Menu Plan Monday - Sept 8, 2014

Hello all my lovely internet friends! Long time no chat! This has been a crazy year so far, and I have to admit that this little blog definitely fell by the wayside. But, it’s the time of year that I get all excited – I got a new mommy planner (yippee!), a schedule full of activities for the girls, and once the strike is settled, back to school! My older gingerbaby is going into grade three and my little one is going into kindergarten (sniff sniff, not sure I’m ready for that!).

We spent our summer mapping out all of the parks and water parks in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Our goal was a new park each week, sometimes two! We also spent a lot of time at our cabin at Black Mountain Ranch. The girls rode horses all summer long and swam, and played and played and played!

The kids lessons all start this week, so I know that if I don’t menu plan, I’ll be heading straight to the drive thru! We have two nights during the week that we have only an hour between activities, so we are going to try some new make-ahead and freeze recipes and some crock pot cooking too! I’ll be sharing my crock pot recipes along the way. Thanks for stopping by, I hope you all have a fantastic week!

 

Recipe for this cheesy concoction

On the menu this week:

Monday: Chicken strips, fries and salad

Tuesday: Crockpot Kung Pao Chicken and chow mein noodles

Wednesday: Tex Mex Lasagne

Thursday: Beef tacos and cheese quesadillas

Friday: Heading down to the cabin – pasta and hot dogs for dinner!

Saturday: Perogies, steak and corn on the cob

Sunday: Miss A’s request – Chicken wings, french fries and salad

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Iced Pumpkin Cookies

Hello my friends! As promised, I am back with a recipe for a sweet treat, perfect for cozy days curled up under a blanket with a cuppa tea. It was also perfect for a fundraising bake sale I participated in last week. 

Knowing that fall is just around the corner, and with it the promise of all things pumpkin and spice, I scoured Pinterest to find just the right pumpkin recipe. I found this recipe from jamonkey.com, and it perfectly fit the bill.

These cookies turned out soft and chewy and once the icing was drizzled on top, they were perfect cookies for sitting with a cuppa tea. You could make these with canned pumpkin, but I had some frozen pumpkin that I used for these cookies and they turned out great! They certainly didn't last long on the bake sale table!

Iced Pumpkin Cookies
adapted from Jamonkey.com

Ingredients

Cookies
4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup butter
2 1/4 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cup pumpkin
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing
3 cups icing sugar
5 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Using a medium cookie scoop, drop on cookie sheet and flatten with a fork.

Bake for 17-20 minutes, until the cookies are golden delicious on top. Cool cookies, then drizzle glaze on top of the cookies. For this step, it's easiest if you push the cookies close together on a cookie sheet, or on a piece of parchment paper. This way, when you drizzle the glaze on the cookies, it makes much less sticky mess.

For the glaze: In a medium bowl, combine icing sugar, milk, melted butter teaspoon vanilla. Whisk together until you reach a smooth consistency. If the mixture is still too thick, add milk as needed. You want to be able to drizzle over the cookies. Transfer the glaze into a medium Ziploc bag, cut a tiny piece of the corner and use it to drizzle the glaze evenly over the cookies.

I hope you have enjoyed this recipe - let me know if you try it out!



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Crockpot Marinara Sauce (Freezer Meal)

This week I had a few spare hours (crazy, right??) and thought what better way to use up those precious minutes than by starting a batch of freezer cooking? I was having my in-laws over for dinner, so I thought I would try out a recipe from my new cookbook!I preordered Jessica Fisher's Not Your Mother's Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook, and it came in the mail last week!

I decided to try the Stuffed Chicken Parmesan and Easy Slow Cooker Red Sauce. They turned out so wonderfully that I thought I'd share them with you! I have made Jessica's red sauce recipe before, on one of my previous freezer cooking adventures. I knew it was a hit with our family, so I (with help from the hubs!) made up a big batch yesterday. The batch was big enough for our dinner plus FIVE more servings for the freezer! I'll share the stuffed chicken parmesan in my next post.

I wanted to make a healthy sauce that my family would love, but that had no extra sugars added. I bought canned tomatoes with no sugar added - which is surprisingly difficult!! Lots of the canned tomatoes on my local grocery shelf had sugar added - a few even had high fructose corn syrup! In tomatoes!!
Here is the recipe!!

Slow Cooker Marinara Sauce
Recipe adapted from Here

Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
2 onions, diced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
3 large carrots, grated
1 tbsp minced garlic
4 - 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes (no sugar added)
1 cup water
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground black pepper
3 tbsp italian seasoning

Instructions
In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat and cook garlic and onions until translucent. Add the mushrooms and grated carrots and cook for just a few more minutes. Transfer the onions/mushrooms/carrots into the bottom of a large crockpot.
Open the cans of tomatoes, and one can at a time, puree the contents in the blender. This step is optional, but as anyone with little kids can attest, it's much easier to get kids to eat sauce when there are no chunks of tomatoes in the sauce!!
Add the crushed tomatoes and seasonings and mix together until well combined. Cover and cook on LOW for at least four hours.

This sauce can be used as a base for a meat sauce (just brown your beef/pork and add to the sauce), as a vegetarian pasta sauce, in chili, in any number of delicious recipes!!
I used approximately two cups of sauce to top the Stuffed Chicken Parmesan (recipe will be posted tomorrow!). After the sauce in the crockpot cooled, transfer two cups at a time into medium ziploc freezer bags. Lay the bags in a dish and freeze flat. To defrost sit frozen sauce bag in warm water until it thaws, or let thaw in refrigerator.

I hope you like this recipe! It is honestly one of the easiest and most delicious recipes around, and it provides dinner after dinner for just pennies a serving!!

Menu Plan Monday - October 22,2012

What an amazing weekend!! We did a Fall photo shoot with the fantastic Alana Joy Photography on Saturday - the weather even held out for us! It may have been freezing cold, but the cloudy skies and lack of rain made for some amazing photos. When we get them back I'll be sure to share them with you. Anyone out here in the lower mainland should really book photos with her, she does a great job!

Soaking wet, in the pouring rain, but still a smile on her sweet face!

Last week Miss A and her classmates went on a field trip to Dave's Orchard. The weather was less than lovely that day, but it didn`t matter. She and her little buddies had a great time picking vegetables and learning about farm life. This week`s menu plan will include the veggies she brought home! Corn, potatoes, carrots, turnips, apples and pears. Oh how I love fall!

On the Menu This Week:

Monday - Shake n Bake chicken, rice and Rachel Salad
Tuesday - Roasted root veggies (from the field trip!!), corn and roasted ham
Wednesday - Lasagne Wednesday!
Thursday - Guinness Brats, scalloped potatoes and beans
Friday - Pizza and Rachel Salad
Saturday - Eating at the THREE parties we have that day!
Sunday - Teriyaki Salmon, rice and vegetables
I will be linking up my menu plan with Org Junkie`s Menu Plan Monday. Stop by and check it out for tons of recipe ideas!!