Tuesday Tag Along

Tuesday Tag Along is a blog hop. Click the button to participate. I've found some great new blogs to follow from this meme.

If you are following my blog, please leave a comment with your url so that I can follow your blog too.

Menu Plan Monday—July 5th

Last week I did ok the first few days, then my menu seemed to go right out the window.  Next Monday I am going back to work full time outside the house for the first time in almost 12 years.  Time is up and I now REALLY need to get serious about meal planning.

Monday…Homemade Chicken Strips (didn’t have these last week as planned)

Tuesday…Italian Sausage & Pepperoni Calzones

Wednesday…Sub Sandwiches and Fruit Salad

Thursday…Cowboy Beans

Friday…Grilled steaks w/corn on the cob

Saturday…Hot dogs, fries and baked beans

Sunday…Spaghetti and Meatballs

Friday Follow Me and I’ll Follow you Back

Friday is a popular day to find new blogs to follow....this week I am participating in all these events. Click the buttons to sign up. If you are following my blog, leave me a comment with your URL and I will follow you back.













 

Menu Plan Monday

It has been MONTHS since I’ve done this on my blog.  I belong to a message board for families with lots of kids and I usually try to post a weekly plan there.  Sometimes I stick to it and sometimes it goes right out the window.  I’m hoping by getting back into regular posting here, I will get better at true meal planning.
This week we don’t have a lot of options, most of what is in the freezer is chicken, so my challenge is to cook chicken in different ways that my family will eat without all of us getting completely burned out on chicken in general.
Monday…Easy Burritos with homemade tortillas
Tuesday…Chicken and Rice Stir Fry
Wednesday…Spaghetti with Italian sausage
Thursday…baked chicken and baked potato
Friday…Cheese Enchiladas (looking for a recipe for homemade corn tortillas)
Saturday…homemade chicken strips
Sunday…Chicken Parmesan

We will all be home during the day too, so I've got some tentative ideas for lunches, but no particular day planned for them.  On the other days we will eat leftovers or we may even resort to peanut butter and jelly.

SOS
Red Beans and Rice w/Cajun sausage
leftover Penne pasta casserole from last week
Cheesy Sausage and potatoe casserole

New look and a bunch of new posts

It has been a while since I've actively worked on this blog.  I refer to it constantly for recipes I've recorded here, and had been storing things with the intention of taking pictures the next time I made them to post them.  Today, I went through and finished up several old entries and posted (without pictures, mostly).  I didn't date them all today, but anything new for this month was actually completed today.

I also went into the new blogger Template Designer and gave this blog a little make over.  It has always bugged me that the text portion was so skinny, I LOVE being able to make it wider without losing the sidebar.  I may still make a few tweeks, but for now I'm happy with it.

I've been using Windows Live Writer to work on my main blog and I'm really enjoying it....so much so that I'm planning to add this blog to it so that I can create blog posts for this blog too.

I'm hoping to get back into the habit of participating in Menu Plan Monday and some of the other weekly food carnivals and I'm looking for food related blogs to add to my blog roll.  I've discovered a few new ones recently that I will be adding soon and I'll also be on the look out for more.

Easy Burritos

Burritos are a staple in our house. If my kids had to choose only one food to eat for days on end, burritos would be their choice. It is one of the only things that all SIX of my kids LOVE.

Ingredients
2 lbs ground beef
1 packet taco seasoninglarge can of refried beans
flour tortillas
shredded cheddar cheese
salsa (optional)

Brown the ground beef. Pour ground beef into a metal collander. Let it sit for at least 5 minutes to fully drain off as much grease as possible. (ground beef can also be rinsed with HOT water to remove even more grease). Transfer ground beef back into frying pan. Add taco seasoning and water according to package directions.

Heat refried beans in a large sauce pan. When beans are HOT and water has cooked out of ground beef, mix the the beans and the ground beef together.

Wrap flour tortillas in a clean dish towel and microwave on high power for 45 seconds. (I usually heat about 10 at a time, heat for less time for fewer tortillas)

Place tortilla on a plate. Add filling and sprinkle with shredded cheese, add salsa if desired. fold both sides in, then start at one edge and roll up.

Burrito mix can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week and is easy to reheat in the microwave.  My 12 yr old and 10 yr old will eat this for lunch daily during the Summer and they can fix it for themselves.

Strawberry Bread

I book marked this  recipe quite a while ago and keep forgetting to post it. Strawberries are one of our favorite fruits, so we had to give this a try.

STRAWBERRY BREAD
Ingredients

3 cups Flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 cups Sugar
1 tsp Salt
2 pints chopped Strawberries

1 1/4 cup Cooking Oil
4 Eggs (well beaten)
1 tsp Red Food Coloring

~ Mix all dry ingredients together.

~ Make a hole in the center of the mixture. Pour strawberries, oil and eggs into the hole.
~ Mix until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

~ Pour into 2 small greased and floured 9 x 5 x 2 in loaf pans

~Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour

The original recipe also has a yummy cream cheese spread to turn this into tea sandwiches, put my picky eaters don't eat cream cheese