Meal plan #15: 7-day dinner menu
A family dinner meal plan for the week, with some notes and links to recipes.
Family meal plan for the week:
Sunday: Sous-vide tri tip and baked potatoes
Monday: Salmon and caesar salad
Tuesday: Costco chicken pot pie
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Pork & broccoli stir fry, salt & pepper tofu
Friday: frozen pizza
Saturday: Moussaka with pasta & greek salad
Keep reading for all the details about each dinner.
And now for the details…
Sunday: Sous-Vide Tri Tip and Baked Potatoes
I go a year or more forgetting I have a sous-vide machine, but it’s such a great way to cook bigger pieces of meat. If you’ve never cooked this way, I recommend you try it. My sous-vide machine is several years old now and I’m not sure that model is still sold, but there are lots of great options on Amazon if you click here. I usually use this kind of container to do the cooking in, but you can see from the pic that I did these in a big pot because I needed more room. I love that big pot though, it’s a Lodge brand enameled cast iron and I use it several times a week lately.
My local store has had a great price on tri-tip lately so I’ve been buying them a lot. I’m not sure if this is a common cut of meat everywhere, but it’s been popular in California for a long time and I think it’s becoming more well known. It’s the tip of the sirloin, and is called tri-tip because of it’s triangular shape. It’s typically grilled, seared at a high temp, and left rare to medium rare in the middle, and served sliced thin, often on fresh rolls as like a steak sandwich. I’m not a big griller - even though I’ve been cooking for decades I feel like grilling is just not something I good at, I have a knack for setting my grill on fire. So I like to look for other ways to cook meat like this. The sous-vide is a great way to do it.
This is the recipe I loosely followed, I put a little butter in the bags with the meat as well as the seasoning in this recipe, and I cooked two because leftover steak is never a bad thing. The flavor was really great and I will definitely do it this way again, although it was maybe a tiny bit more rare than my kids like it so I’ll probably cook it a degree or two hotter next time.
Tip: leftover steak makes the best quesadillas. I chopped up a bunch of the leftover sliced steak and made a big stack of steak quesadillas one day for lunch. One reason I like to leave meat like this on the more rare side is so that when we have it left over it just cooks a bit more but still doesn’t get too done.
Monday: Salmon and Caesar Salad
I went to Costco on Monday so we got a couple of salmon filets and their big container of Caesar salad. As much as I like to get creative, my people like their salmon very simple. I drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle a little salt, sometimes a squeeze of lemon, and put in a very hot oven for 5-7 minutes. I prefer this over grilling (see above comment about always catching my grill on fire), even though I usually manage to fill the house with smoke and set off alarms when I put oily fish in a super hot oven. You can do this with the broiler too, but then my house gets even more smokey. Oven grilled salmon and Caesar salad is such a simple and delicious meal.
Tuesday: Costco Chicken Pot Pie
Tuesday is usually taco day in our house but we had a meeting at the high school, and I’d just been to Costco, so it was easy to just cook the pot pie in the late afternoon and leave it for the people to serve themselves whenever they wanted dinner. I try not to buy too many already made things at Costco, but the chicken pot pies are so good that I'm pretty much not allowed to come home from Costco without them. I always get two and cook both because we will eat a whole one for dinner and the second is ready for leftovers. My family eats it for breakfast.
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Pork & Broccoli Stir Fry, Crispy Salt & Pepper Tofu, Steamed Rice.
I’m not sure I’ve ever used a recipe for a stir fry, but I’m sure there are plenty of good ones out there. I do pork for stir fry a lot, because it’s a relatively inexpensive meat and my family gets tired of chicken. Most of the time I end up just cutting up pork chops because I buy them in bulk at Costco, they’re a good price but my kids don’t love just eating a pork chop. I season the pork with soy sauce, garlic, white pepper, a little sesame oil, sometimes a bit of lime juice, maybe some onion powder, a little corn starch and a little baking soda. Let it all marinade for a while, and then cook in batches in hot oil in a hot pan. I like a mix of a little sesame oil for flavor, plus a high heat cooking oil.
Tip: I use baking soda to tenderize meat. You know that tender texture of the meat you get in dishes at the Chinese restaurant, that you can never seem to recreate at home? Well baking soda does this. Use it sparingly, just a teaspoon or so, but it makes a world of difference. It changes the pH of the meat and causes the proteins to relax. You can read a bit more about the science behind this here.
After you’ve cooked the meat, then you toss in the veggies to cook those. My stir fries always vary depending on what I have, but broccoli is common, onions, cabbage, sometimes carrots, celery. Season with ginger and garlic, some salt and white pepper. I like to cook the veggies until they are starting to soften but still have some crunch.
Then I add the meat back in, and the sauce. For the sauce I do about a cup of cold chicken broth and a teaspoon or so of corn starch - mix this well, and then add some flavoring. I love oyster sauce, it’s got a sweet, salty, umami flavor. You can add ginger, soy, whatever you like. Pour the mixture over the meat and veggies and stir to combine, and you’re done.
Next up - salt & pepper tofu. You can google for crispy salt and pepper tofu recipes, there’s a lot out there. But honestly how I do it is a lot simpler than most of them and we love how it turns out. I use extra firm tofu, I slice the block in half and stack it between some dishtowels for an hour or so to get some of the water out. Then I cut in cubes, toss in a bit of sesame oil, and then toss to coat in a mixture of corn starch, salt, and white pepper. Just season some corn starch with salt and pepper and dip a finger in to taste it, and add more seasoning if you need it. Then I fry the cubes of tofu in hot oil until golden on all sides. After I’ve cooked all the tofu I sometimes toss some chopped green onion and minced garlic in the oil just long enough to start to brown and sprinkle that over the tofu along with a generous sprinkling of coarse salt. It’s delicious. This is one you want to serve pretty quickly while it’s still crispy and hot. It’s still tasty leftover but no longer crispy.
I also served steamed rice with this. You can find my tip for perfect steamed rice in last week’s post.
Friday: Frozen Pizza and Bag Salad
Sometimes I need to take a week off from making all the homemade pizzas so we just go for frozen ones and a bagged Caesar salad.
Saturday: Moussaka!
I’ve never made moussaka before, but I started browsing some greek recipes recently (see last week’s post about making gyros) and was reminded that I really like it. Moussaka is described as like a greek lasagna, and I guess it’s sort of like that, in that it’s layered with a meat sauce and a bechamel. But there’s no pasta. It’s been years since I had moussaka, so I figured I would give it a try. One of the ways we save money in a big family, but still get to be foodies, is because I try to recreate a lot of my restaurant cravings at home.
Photo is from Themediterraneandish.com - source of the recipe. click the image to get the recipe.
This is the recipe I used and I would definitely do it again. I followed in fairly closely, except I added a bit more seasoning to the sauce because I was using ground beef and it doesn’t have as much flavor as lamb, and I made extra of the sauce. Also it seems like a mistake or oversight in the sauce section of the recipe that they don’t include salt at all. This sauce most definitely needs salt. I salt the meat a bit while it’s browning, then add all the spices and taste and salt some more.
This dish isn’t hard to make, but it’s not a quick weeknight meal. There are three separate components that each need to be cooked before you assemble the casserole. It’s a good one for a weekend when you have time to spend cooking. It would be great on a weeknight though if you made it all the components ahead of time.
