Tuesday: Southwestern Roasted Veggie Soup*
Wednesday: 40 Clove Broccoli and Chickpeas
Thursday: Indian Red Beans over Coconut Rice with Curry Cauliflower
Friday: Veggie Burgers and Cucumbers
Saturday: Shrimp Fajitas
Sunday: Harper's Birthday - Pizza, Broccoli, Salad with Cake and Ice Cream
*As these are mostly made from leftovers from Sunday dinner I did not include them on the grocery or pantry list.
Weekly Pantry List
Olive oil, fresh garlic, thyme, allspice, curry, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, dill, chili, oregano, baking soda, flour, yeast, mayonnaise, salsa
Weekly Grocery List
Mozzarella cheese
Feta Cheese
Romano Cheese
Provolone Cheese
Marble Cheese
Olives
Sour cream
Mix of wild mushrooms
4 tomatoes
2 avocados
4 limes
2 red pepper
2 green pepper
3 onions
2 onions
1 red onion
2 bunches broccoli
Cauliflower
1 lemon
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup sesame seeds
1 1/2 cup TVP granules
1 package of fajita seasoning, low sodium
MASA flour or corn tortillas
Thin bagels
Basmati Rice
1 can coconut milk (400 ml)
28 oz can of diced tomatoes
28 oz can of red beans
1 can chickpeas
Sun dried tomatoes
Roasted Red Peppers
Veggie Stock (need 1 cup)
These are toppings for the pizza that we had on Sunday
Salmon Dill Pasta
I'm not sure why or how but sometimes I forget that kids minds are going a mile a minute just like mine. When we're sitting at the table together in the morning and it's quiet (this doesn't actually happen all that often) I get lost in my own thoughts and forget that they do too. That is until I hear Harper start the think out loud. Lately she's been practising her body parts and she'll half mumble half talk while pointing to each part, "Tis my chin, tis my nose, tis my eye...two eyes, tis my head...." Hannah's thoughts are a little more complex and usually wake me from mine with questions or statements. This morning she says to me, "I guess it's much easier to take care of kids than a dog!" (where does she come up with this stuff?) I replied, "Well, I think that there's more responsibility involved when you take care a kids opposed to a dog." She took this in, thought about it for a few minutes and then said, "I guess you're right, because you have to take your kids on vacation with you, but you don't have take a dog!" There you have it, the difference between raising a dog and raising a child, she cracks me up!
Recipe
So we had a lot of leftovers from Mother's Day dinner. to use up some of them today I made a pasta. It was exactly what I was wanting, creamy and dilly!
1/2 recipe of fennel bake
1 cup of dill sauce
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 Tbsp dill
juice of 1 lemon
375g package of whole wheat spaghettini, cooked
Salt and pepper to season
Once the pasta was cooked I put it back in the pot and added all the other ingredients, stirring constantly so that it didn't stick, seasoned with salt and pepper and served.
Southwestern Roasted Veggie Soup
I find it so interesting to watch Hannah interact with other kids and adults when she's on her own. Tonight at soccer I was watching her with her teammates and her coach when she was on the sidelines. She seems to observe more and is a little more cautious about jumping right in there. Her coach came over to the tarp where they were waiting their turn and asked who wanted to go in next and all the kids jumped up and yelled, "Me!" or ran onto the field whereas Hannah sat up real tall on her knees and beamed with that bright open face waiting to be picked. She wasn't picked, there was no chance because all the kids had run onto the field, luckily they were short one player and so the coach told her to go on. She leaped (I seriously mean leaped) onto the field!
It breaks my heart a little, not that she's a little shy or cautious, that she's growing up and going at it alone in those little ways ( I mean little of course, she's five). But she acts differently around others than she does her family, as many of us do, but I won't see that side of her. Up until now our worlds have revolved around each other and suddenly there's going to be this whole new, very large part of her life that I'll only be privy to in small glimpses. It's both exciting and terrifying. I had a dream the other night that I was with her on the 12th floor of an apartment building and she went out to the balcony, climbed up on the railing and jumped down! I watched her fall in slow motion, tears in my eyes, my heart in my throat, her whole life passing before my eyes (every little detail) and then she landed and was fine. In the dream I ran down and was telling someone about it and when we reached her they said, "Wow, you're like a super hero!" I couldn't believe it, I was so angry at this person for encouraging her to take a risk like that again. I can't seem to stop seeing her fall and land over and over again in my head but, I get the message.
