Week Review 9/12 - 9/18

Here's my first week in review. Please let me know what you think - feel free to comment and suggest different ideas. I originally posted my "plan" for the week on my other blog. As you can see, things change. Here's what we ate, how I made it and a few pictures of what it looked like. Enjoy!


SUNDAY


We made pizza. This was a total "Semi-Homemade" recipe using Trader Joe's herb pizza dough, a jar of putanesca sauce and a bag of shredded "quatro formagio" cheese (also from Trader Joe's). I added spinach and bacon to make it awesome. It was devoured by all.


MONDAY


So much for braising… I ended up really busy cleaning all day and didn’t cook ahead, so when I got back from picking up Maya, I had to make dinner fast. The natives were restless. I pulled the mandarin chicken out of the freezer and made a quick carrot and fennel salad. For some reason, my kids LOVE shredded carrots, especially really fresh ones from the garden. It’s one of those foods I know they’ll eat. The mandarin chicken from Trader Joe’s is the same. Everyone loves it. And it is so easy.


Carrot & Fennel Salad


Trader Joe's Mandarin Orange Chicken

TUESDAY


Lunch


I’m usually skeptical of Marco’s ideas. But he said the kids at eaten his tuna salad, so I attempted to recreate it. Basically, I made a coctel, which is the Mexican way of doing Shrimp Cocktail, but I made it with tuna. I wouldn’t normally include lunch, but this was so ridiculously good.


Coctel de Atun


Dinner


I made some chicken lettuce wraps. This was well received by everyone. I realize it’s not of a particular ethnic persuasion. However, it was small pieces, easily eaten by all and was actually quite good. It had veggies and protein and was really easy to make. The chicken came from South Mountain Creamery and was a free-range, humanely treated chicken. I used a great frozen veggie mix from Trader Joe's (of course) called Soycutash. It's taasty, and my kids eat it up!


Chicken Lettuce Wraps
















Cookies


Maya loves to make cookies, so we make them every once in awile even though she's hardly ever allowed to actually eat them. I thought these turned out really well. I took a recipe from the back of some Toll House milk chocolate morsels and then altered it a little bit. I think they're addictive.


Salted Chocolate Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies















WEDNESDAY


I made salmon "burgers and sweet potato "fries." I got the salmon burgers at Trader Joe’s (big surprise). I think I overcooked them because they were a little dry. I mixed up a little “tartar” sauce with some of our pickled rhubarb, onions, mayo and dill. That was delicious and went well with the salmon. I cut up the sweet potato into thin slices and baked them with olive oil and salt. I didn’t let them crisp up, so they were basically just baked sweet potato strips, but they were still yummy.


Tartar Sauce

THURSDAY


My soup was so delicious! Seriously, I have to brag about how ridiculously good it was. Both Maya and Marco loved it. And the babies chowed down on their steamed chunks of the same ingredients. It was VERY easy and VERY healthy. It was perfectly balanced sweet and spicy. I used Penzey's Hot Curry, so it had good heat. You can add sour cream to each bowl if you want it more velvety and a little less spicy. We ate it with the French bread Marco made over the weekend. And Marco and I drank the Barefoot Muscato, which sounds funny to have with dinner, but the spicy/sweet combo was perfect.


Curried Butternut Squash and Apple Soup


FRIDAY


I stole this recipe from my sister who was trying to recreate a dish we had at Agave Mexican Restaurant in Lewes, DE. It is so easy and comes out really yummy. You can make it as hot as you want, depending on the salsa you use. I used Safeway's Medium Salsa Verde, which is surprisingly good. Because I was making the dish for a new Mom of Multiples and having friends over, I made dessert as well. Plus, I had all these Granny Smith apples that I was dying to bake!


Chicken Enchilada Casserole


Apple Crisp


SATURDAY


The kids had pizza again. Seeing as they were not big fans of the chicken casserole, I didn't want to force it on them while we were rushing to get ready to go out. I asked Maya, and she requested pizza, so that's what we did! Marco and I went on a date for my birthday. It was wonderful. We were fortunate enough to have SIX babysitters. My nephew and nieces came over with some friends. Thank you guys. And Happy Birthday to my nephew, Brad, as well. Hard to believe he's 24 years old!!


And now we're back to Sunday...what will I make tonight?? I'm thinking spaghetti with broccoli and potatoes. Maybe I'll steam that beet for the kids. I've also still got green beans and carrots and banana peppers and cabbage...carrot and cabbage slaw? Hmmm...a lot to think about this week. I'll let you know how it went! :)