We had it with buttered pasta on the side, and a greek salad of just cucumbers, tomatoes, greek olives, feta, and a simple olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.
That’s it for this week!
Meal plan #14: 7-day dinner menu
Another easy week of dinner ideas for the family.
One week family meal plan.
I’m back with meal planning for the family after a long break of not posting our dinner menus. I’m not doing a lot of original recipe creation these days, but trying a lot of recipes from other food blogs and customizing to our tastes. Read on to see what we had for dinner this week, with some links to recipes when I’ve used them.
The menu for this week:
Sunday: homemade vegetable beef soup with fresh rolls
Monday: spaghetti with jumbo baked meatballs
Tuesday: chili-lime chicken tacos
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: sheet pan beef with broccoli
Friday: pizza
Saturday: gyros with homemade flat breads and greek salad
Keep reading for the recipes I used.
Sunday: Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup
This was an all day affair because I decided to try making beef stock from scratch. I loosely followed this recipe for the stock. It turned out good but honestly was a long process and I’m not sure it was any better than a good quality stock I could buy at the store. Less expensive? Maybe, but the soup bones I bought weren’t as cheap as I would have hoped. Will I make it again? I don’t know.
For the soup I used this recipe. This was really good. I would not have thought to thicken this soup with a little flour, but somehow just that small addition makes a big difference.
We also had homemade rolls with this. I make these rolls using the Milk Bread recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. I double the recipe and make it into rolls instead of a loaf. The real secret is butter. Butter for kneading, butter while rising, butter when you roll them out and shape the rolls, brushed with butter before baking. We also like them with a little salt sprinkled on top just before baking. I first made these a couple of years ago for thanksgiving, after trying several recipes to find the perfect thanksgiving roll recipe, and they’re so good that they’ve become a bit of an obsession in our house.
tip: these rolls freeze great after baking. I’ve tried freezing the dough but it never rises quite as well. But if I bake a bunch extra and bag them in the freezer then my kids can just pull out and warm up one or two at a time.
Monday: Spaghetti & Jumbo Meatballs
We do a lot of deconstructed meals, so people can choose how they want to put their own plate together. So the pasta is served by itself, with a little butter and sometimes cream. The sauce is separate. The meatballs are separate. I thought it would be fun to make really big meatballs. I loosely followed this recipe for the meatball mixture, with a combination of ground beef, lamb, and pork, and just baked them 15-20 minutes longer because of the big size. I served some without sauce and put some in a dish with a simple tomato sauce over the top.
My tomato sauce is one I’ve kinda perfected over the years to be just how we like it. I use this basic recipe on pizza almost every week, and on pasta, meatballs, meatloaf. It’s just a big can of crushed tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of fresh crushed garlic, a few dashes of ground thyme and ground rosemary, salt and pepper to taste. For pizza I just mix this up and spread directly on the pizza with no extra cooking. For other things I let it simmer in a pan for a bit.
Tip: when I make meatballs or anything similar, I ALWAYS at least double the recipe and freeze half. These things are kind of time consuming and messy, and it’s not twice as much work and mess to make twice as many, so it’s a really easy way to stash a meal in the freezer for another night. Put raw shaped meatballs on a tray and freeze, and then transfer to a ziplock bag once frozen. Then you can cook straight from the freezer, boil some pasta, heat up some sauce, and dinner is done.
Tuesday: Chili Lime Chicken Tacos
Taco Tuesday is a thing here, but I try to mix it up with different fillings every week. Chili lime chicken is a favorite. There are lots of chili lime chicken recipes out there, here is just one example. This is the kind of thing that once you’ve made it a few times you really don’t need a recipe. I’ve made this before and it’s been popular, but I made a bit of a mistake this time. I used a different chili powder than before and I didn’t taste to see how spicy it was before dumping a bunch in. It was spicy! The chicken still turned out good, and the spice was tolerable with lots of lettuce and sour cream in the taco.
We have this taco bar style with the usual topping choices - lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, sometimes avocado if I have them, sometimes chips and salsa or beans or rice on the side.
Wednesday: Leftovers
Wednesday night we have scout meetings so dinner is almost always leftovers. I always cook extra of everything so we have lots of leftovers to choose from.
Thursday: Sheet Pan Beef with Broccoli
I make a lot of stir-fries on the stove, but this was the first time I’ve done this kind of recipe in the oven. Sometimes I just get tired of cleaning the stove, so I look for oven recipes. I tried a version of this Sheet Pan Beef and Broccoli recipe from Nom Nom Paleo. I’ve cut way back on my carbs lately so I look at a lot of Whole30 and Paleo recipes for ideas. I mostly followed her recipe except I did use some soy sauce. After following a whole30 for a month already I realized that the one thing I really don’t want to live without is soy sauce. One thing I also added was just a bit of baking soda. It’s a secret to tender meat in things like this, or stir fries. A teaspoon or so of baking soda added to the marinade changed the pH of the meat and tenderizes the though fibers. It really makes a massive difference. Served with rice for the carb eaters, and a salad with a sesame ginger dressing.
Tip: my never fail method of rice cooking: Heavy bottomed pot, melt a little coconut oil, add rice and brown just a little, then add 2 cups of water for every cup of rice. I usually cook big pots of rice so 4 cups of rice and 8 cups of water. Let simmer uncovered until you can just see some of the rice coming up to the top of the water level. Then cover, turn heat to low, set a timer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes turn off the heat and leave covered until you are ready to eat. Perfect every time. I hardly ever rinse rice because my kids like it sticky. Rinsing gets rid of some of the excess starch that can make rice sticky.
Friday: Homemade Pizza
Friday is pizza night at our house. Always and forever. I would have a mutiny if there wasn’t pizza. Usually it’s homemade. Lately I rarely follow a dough recipe, I make sourdough pizza dough and just do it by feel most of the time. But here is my basic bread and pizza and everything dough recipe you can try, it’s my fallback if the sourdough isn’t behaving or I’ve forgotten to feed it. It’s a very basic bread dough that can be customized for a lot of uses. For pizza I add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and extra salt.
I usually make 4 pizzas. Always at least one cheese and one veggie, and the other two are combos with whatever I have around - usually some pepperoni and/or salami, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, sometimes ham and pineapple.
Saturday: Gyros with Flatbread and Greek Salad
I’ve never made homemade gyros before but I thought it sounded like fun to try. Saturdays are the day that I spend more time getting a little creative, and I’ve been into trying some Greek things lately.
Making gyros is a bit like making meatloaf, you season the ground meats and cook it into a loaf. Then let it chill and slice and fry the slices in a pan. I used this recipe here for the gyros, and of course made a lot extra to freeze.
For the flatbread, I again went back to my trusty basic dough recipe. A little extra salt and a bit of olive oil in this one, and then after it’s done rising you just pinch off small balls and roll them out as flat as you can and cook them on a hot oiled pan.
I served the gyros with the flatbread, chopped cucumber, tomatoes, and lettuce, some homemade tzatziki and homemade garlic tahini sauce.
The tzatziki is plain yogurt with grated cucumber, lemon juice, salt, and I add a little cumin which isn’t traditional but I like it.
The tahini sauce was leftover from this meal - I always make lots extra of sauce recipes so we can use it for another meal. This was really tasty and I’ve used this sauce on a lot of things.
Meal Planning Tips
Some quick thoughts about how I make meal planning easy.