Recipe
I still had some roasted veggies left to use up and since it is very glum today I used it in a soup. We had a few left over tortillas chips to use instead of crackers and it added a little saltiness - yum!
olive oil
2 tsp of cumin
4 cups of roasted veggies (mixture of peppers, mushrooms, onions, zucchini and corn)
4 cups of veggie stock
1 15oz can of tomatoes
1 15 oz can of lentils, drained and rinsed
Salsa
Cheddar cheese, grated
Sour cream
Tortilla chips
In a large soup pot heat a glugg of oil and saute the onions and cumin until soft. Add the veggies, stock and tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes. Using a food processor or hand blender whirl it all up together. Return soup to pot and add lentils, cook until heated through. Serve topped with salsa. cheddar cheese, sour cream and some crushed up tortilla chips.
40 Clove Broccoli and Chickpeas
It's so glum this week. I wish the weather didn't affect me so much. When it's this glum for so long all I want to do is lay around and sleep and read. Funny, this is not what my kids want to do. Hannah got it in her head that she wanted to make a float this week, a castle float. It took us three days to get all the supplies and paint everything and let it dry and finally put it together today. The girls ran up to get princess dresses on so they could have a parade with their float. This lasted about five minutes and then they went back to playing their usual 'surprise party' game (where they drag out every toy in the house and lay out in the livingroom - it's my favorite game). Recipe
This is another recipe from Appetite for Reduction. It's not really pretty or actually have 40 cloves but it has a great flavour and is a quick and easy weekday meal. We had this with a salad and some toast (mostly because we had all these bits of bread to use up) it would also go well with a rice or couscous dish.
1 lb broccoli, cut into large spears, stems peeled and chopped in 1/2 inch pieces
10 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp lemon zest
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 cup veggie stock
Preheat oven to 400F.
Place the broccoli, garlic, and chickpeas in a 9 by 13 inch baking pan. Drizzle them with oil, spray with a little nonstick cooking spray, and toss to coat. Sprinkle with the salt, pepper, lemon zest and oregano. Once again, toss to coat. Spray a bit more for good measure, then pop in the oven.
Bake for about 30 minutes, flipping once. Remove from the oven, flip again, and add the veggie broth. Use a spatula to scrape up any crisp bits of flavor from the bottom on the pan. Return the pan to the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the garlic cloves are nice and tender and the broccoli is browned in some places.
Indian Red Beans over Coconut Rice with Curry Cauliflower
It is so cold today and of course it's soccer night. You never really know how long an hour can be until you are standing on the sidelines watching your child play soccer freezing your butt off! I watched one of the families come and they had on winter jackets, blankets to wrap around their legs and hot coffee, brilliant. We had on our spring jackets with sweaters and tuques. Dave had to work late and came with about twenty or thirty minutes left just in a suit. I have to admit he's a better parent than I am, because it was so cold I'm quite certain I would have dragged my feet in that meeting and not quite made it. Although, I have to tell you Hannah is a lot of fun to watch. Her legs seem so long when she's out there half prancing, half jumping and running full speed. A friend of mine always compares her long legged, slim child to a grasshopper and I think that it is the perfect comparison!
Recipe
This would have been a great meal to have after soccer to warm up the insides. I love this meal, I think that I could eat all of the coconut rice on my own and had a hard time convincing the girls we needed to save some for Dave. The recipe is from Moosewood Simple Suppers and is really so simple and delicious.
Cook the coconut rice
1 1/2 cup basmati rice
1 can coconut milk (400 ml)
1/4 cup water
Put all ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes.
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp allspice
28 ounce can of diced tomatoes
28 ounce can of red beans, rinsed and drained
While the rice is cooking, in a saucepan on medium heat, saute the onion in the oil for 3 or 4 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes, sprinkle lightly with salt, cover and cook stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the thyme, allspice, tomatoes and beans, cover and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve over rice with a little cilantro sprinkled on top.
We also had curry cauliflower, because seriously, why would you ever eat it just steamed again?It's so easy and yummy and you can find how from this post.
Veggie Burgers and Cucumbers
So Harper has started saying, "I wuve YOU!" It melts my heart everytime. It's like, I never wanted to coach her to say it, like it wouldn't mean the same thing (I do realize that this is ridiculous) I just wanted her to be able to say it back to me when I said it, and then she did. Her little face lit up and she said, with great emphasis on the you, "I wuve YOU!" and my heart grew like the Grinch's and then melted to goo. I immediately started saying it over and over just to hear her little scratchy voice say it back and make me feel like the most loved mom on earth! Then, today there was a bowl of onions in the fridge that I brought out for the burgers and Harper got up on her stool, wrapped the bowl of onions in her arms and exclaimed, "I WUVE YOU!" and then looked up at me very serious and said, "I wuve this." "the onion? Harper? you love the onions?" "Yes, I WUVE this!"