How to create a meal plan for your family
If you spend too much time on Pinterest, you might get the idea that it's normal to be cooking a new recipe every night of the week, and always have a lovely menu planned for your family with a new dish every night. That's marvelous. But not real. I don't know anybody who actually does this. How can you? If you got kids and jobs and housework and all of the things, I think very few people have time to cook like that.
I'm not sure how we got to the point where we somehow started thinking that this is what we were supposed to be doing. It's not realistic, and I don't think any other culture in the world does this. Most other cultures around the world eat fairly simple diets - a routine formula that consists of a basic starch (noodles, rice, bread, pasta, potato, depending on what part of the world you are in) with simply prepared seasonal local vegetables, and a bit of meat if you can afford it. They repeat the same basic meals with the same basic seasoning and local spices almost every day, cooking more elaborate dishes only for guests and special occasions.
But somehow we have gotten away from this, and I think put way too much pressure on ourselves.
I see meal plans on Pinterest that promote "no repeats!", and I say no to that. We need repeats. Busy moms need predictably. Kids love predictably. They call it comfort food for a reason. When our lives are crazy busy, our days feel like we're living through a tornado, I think we need a meal plan of easy, predictable favorites that we know our family will love and we know we can get on the table quickly. We don't need "no repeats".
I think we're too conditioned to variety to be able to eat the same meal every day, but we can at least follow a repeatable and predictable schedule that makes meal planning a lot easier.
My practical method of meal planning for our busy family:
I follow a plan that sets a basic guideline or theme for each night of the week, and just repeat it week after week. I don't make the exact same thing each time, but it's usually just simple variations on the basic theme.
Monday: Soup or stew
Tuesday: Tacos, or Mexican
Wednesday: Something rice based, or Asian
Thursday: Pasta or kid food
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Leftovers
Sunday: Roast or grill, meat or fish
Monday is our full day, so a soup or stew that I can have made ahead when we get home late works really well for us and keeps us from eating out. On Friday pizza night we mix it up a lot - sometimes it's delivery, sometimes it's frozen pizzas from the grocery store, sometimes we make it completely from scratch and have fun putting lots of different toppings on. I switch the nights around occasionally, just depending on what our schedule is at different times of year, but the basic themes stay the same.
I have a page in my notebook where I keep lists of ideas for each theme - a list of my favorite easy soups to make, or variations on the taco theme, or simple Asian rice dishes. So then, when I am figuring out my meal plan for the month, it's really easy to just look through my lists and pick 4 from each category.
Grazing Table For Kids
Grazing Table Ideas for Kids
Grazing Tables and Charcuterie boards are all the rage these days and I am totally here for it. I have been feeding kids like this for years and it is the easiest way to get them to eat a good meal.
I am a huge believer in giving kids control over their food - they really will eat better if they feel like they are in control of it.
This doesn’t mean it’s a junk food free for all. It means you give them a variety of easy, healthy choices, and a few guidelines, and let them build their own plate. I do this regularly and it works really well.
A big mixed platter of protein, fruits, veggies, and a little carbs. I give them a guideline that they have to choose at least one protein, one veggie, and one fruit. The carbs are optional, and honestly if I leave them off the kids don’t even miss it and eat more of the other stuff.
This is basically a guaranteed way to get kids to eat. Seriously.
It's a win-win for everyone. You get to know that your kids are eating food you want them to eat - healthy food! And the kids get to feel like they have control over their own meal.
Every time I make a lunch like this my kids attack it like they haven't eaten for days. And a bonus tip for you - grown ups love to eat this way too. You don’t have to make a charcuterie or grazing table of fancy expensive stuff, fill it full of “kid food” and it will get devoured.
Family Favorite scone recipe
Light and flakey fresh baked scones can’t be beat. This recipe is versatile and works with lots of flavor combinations.
I love a recipe that is versatile and flexible and works in a lot of different versions. I have made many versions of this scone recipe for many years now and they turn out great every time. It’s a flexible recipe that can be cut in half or doubled, and made in a variety of flavors and sizes.
One of our favorite family christmas breakfast treats are these scones make with a cranberry orange flavor. Something about that combination of flavors just feels festive to me.
My husband loves blueberry scones and I feel like the kind you buy are too often dry and crumbly, but I think the buttermilk in these keeps them flakey and moist and they make the best blueberry scones I’ve ever had.
And most recently I have been using this recipe to make a copycat version of the Starbucks Petite Vanilla Scones - my kids absolutely love those but it’s too expensive to buy very often. Trader Joe’s also sells a bag of little vanilla scones which are pretty good too. But neither of those are as good as these.
Scroll on down for the basic recipe, and be sure to read the notes where I tell you how to make some of our favorite variations. But even the plain version is amazing fresh out of the oven with a little butter or jam.
Scones
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425
- In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Add cubed butter and cut in and combine until mixture resembles fine crumbs.
- If using dried fruits, nuts, chocolate chips, vanilla beans: add to crumb mixture before adding wet ingredients.
- Combine buttermilk, egg, and vanilla.
- Add wet mixture to dry mixture and combine until it comes together into dough. Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead several times until well mixed.
- Divide dough into quarters and press each quarter into a 1⁄2 inch thick circle.
- Cut each circle into 6 wedges.
- Alternatively, you can roll the entire dough out to 1⁄2 inch thick and cut in squares, or use a round biscuit cutter to cut circles.
- Place on parchment lined baking sheets. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with a little sugar. Skip this step if you plan to add icing.
- Bake for 12 – 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown.
- Allow to cool and then drizzle with icing if desired.
- You can make this dough ahead and refrigerate or freeze until ready to bake.
Notes
Starbucks copycat petit vanilla scones:
- divide the dough into 8 rounds instead of four.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes.
- Top with vanilla bean icing after cooling
Vanilla Bean Icing:
- Combine powdered sugar and milk until smooth.
- Scrape vanilla beans in and mix well
Blueberry scones:
- It works best if you use frozen blueberries and mix them right at the end and then work fast to get your scones rolled out before the blueberries thaw.
Lemon scones:
- Add the zest of one lemon to the dough
- Replace a tablespoon of buttermilk with lemon juice
Lemon icing:
- replace one tablespoon of milk in icing recipe with lemon juice.
- add the zest of one lemon to the icing.
Orange Cranberry Scones (our holiday breakfast favorite)
- Add orange zest and about a cup of dried cranberries to the dough
Preserved lemons
Quick and easy preserved lemons that add tons of flavor to your recipes.
I’ve just made a batch of my preserved lemons, so I thought I’d show you how I do it.
I’m a bit obsessed with the flavor. I love to use them in salad dressings, in a cucumber yogurt sauce, with pork or chicken.
My method is simple - cut off the ends and quarter the lemons, and layer them in a jar with kosher salt. I use about a tablespoon of salt per lemon.
Squish the lemons down to get the juices going, put on a tight lid, and then agitate or rotate the jar regularly for several days until the salt is all dissolved.
My kids call it my snow globe.
If your lemons aren’t super juicy then you might need to juice a few extra to add more juice to the jar, you want to end up with liquid pretty much covering all the lemons.
Sometimes I open it up after a day or two and squish the lemons down once they’ve gotten a bit soft, and add more lemons if there is room. Sometimes people add a bit of boiling water to top it off to make sure all the lemons are submerged.
And then that’s it.
Leave them alone for a few weeks, roll the jar around once a week or so.
And then dice them up in any dish that needs a savory kick. They keep for a long time and just get better.
Some recipes tell you to remove and discard the pulp and just use the skin, but I actually love the flavor of the pulp too so I usually add that in as well.
Enjoy!
~ Lisa
Extra Creamy Scrambled Eggs
A simple secret for extra creamy scrambled eggs.
One of my favorite quick and easy tips for making amazing scrambled eggs every time: mayonnaise.
I said what I said. Add mayo. You know what mayo is made of right? It’s eggs and oil, with some seasoning, mixed into a creamy emulsion. So adding that to eggs makes them extra creamy and adds seasoning and flavor.
I usually do at least 6 - 12 eggs at a time because I’m always cooking for a crowd so I add a couple tablespoons of mayo. Experiment for yourself and decided how much you like.
Meal Plan #13: a full month menu
A quick view of another method of meal planning I sometimes use.
Another full month meal plan, but this time I’m showing you how I do it by hand in a journal.
I’m all about full month meal planning, I think it helps save a lot of money and avoid getting in a rut. Sometimes my meal planning is fancy, and sometimes it’s quick and dirty, like this. In my bullet journal I have just pasted a blank month calendar template. I’ve written before about how I try to meal plan with a general “theme” for each day of the week. It helps me focus and figure out ideas. So as you can see in the picture, I write the theme above the day column for the month.
I typically only plan out the main dish for the meal. The sides tend to sort themselves out. I always try to make sure we have a vegetable, so if there isn’t a vegetable component of the main dish then I will usually either just add a salad or some roasted veggies.
Homemade superfood breakfast cereal
Quick and easy recipe for a homemade superfood breakfast cereal to get your day off to an amazing start.
Do you need a boost of healthy energy in the morning?
A way to get your day going with a super healthy start? This is what I've been having for breakfast every day and I am loving it.
This is my quick and easy recipe for a homemade superfood breakfast cereal.
I was buying some pre-made superfood cereals, until I read the ingredients and realized it was all things I had in my pantry and I could throw it together myself for a LOT less than I was paying to buy it already made for me.
As with most of what I make and share - this "recipe" is more of a guideline. This will give you a basic framework for a healthy cereal to get your morning off to a great start.
You are basically just combining rolled oats with a variety of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits.
For mine I try to shop at Trader Joe's - they have a great selection of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits, and they have a good rice on organic oats. You could also grab your ingredients from the bulk foods section of your grocery store or natural market.
Ingredients:
Rolled oats: NOT steel cut, and not quick cooking. Just old fashioned rolled oats. 1 regular size container - probably about a pound.
Nuts: I like a combination of sliced almonds and chopped walnuts. Use any kind you like, just make sure they are in bite sized pieces.
Seeds: Sunflower seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds (or ground flax).
Dried fruits: raisins, blueberries, cherries...
A few notes about the ingredients:
Nuts: Don't buy salted ones. They are going to be way too salty for this kind of recipe. I personally prefer to buy roasted nuts, I find that I digest them better. But if you like raw then go for raw nuts. I like to buy the nuts that are already sliced or chopped. That makes it super easy to throw this together.
Seeds: I buy roasted unsalted sunflower seeds - again, my system handles the roasted ones better. But many folks prefer raw. In addition to the sunflower seeds, add whatever combination of other seeds you can get your hands on - chia, hemp, flax - there's no limit!
Fruits: Trader Joe's has a great bag of mixed dried fruit, so that's what I've been using. It's got raisins, cranberries, blueberries, and cherries - so it's everything I need and it's easy.
Feel free to add other stuff - ground flax is great, wheat germ if you're into that.
Quantities:
My personal preference is to have the mix be about half oats and half other stuff. Of the half "other stuff", I tend to go for about equal parts of fruit, nuts, and seeds - slightly more fruit & nuts vs. seeds.
The container I'm using is about 8 cups. So that breaks down to about:
4 cups rolled oats
1 1/2 cups dried fruits
1 1/2 cups chopped nuts
1 cup mixed seeds
Instructions:
Literally - dump it all in and mix together.
Store in an airtight container.
Serving:
My container comes with a 1 cup measuring scoop, so I use 1 cup as the serving. Add enough of your favorite milk to cover, and let sit for a few minutes to let the oats & fruit soften a bit. I use almond milk, but you can use any kind you like.
I top it with whatever fresh fruit I've got around - blueberries, strawberries, etc.
Roasted broccoli and cauliflower
My favorite way to cook broccoli and cauliflower.
Just a super quick post to share with you my absolute favorite way to cook broccoli and/or cauliflower: roasted until it’s just a little blackened.
I toss with lots of olive oil, salt & seasoning. Today was this onion salt from Trader Joe’s, sometimes I do salt + curry powder, or salt + za’atar.
Then a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes, a quick stir, and 5 more minutes. It’s perfect when it’s getting a little crispy and charred around the edges, but the thick stems are still crunchy. I could honestly eat this entire tray myself, I love it that much.
Ravioli Lasagna Recipe
Ravioli Lasagna recipe - an easy and delicious family dinner recipe.
We have a new family favorite dinner. This ravioli lasagna recipe is so easy and sure to please a crowd.
When we were in the process of moving last year we were in a state of limbo for several months. We had to have a lot of work done on our old house before we could sell it, so after the months of packing and moving out of our house, we then lived in an AirBnB for two months while the house was remodeled before we could list it.
With all the chaos and upheaval I didn’t have the energy to do a lot of cooking from scratch. We were very close to a Costco so we basically lived off all the amazing pre-made dinners from Costco every night. They had so many options and we tried them all, but definitely found a few favorites - and their ravioli lasagna was one of our top favorites.
Now that we’re all settled in our new home and I’m back to cooking every night, I thought I could probably easily recreate that amazing ravioli lasagna recipe at home. And I was right. This is so easy to make and everyone loves it, and I’m sure this ravioli lasagna recipe is going to become a regular on our family meal plan.
You hardly need a recipe, but I’ve listed it out below for you anyway.
As with everything I make, this will be super flexible and you can basically add anything to it you want. I kept this one vegetarian, mostly just to keep it simple. I added some fresh baby spinach to add a bit more nutrition and some green to the mix. You could certainly add some meat in here too if you like, some crumbled up sausage or browned ground beef. And you could use any kind of ravioli you like, I just went with the inexpensive store brand cheese ravioli because my kids love those.
Ravioli Lasagna Recipe
Two bags of frozen cheese ravioli
Two 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes (or sauce of your choice)
One container of washed baby spinach
One 32 oz container of ricotta cheese
Several cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Seasoning as desired - a little salt and pepper, some dried herbs (I like thyme and rosemary), a drizzle of olive oil.
All you’re going to do is layer all these things in your pan. I use a big nonstick roasting pan for lasagna, because we like it thick with lots of layers. I always start with a bit of sauce on the bottom, just to keep things from sticking. And then just layer - pasta, cheeses, sauce, spinach, etc. - until your pan is full. One last layer of cheese on top and then cover it with foil and pop in the oven at 350 for about and hour and 15 minutes, and then take off the foil for another 15 minutes. About 90 minutes total should do it - you just want it all bubbly and melted and getting a bit brown on top.
A note about sauce: I’ve taken to using canned crushed tomatoes as my tomato “sauce” of choice in almost all things. They give you great tomato flavor without any added sugar or salt. I always try to keep several cans in my pantry. This is what I use on pizza also. Sometimes I season it with a little olive oil and salt and pepper, and a little ground thyme and rosemary. Sometimes I leave it plain if I’m in a hurry.