Recipe
So I've had this recipe in my recipe book for a few years now and have avoided it because it calls for TVP and I've never used it before. I have no idea where it came from but I didn't make it up. There is this restaurant called The Underground here that makes a Veggie Burger called the Sun Burger, it is so good. This recipe is suppose to be similar to that one and we all really liked it - the dill sauce is so good. If you can get TVP granules that would be best, but if you can only find the slices or chucks grind them to little granules (not powder) first. It's ridiculous that I've been avoiding this recipe because all you do is add water and I think they may be the cheapest thing you can buy.
1 1/2 cups TVP (textured vegetable protein)
1 1/4 cups boiling water
1 cup sesame seeds
3/4 cup marble cheese, grated
4-5 Tbsp finely diced and sauteed green pepper
1/4 cup oil (I used olive)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup flour
Salt and pepper
Warm Water
Lime dill sauce:
3/4 cup mayonnaise
Juice of one lime
Dill, lots and lots of dill
Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spray it lightly with olive oil or non stick spray.
Mix TVP with boiling water in a bowl and let hydrate for five to ten minutes. Mix in remaining ingredients, gradually adding warm water at the end until the mixture is sticky enough to form solid patties (I added about a cup, my mixture was super sloppy but cooked up really nice). Scoop mixture onto the baking sheet with a 1/2 cup measure and press down to form into patties. Bake for 13 minutes and then flip and cook for another 13 minutes. Trust me you're going to look at this mixture and think for sure it's too runny and won't work, but it will.
For the sauce mix all ingredients together, taste and adjust if needed.
When burgers are ready I used those new thin bagels, toasted them and then topped the burger with tomato, cheese, red onion and sauce (seriously don't skip the sauce).
Shrimp Fajitas
Every conversation is an adventure! Today we're driving home from the store and talking about Harper's birthday which is tomorrow. This has been a very hot topic with Hannah lately, we've driven by both old houses, the one where Hannah was born and the one where Harper was born, and we've talked about both birth stories. She seems to be fascinated and has a few fragments of memory from when Harper was born so we've been filling in all the gaps. The conversation today started when she said, "So Harper was born on a Sunday?" This opened a whole conversation about how the calendar works and how we go by the date not the weekday. This actually took a long time to explain and we went back and forth with questions until Hannah's final question or I should say statement, "Some families all die together you know, like all at the same time." ....ahhh....yyyyyes....I guess that can happen sometimes (?????, where did this come from? I thought we were having an easy conversation about the calendar). You just never know where the conversation may take you with a five year old.
Recipe
Fajita seasoning, low sodium
2 red pepper, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
1 large white onion, sliced
Shrimp (depending how many people you have)
1 lime
chili spice
Sour cream
Salsa
Guacamole
Make your corn tortillas and keep warm in the oven.
Saute onions in a little olive oil until slightly soft and then add the peppers. Sprinkle over half the package of seasoning and add 1/2 cup of water and continue to saute over low heat until saucy (not watery) and veggies are tender.
Toss the shrimp with a little olive oil, juice of a lime and sprinkling of chile spice and then grill or saute until cooked through.
Top a warm tortilla with veggies, shrimp, sour cream, salsa, sour cream and guacamole.
Pizza, Broccoli, Caesar Salad and Birthday Cake
Two years ago we were blessed with our second little girl. Seriously, the first two years of life are amazing. We grow and develop the fastest in those first two years. It's really incredible to think that two short years ago there was a little baby in my arms, sleeping and nursing, not even really crying yet, her skin all wrinkly and new, her personality waiting to slowly reveal itself as we fell deeper in love. To the amazing little girls she is today, who put on her new dress this afternoon and declared, "I'm ready for my pwarty!" How did she get so big so fast? Although, when she fell asleep in my arms tonight, with a little bit of birthday cake smeared on her cheek and a death grip around her new Max and Ruby dolls, she didn't seem so big.For dinner we had pizza topped with feta, provolone, mozzarella and Romano cheese, olives, sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, wild mushrooms and onions with Caesar salad and birthday cake and ice cream for dessert. Harper wanted (or more Hannah wanted and convinced Harper) a Max and Ruby cake and so I made the best Max I could make. The cake recipe is from Catherine Newman's blog and it was a buttermilk cake.
Have a great week, may the sun shine down on you!
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