One-Pot Macaroni and Cheese
Easy homemade mac and cheese recipe that cooks in one pot in 15 minutes from start to finish.
Are you looking for an easy homemade mac and cheese recipe?
Below is my recipe for the best easy homemade mac and cheese you will ever make!
Not only is it delicious, but this Macaroni and Cheese Recipe also is FAST and EASY to make, and you make it in ONE POT!
Nobody wants to stand over a hot stove on a summer day - so this easy mac & cheese recipe comes together in 15 minutes!
I came up with this recipe when I was in a hurry for a kid dinner one night not too long ago, and it has been one of my favorites ever since.
This is the easiest homemade mac and cheese you will ever make!
It is just as good as Grandma's old fashioned recipe. Maybe even better, because you didn't slave over it.
It takes 15 minutes, about as long as it would take you to make one from a box!
Seriously, I timed it.
I had the whole thing done and the stove turned off exactly 15 minutes from the time I turned the burner on.
You've seen all those Pinterest posts about "one pot wonder" pasta dishes. Well this is like one of those. But it's homemade MACARONI AND CHEESE.
You might look at this and realize that it's similar to a lot of other homemade mac & cheese recipes. It is. The ingredients are basically the same. But the technique is different.
This is a one pot recipe. You don't drain the pasta!
This is comfort food - it is creamy and cheesy and fills your tummy, just like comfort food should. But unlike a lot of comfort foods that take hours to make, this takes only minutes. It almost sounds too good to be true, but it's not!
One Pot Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients
Instructions
- Put macaroni, salt, 5 cups of water, and butter in a pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer, stirring frequently, until most of the water is absorbed (about 10-12 minutes). If the water is almost gone but you don't think the pasta is done enough, then add the rest of the water, 1/2 cup at a time. Thicker pasta is going to absorb more water.
- Meanwhile, mix the flour and spices into the cold milk.
- When the pasta is mostly cooked and the water mostly absorbed, add the milk mixture and stir until well combined.
- Then add the shredded cheese, and mix over low heat just until the cheese is melted and mixed in.
- Turn off heat, cover, and let sit for a few minutes to thicken.
Notes
- Use whatever kind of cheese you like - I think it's great with a combination of cheeses.
- If you really want this to look like the box stuff, get the small elbow macaroni. If that doesn't matter so much to you, then try other shapes - little shells are nice, or curly pasta - you just want something that is going to grab that cheesy sauce and hold onto it.
- If you really want it to taste more like the box stuff, then go ahead and use a little processed cheese. I've done it with American cheese and it tastes great! I just use the slices and tear it into pieces. I think a blend of a little American cheese plus a little sharp cheddar gets you a really nice flavor.
- The seasoning and spices are definitely flexible. I keep it mild because my kids are picky. But if you want more spice or kick to it, then go for it.
- It reheats great - just add a little more milk.
Game Day Chili
An easy ground beef mild chili recipe the whole family will love.
This isn’t your grown up chunky chili. This is my recipe for the kind of chili you would want on a hot dog at an amusement park. This is kid friendly chili, hot dog chili, the kind of chili that goes down smooth and feels like the meat has melted in your mouth. This is game day chili. Rainy day chili. Snow day chili. This can be mild chili or spicy chili. Top a steaming bowl of chili with a bit of shredded cheese and sour cream, and you’ve got the key to happiness. We’ve even done this in sourdough bread bowls and it was amazing!
I made this recipe to be super kid friendly. My kids don’t like big chunks of meat, and they don’t like heat, but they do like flavor. If my picky kids love this chili - then I’ll bet yours will too.
A bonus for those of you following a low carb, keto, or grain free diet:
I’ve made a variation of this for you! Scroll all the way to the end to read the instructions for a Low Carb / Keto / Grain Free Chili. I’ve made this recipe both ways many times now, and honestly I can’t tell you which I prefer. My kids like the regular way, it’s got a bit more of a gravy/saucy consistency to it. But the low carb version is more meaty. So you decide!
I’ve played around with chili recipes for years. Many years ago when it was just the two of us, I would make a chunky chili - one with cubes of meat that simmered until they were almost falling apart, but still felt like a mouthful of meat. I still do love that style, but for a family friendly recipe I wanted to come up with something that was more like kind of old fashioned ground beef chili that you might get on a ballpark or fast food chili dog - but with better ingredients and made at home!
After trying a bunch of different variations - I think I’ve just about perfected it! This recipe comes together quick and easy - so easy that my 11 year old daughter now makes it herself from scratch. It is packed with wholesome healthy ingredients - nothing pre-processed, nothing artificial. This is the kind of recipe that you can throw together quickly and then let simmer away all day and make your house smell amazing. If I make this while my kids are at school they will notice immediately when they walk in the door - “what smells so good?”
This is the kind of chili you want to make on a rainy or snowy day. You could make this ahead and set out your slow cooker to simmer it all day while you head out for a day or skiing or playing in the snow, or after those rainy soccer saturdays.
As with all of my recipes - this one is super flexible. Feel free to make it your own by adjusting the amount of spice. My mother now makes this all the time and she likes to add a can of beans to hers at the end. If you like beans in your chili - go for it!
Below is the recipe. There are a few secret tips here that make this amazing - a lot of it is about the texture, you want your veggies to be diced very fine, so they just melt into the flavor. I use a food processor for mine, it really pulverizes everything and gets it into tiny bits.
If you really want your meat to also be in very small bits and almost melt in your mouth - add a bit of water as you are browning it. That will help if cook more evenly and makes it easier for you to really mash it around and break it apart with your spoon.
Most of the time I double this recipe. It is awesome for feeding a crowd, and it freezes great.
BONUS Keto / Low Carb Chili:
Make a low carb version by following the variation I included after the recipe card below.
How to control the spice level:
This spice here comes from the chili powder. You can really control how spicy the chili is based on the type and quantity of chili powder you use. If you get an ordinary grocery store brand of chili powder that’s not very spicy, then you can add more. If you buy a more authentic Mexican style chili powder that’s more spicy you might want to add less. I suggest you start with less, unless you know you want it spicy. Get it all mixed together and then taste and see what you think.
Game Day Chili
The kind of chili that's meant for rainy sports days in front of the TV, or piling on hot dogs - a smoother texture, not too spicy.
ingredients:
- 2 pounds ground beef
- 1 large onion
- 2 red bell peppers
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 stalks celery
- 3 tablespoons chili powder
- 3 tablespoons cumin
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 (6oz) can tomato paste
- 1 (12 oz) can tomato sauce
- 2 cups beef broth
- 1/4 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
- 2 tablespoons honey
instructions:
- Brown the ground beef (tip: add a bit of water for faster browning and softer texture)
- Finely chop or dice veggies (use food processor or a mini chopper)
- Add chopped veggies to browned meat and cook until soft
- Add spices and mix well
- Combine tomato sauce, tomato paste, beef broth, and flour in a separate bowl, mix well so there are no lumps
- Add liquid mixture to pot
- Add mustard & honey
- Stir well to make sure everything is combined
- Simmer on low for several hours, stirring occasionally, or slow cook on low 4-6 hours
NOTES:
Don't feel tied to these ingredient quantities! As with all of my recipes, these ingredients are flexible. Feel free to add more or less spices, more or less meat. Add in other finely diced veggies if you want to sneak veggies in! If you want to add a little kick to it, use a dash or more of cayenne pepper. Enjoy! ~ Lisa
Low Carb (Keto, Gluten free, grain free) Variation Instructions:
Leave out the honey, tomato sauce, and flour.
Cut the beef broth quantity at least in half - just add a bit of broth as needed to get to your desired consistency.
Homemade Dishwasher Detergent
Run out of dishwasher detergent - here is my two ingredient dishwasher detergent hack that will get your dishes clean until you can restock.
Read on to find out how I use this DIY dishwasher detergent when I run out of the real stuff. This is a simple dishwasher hack for a baking soda dishwasher detergent.
I don't know about you, but running out of dishwasher detergent and not being able to do the dishes is just not an option around here. Getting behind on the dishes might be worse than getting behind on the laundry (which happens too often).
But what to do when it's late at night and you go to the cabinet and realize you're out of dishwasher detergent? A late night grocery store run sounds like about the last thing I want to do, and waking up to a mountain of dirty dishes sounds even worse.
There has to be a solution.
Have you seen any of these recipes online for making your own dishwasher detergent? They sound interesting, but a lot of them call for stuff that I just don't normally keep around my house, or stuff that I'm not sure I'm comfortable putting on my dishes (Borax, Oxy-Clean, etc.), or they require you mixing up some big recipe of stuff, which I'm not doing late at night.
But I saw one recently that called for just dish soap and baking soda. Things I always have.
So of course I had to try it.
We run our dishwasher at least twice a day here, and often three times on weekends. With 6-8 people at every meal, everything homemade, we go through a lot of dishes!
And so we also go through a LOT of dishwasher detergent. I try to buy a more natural brand, because when I open the dishwasher and I am hit in the face with a strong chemical smell, I just don't think that sounds like a good idea. If there's that much strong chemical odor left in the steam that comes out of the dishwasher, then I'm pretty sure that it's on my dishes too, and I just don't like the idea of that. So I try to go for a dishwasher detergent that is a little lighter on the chemicals. But those kinds are expensive, and for some reason they come in very small packages. I buy like 4 or 5 packages at a time, just to make sure we don't run out.
But what if we do run out? That would be an emergency! So when I came across this idea for running the dishwasher with just regular other household stuff, I had to know if it worked!
I had to.
And you know what? IT WORKS!!
I've been doing this every day this week. I run the dishwasher twice a day usually during the week, so I've been doing one load with our regular detergent and one load with this homemade combo. I've stuck with the regular detergent for the load that we run after dinner, since it's running at night and I'm not keeping an eye on it, and I've tried this new method for the load I run while I am home during the day - just in case I had any kind of over-sudsing incident.
And I can honestly tell you the results are identical. I haven't noticed any difference in the dishes between the two methods.
The loads with the homemade detergent are just as clean as the loads with the packaged detergent. I haven't added up the costs yet, but I can pretty much assure you that a bottle of dish soap and a big package of baking soda are going to be a heck of a lot cheaper than the expensive detergent tablets that I've been buying.
The recipe:
A couple tablespoons of baking soda
A few drops, or a small squirt, of Dawn dish soap.
Directions:
Fill your detergent cup with baking soda, you don't have to be precise, but with mine this ends up being a couple of heaping tablespoons. Then add a few drops of dish soap. I have a pump dispenser for my dish soap, so I just put about half a squirt in there. Close the cover, and run dishwasher as usual. That's all.
I experimented with quantity of dish soap. The first few recipes I read said just 2 drops, but that just didn't feel like enough to me, to really get a very full load clean. So I gradually added a little more until I felt comfortable. I haven't yet found an upper limit, but I haven't pushed it too far.
The baking soda is VERY important here. Don't try this without it! It keeps the soap from forming suds. The reason they tell you never to use liquid dish soap in your dishwasher is because of the suds - you'll have bubbles all over your floor. But the baking soda apparently prevents that, so it allows the soap to do the grease cutting and cleaning, without making all those bubbles. I've opened my dishwasher at various points in the cycles to see what's going on in there, and there are no bubbles. I'm not scientist, so I'm not going to try to figure out why any of this happens. All I know is, my dishes are getting clean and I don't have soap all over my floor and I didn't have to buy dishwasher detergent.
I have not tried this with other brands of dish soap. I've tried lots of other brands of liquid dish soap for hand washing, and I keep coming back to Dawn, so that is what I used for this. The more natural and/or less expensive brands just don't work as well. I found that I was having to use so much more soap to just wash a sink full of dishes, that it just wasn't worth it.
I pour my dish soap into a pump dispenser that I keep next to my sink. I like this one because the spout extends out far enough that you can just pump it right into the sink.
So that's it. Dish soap & baking soda! Let me know if you try it!
Basic Bread and Pizza Dough Recipe
Every time I share our homemade bread pizza on social media I get asked for my dough recipe and I realized that after all these years I’ve never shared it - so it’s about time I got around to writing a blog post for you with my basic easy pizza and bread dough recipe. Keep reading for my recipe and lots of baking notes.
I think there’s a big myth in baking.
We’ve all been sold this idea that we must have extremely precise measurements and use very specific techniques or our recipes just won’t work out to be edible.
I’m here to tell you that this is a giant lie.
It’s just not true. The more I cook the more I realize that just about every recipe I’ve ever come across is actually quite forgiving. So you add a little too much flour, or not quite as much yeast, or slightly less sugar - that doesn’t mean your recipe is going to automatically fail. It might not be picture perfect, but it will still be good enough for a weeknight dinner and you will have learned a lot in the process. I’m sure there are very fussy and fancy French pastry recipes out there that require the exact to the gram amount of the exact perfect kind of milled flour and high fat butter, but honestly very few of us are cooking that kind of stuff. I promise you that probably 95% of the recipes you will come across in your everyday home cooking are really quite forgiving and flexible - and this kind of dough recipe certainly fits in that category.
This is a super simple recipe. It’s very flexible and not at all fussy, and really quick to throw together. I’ve evolved this recipe & method a lot over the years, and learned in the process that making this kind of dough is considerably easier and less precise than most recipes and cookbooks would have you believe.
I actually don’t even usually measure when I make this any more, I just eyeball it and add a bit more water or flour if it seems off. But I’ve measured out the basic ingredients for you so you have an easy starting point. Just remember that this can just be used as a starting point and you can - and should - adapt recipes to suit your personal taste and style. That’s what cooking is all about!
You don’t need fancy tools for this. I used to make dough in the food processor and mixer, but over the years I realized that doing it by hand is just as easy and really just as fast, and you end up with less stuff to wash. I can mix this dough up in a big bowl in less time that it would take me to get out my mixer or food processor, assemble it, mix the dough, put it in another bowl to rise, and then clean the appliance and put it away. Sometimes the old fashioned way is just the best.
The tools I use are a very large wide bowl (like a large wide pasta bowl), and a dough whisk. With this kind of bowl you can do all your kneading, mixing, and rising right in the bowl. It’s really the minimal amount of mess. The dough whisk isn’t strictly necessary, you can just use a wooden spoon, but I find that it helps with the early mixing.
The recipe is below. It’s really quite simple once you’ve done it a few times, but be sure to read through the whole thing so you understand the steps. Also don’t skip the notes at the end - there’s a lot of my knowledge from having done this for many years. If you still have questions after all that, feel free to comment or message me on Facebook or Instagram - I’m not quite as timely with responding to comments here on the blog.
Lisa's Basic Bread & Pizza Dough:
4 cups flour, plus extra for kneading if necessary (see notes about type of flour)
2+ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
Instructions:
In a large wide bowl add the yeast, sugar, and warm water. Give this a quick stir to combine, and wait just a minute for your yeast to wake up. If you are sure that your yeast is fresh then you can skip this step, but I like to do it because I feel like it gives the dough a bit of a head start.
Add the flour and salt and give it a good stir to start it mixing together. Very quickly you will get to a point where it's no longer useful to stir and you will want to get in there with your hands. Get it together into a ball and start kneading.
You can knead by hand in your bowl. This is why I use a big wide bowl - I don’t even have to get my counter or another surface dirty for kneading. If you didn’t have a bowl wide enough to knead in, then you’ll want to put it out on a flat surface. If the dough still seems a bit too sticky, add more flour just a small handful at a time. You should be able to easily pick it up, folding and squeezing and pushing it together. After a few minutes of working it should start to feel smooth and tight. If you haven’t done a lot of kneading before, don’t worry about it. It’s a weird thing that just takes practice to get a feel for. You can probably find a few youtube videos if you really want to see how it’s done.
At this point I like to set it down and let it rest for a few minutes. Just leave it for 5 minutes or so while you clean up a little. Then come back to it and knead a bit more. It’s much easier to knead after a short rest.
Lay your nice round of dough down in your bowl and cover with plastic wrap to rise. You want it to at least double in size. I’ll say this takes about an hour on average, but rising time is going to really vary depending on your kitchen situation. If your room is very warm, it will rise faster. If it’s rising too fast you can stick it in the fridge to slow it down. Rising will take longer in a cold room. You can speed this up by turning on your oven and setting the bowl nearby.
After it’s risen to more than double, give it a good punch to deflate, and knead again for a couple of minutes
At this point you can decide if you are going for a full second rise or not. If you aren’t in a hurry, the extra rise will give it a bit nicer texture. But if you don’t have the time then you can absolutely go ahead and get it ready for how you are using it at this point.
For a loaf of sandwich bread:
Shape dough into an oblong blob and plop it into a lightly oiled loaf pan. You can also line the pan with parchment paper if you like.
Let it rise in the loaf pan, again until nearly doubled. I usually put just a little oil on top to keep it from drying out.
Once sufficiently risen, take a very sharp knife and cut a slit straight down the middle. Then spray the top with a bit or water or brush with melted butter, and I like to sprinkle a bit of coarse salt on top.
Bake in a 350 oven for one hour.
For a round loaf of crusty bread:
Shape into a nice round ball and set on a piece of parchment paper.
Put a large dutch oven in a preheated 450 degree oven to get hot.
When the dough has risen again use a sharp knife to cut slits across the top of the loaf.
Very carefully lift your risen loaf with the paper and set it into the heated dutch oven. Put on the lid and put it in the oven.
Bake for 45 minutes with the lid on, and remove lid to bake for 15 minutes more.
Carefully remove loaf from pan and allow to mostly cool before slicing.
For Pizza:
Divide dough into balls for pizza. If you want thick crust you can divide in half. We like our pizza with a very thin crust, so I divide this amount of dough into four balls.
Let the balls rest for a few minutes and then you can start rolling them out to your desired thickness and add toppings.
We bake our thin crust pizzas on parchment paper on a pizza stone in a 500 degree oven for 7-8 minutes.
Notes:
The flour can be any combination you like, but I recommend you start with white flour to get the hang of it. Bread flour will give you the best results, but all purpose flour works well too. After you’ve done it a few times and you’ve got the feel for the process, then experiment. Substitute in a bit of whole wheat flour, or add other flavorings or grains. For a simple sandwich loaf my typical combination is 2 cups white bread flour and 2 cups whole wheat flour. More wheat flour makes a denser loaf. More white flour makes it rise better and you get a lighter, more airy loaf.
If you want to make a whole wheat loaf, try adding a couple tablespoons of vital wheat gluten. Whole wheat flour has less gluten and won’t rise quite as well, so adding a bit back helps.
Salt is really a personal preference. We like ours salty. If you don’t want it salty, then use a little less than 1 tablespoon. You’ll also need to experiment with different types of salt. Some salts are more salty than others.
Less sugar is fine, but it will need more time to rise. The sugar just feeds the yeast.
Honey works too - and is nice with whole wheat - but you might not need all the water with a liquid sweetener. Try adding 1/4 cup of honey and reduce the water to 1 1/2 cups.
Cold water is fine, but it will also need more time to rise as it warms up. Using warm water helps kickstart the yeast.
Yes this works in a bread machine. I like to add 3 tablespoons of room temperature butter otherwise it sticks in my bread machine, and just use 3 1/2 cups of the flour.
I use this recipe for rolls also. Divide it into 12 little balls and let them rise on parchment. I like to brush them with a little butter on top and sprinkle a little salt. Bake for 30 minutes at 400.
Oven temperatures vary also - so it might take a few tries to find the right temp for your oven and for the size of bread you are baking.
Experiment with it! Try milk instead of water. Try adding a little oil or butter, add an egg. Try adding some herbs or cheese. Try juice or beer. The possibilities are endless, and the worst that can happen is you are out a few cups of flour and a couple teaspoons of yeast.
Enjoy!
Simple roasted tomato sauce
Theres nothing better than a fresh tomato sauce, and roasting the tomatoes first takes even that up a notch. Here is a very quick recipe for a simple tomato sauce with fresh roasted tomatoes. Fresh from the garden tomatoes of course are the best, but you can make this with store bought tomatoes as well and it will still taste amazing. Most commercial sauces have a lot of sugar in them, but roasting the tomatoes concentrates the flavor and natural sweetness so adding sugar isn't necessary.
This requires a good blender. I love my Vitamin. Having a high powered blender saves you the time of having to bother with peeling or seeding the tomatoes - it all just purees to a smooth sauce so doing those extra steps isn’t necessary.
Fresh Roasted Tomato Sauce Recipe
Ingredients:
Tomatoes - I like Roma for sauce, but this works with any kind.
olive oil
salt
garlic
onion
basil
Instructions:
Quarter the tomatoes and spread out on a baking sheet. Add a few cloves of garlic, or more if you like, and some roughly chopped onion. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle a little salt.
Roast at 350 for about an hour, or until the onions are garlic are soft and have developed a nice bit of color.
Dump everything in the blender and puree until smooth. Taste and add more salt if needed. Add fresh basil leaves and puree just until the basil is blended in. Serve on freshly cooked pasta.
Easy Refrigerator Garden Pickles
Our garden has done amazing this year! It’s been several years since we had a garden, so it’s been a lot of fun with the kids to go out every day and see what is ready to pick. But even with six of us here there’s no way we can keep up with all that produce! So this year for the first time I decided to try pickling!
I played around with several different recipes and came up with one I really like. I am a dill pickle gal - I do not like any hint of sweetness a pickle. So many recipes I found had a ton of sugar, which was not for me. After a bit of trial an error I came up with this combination that has really worked well. It does have a some sugar which I think just helps balance the flavor, but no sweetness at all.
I’m pickling everything together, I love having a mixed jar of pickled stuff, it’s like a snack plate in a jar! This brine is working well for everything I’ve used so far - cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, onions - also in a variety of shapes and sizes. I love them with lots of fresh dill and garlic.
Ingredients for the brine:
8 cups water
4 cups white vinegar
3/4 cup pickling salt
1/4 cup sugar
Combine all the brine ingredients in a pot and simmer until the salt & sugar are dissolved. You can adjust the quantities up and down depending on how many jars you are making. I did quart jars and this was enough for 6-7 jars.
For the pickles:
cleaned and cut up veggies - cucumber, zucchini, carrots, onions, etc.
several sprigs of fresh dill for each jar
2-3 cloves of fresh garlic for each jar
pickling spice - 2 tablespoons per quart size jar
Once the brine is ready - put a couple tablespoons of pickling spice in the bottom of each jar, along with several sprigs of fresh dill and several pieces of garlic - I like to take the whole cloves and slice them in half. Then fill each jar with a variety of veggies - cucumbers, carrots, onions, etc. Then fill each jar with the warm brine, all the way to the rim. Put on a lid and then in the fridge.
These taste great after just a few days, and they are really amazing if you have the willpower to let them sit for more than a week.
No drain pasta - One pot Pasta!
The quick and easy way to cook pasta - one pot, no draining, ready in about 10 minutes.
I’m about to completely change the way you cook pasta.
Once you cook pasta with this no-drain one pot pasta method, you’ll wonder why you ever did it any other way. This is the only way I cook pasta any more - the no draining method.
All those years spent thinking pasta had to be cooked in gallons of water - I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to do that.
This way is so much faster, and it works perfectly every time.
Here is the basic formula for one pot no drain pasta:
1 package of pasta + 4 cups cold water.
In a shallow pot, one pound of pasta, any shape, needs about 4 cups of cold water. A standard sized package of most kinds of pasta in the US is usually one pound.
You can play around with this ratio and figure out what works for you, if you like your pasta softer or more firm, but I’ve found these quantities to be pretty spot on for us.
I add a bit of salt and butter, bring it up to a simmer, stir occasionally until the water is absorbed and pasta is cooked, maybe 10 minutes. If you want to add sauce of any kind, do that when most of the water is absorbed.
My kids favorite - which I recently found out that most children in Italy eat and they call it Pasta Blanco - White Pasta:
When the pasta is almost finished, add a little more butter and a few tablespoons of cream. Mix well until the butter is all melted. Taste and see if it needs a bit more salt. Serve with parmesan cheese on top.
This is so quick and easy. No waiting for water to boil! No rinsing. No draining. You are going to wonder why you ever did it any other way.
Orange Banana Protein Smoothie
A family favorite smoothie recipe.
This is my favorite smoothie, and my go-to when I want something quick and fresh. It's fast and easy, and I love knowing that it's got whole fruit and no added juice. I make this one for my kids a lot and they love it. And it reminds me of an old fashioned Orange Julius.
Because you are starting with whole oranges, you don't need to add any extra juice or other liquid to this. It's great because you get all the fiber and vitamins from the fruit, not just the juice. You can however add a splash of milk or cream (or almond milk) if you want it a little creamier.
I am making this for four kids, so this recipe makes four small servings, or two large glasses. You could cut this in half or thirds if you want a serving for one.
Ingredients:
3 whole oranges
2 frozen bananas
1/2 cup protein powder
1 Tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
Peel and quarter oranges. I cut off the ends, and then cut down the sides with a sharp knife. So I end up with a whole orange with no skin. Then I cut into quarters.
Put the oranges in the blender first, and then all the other ingredients, in high powered blender (I use my Vitamix). Start out pulsing slowly so the oranges release their juice. Once you have some liquid in the bottom, then you can turn the blender up to high to puree the whole thing.
You could use fresh bananas, I just like frozen bananas because it makes the smoothie cold. I buy extra bananas, let them get ripe, then peel and break into pieces and freeze. Then I always have bananas in the freezer for smoothies.
For protein powder I prefer a pure whey powder - with no added fillers or sweeteners. This is the brand I buy. It's just whey, nothing else. It has 15 grams of protein per 1/4 cup, so it really gives a nice protein boost in the morning.
Pressure Cooker "Boiled" Eggs
The easiest way to make boiled eggs is to not boil them at all.
I've tried every trick out there for cooking easy to peel eggs. EVERY. TRICK. And I don't think there was a single one that worked consistently. Some methods would work one time, and then not the next time.
Then I discovered cooking eggs in my pressure cooker.
I'm telling you - perfect eggs every time, and the shells practically fall off.
If you have a pressure cooker and haven't hard cooked eggs in it yet, you must try. And if you like hard or soft boiled eggs but you don't have a pressure cooker - you must get one!
If you don't yet have an electric pressure cooker - let me just take a moment and tell you about mine. Don't be scared - they are not the dangerous things they used to be. They are electric and easy to program and super safe.
I have two! The first one I've had for several years and it is my favorite - is the Cuisinart Pressure cooker. It's a workhorse. The second one I had to try because everyone was raving about it is the Instant Pot. They are both great, and they both have their advantages. The Instant Pot is a multi cooker - it can be a slow cooker and a pressure cooker and a rice cooker and a yogurt maker, and I guess it does even more than that because they call it a 7-in-1 cooker. If you really think that you will use all those other features, then it is a great choice. But as for just pressuring cooking, I like the Cuisinart best. It has more options for adjusting your pressure cooking settings, and more options for timing, simmering, and sauteeing your ingredients before you start the cooking cycle. Those things are also possible with the Instant Pot, but I just find the Cuisinart to be more intuitive and easier to program and use. Also, it's less expensive. Either way though, you can't go wrong.
Anyway, back to the eggs. Here are the instructions.
Pressure Cooker Eggs:
Place a rack or trivet in the bottom of your cooker pot
Add about a cup of water - I like to use hot water just to get it going faster. You want the water to be under the rack, not touching the eggs. (be sure to read the directions on your cooker for the minimum amount of liquid you can use - I think it's about a cup for most.)
Carefully place eggs on the rack. A lot of recipes you read for this have you putting them in separate little cups or making little foil nests for them. I have never found this to be necessary and it just takes more time. Yes, occasionally one or two will crack, but I've found that this happens regardless of whether you "nest" them, so I really don't see the point. You can cook just one or two at a time if you prefer to eat them warm (best for soft cooked eggs), or I can fit about 10 at a time in my cooker without crowding them too much.
Close your cooker and set it to low pressure.
Cook according to the times below.
When your time is up - use the quick release method and get the eggs in an ice bath to quickly stop the cooking. I sometimes just dump a bunch of ice and cold water right in the pressure cooker pot on top of the eggs. This is quicker than lifting them out one at a time.
Cook times for pressure cooker eggs:
Soft Cooked: 3 minutes on low pressure, quick release, ice bath. These will have still slightly runny yolks. I LOVE these for breakfast - either mashed up on toast or just lop of the top of the shell and eat them with a spoon.
Medium Cooked: 4 minutes for on low pressure ,quick release, ice bath. These will have just solidified yolks, maybe sometimes with a small dot of wet still in the very center. This is my favorite if I'm making eggs to peel and eat whole for lunch or snack. I personally love to dip them in salt. I think this is also perfect for slicing on a salad.
Hard Cooked: 5 minutes on low pressure, quick release, ice bath. These will have fully solid yolks. This is best for making deviled eggs or egg salad.