Tasty Tuesday

I sort of got off the bandwagon for a little while and I did NOT like it. Life is a little simpler when I have a plan and I don't need to worry about what's for dinner every night. So I'm back on the wagon! There's not really anything new on this weeks menu, though I will be making an Earthquake Cake this week so you'll see that on the blog sometime soon.

My little sister-in-law is celebrating her 10th birthday this week, so I won't be cooking Friday night (yay!!). Other than that, it's my basic, low-carb weekly menu =)

Sunday - Atkins Meatloaf

Monday - Almost "Bourbon" Chicken

Tuesday - Crustless Spinach Quiche

Wednesday - Baked Chicken Breast

Thursday - Asian Pork

Friday - Mikallie's birthday party (pizza!!) 

Saturday - Mexican Chicken

As always, my menu is subject to change, which it already has! Last night, even though I had planned on the "Bourbon" Chicken, I forgot that it had to marinate all day and was unprepared when dinnertime rolled around. So we had Parmesan Chicken instead. Tomorrow's Baked Chicken Breast will be replaced with pizza because I forgot we have a literacy event at the kids' school that night, so it's pizza twice this week for us!

I shared the original menu to show how sometimes our best laid plans go awry, but it's always easier to go with the flow if you have some sort of plan already in place =).

Have a yummy week!

Tasty Tuesday

I've been slacking off a little bit in the meal planning department this week. I haven't even looked at the Fred Meyer's or Safeway sales, but I did head over to Albertson's this morning since today is the last day of their sale cycle. If you need tuna, you can get some for $1, which isn't an amazing price, but if you buy 10, you get a $4 catalina which is pretty decent. Also, if you need dog food, you can pick up a back of Essential Everyday dog food, 32 lbs, for $19.99 but you get a $5 catalina on that, so it ends up being a really good deal. Also, pork picnic roasts are $1.49/lb. These end today though, so if you want to take advantage of these, you gotta act quick.

So what are we eating this week? Lots of yummy stuff! Instead of adding a new dinner recipe to our repertoire, I added a Saturday morning breakfast skillet and an old recipe that hadn't been added to our binder yet.


Sunday: Breakfast for dinner - Bacon and eggs with toast

Monday: Unbreaded Chicken Parmesan

Tuesday: Low Carb Pizza Casserole

Wednesday: Almost "Bourbon" Chicken

Thursday: Melissa's Slow Cooker Beef and Noodles

Friday: Low Carb Baked Chicken Breast

Saturday: Breakfast - Potato Skillet
                Dinner - Crustless Spinach Quiche


You might notice that a few of these recipes are the same as last week. That's because we ended up having pizza one night and bacon and eggs another night (I shifted my weekly planner from Mon-Sun to Sun-Sat so there was an overlapping day.) Instead of planning and shopping for brand new recipes, I carried these over to the next week since I already have the ingredients.

What's on the menu for you this week?

Tasty Tuesday

Do you meal plan? I've "dabbled" in meal planning for quite some time, but I rarely stuck with it (shocking, right?). I had a hard time sticking with the plan and it seemed just wasted energy. That is, until I moved in with my mother in law.

You see, my mother in law doesn't like to eat carbs or many calories. Neither does my husband for that matter. It became a juggling act to try and figure out what they would actually eat and it was nearly impossible to come up with dinner ideas on the fly. After struggling to please everyone while making dinner off the top of my head, I realized things needed to change. I definitely NEEDED a menu plan now that I was cooking for 6 picky eaters.

I started looking up low carb and low calorie recipes on Pinterest and writing out the ones that everyone liked on paper so I could stick them in our own Fox Family Recipe Binder. At first, we had something new every day so I could build up a reserve of "approved" meals to draw from each week. Now, we have one new recipe each week and the rest are tried and true.

I don't organize my recipes alphabetically, I organize them in the order they've been prepared. I pull out the first 6 recipes on Sunday and they go in the back after they've been used. In this way, all the recipes get used and rotated and we have a variety of healthy meals.

I also make it a habit on Sundays to look at what's on sale at my 3 favorite stores so that I can match up our meals with the deals. Chicken was dirt cheap at Fred Meyer this week, so we're having a lot of it ($1.79/lb for boneless/skinless chicken breast! Go get some!) I also do my shopping for the week on Sunday or Monday so by Monday night, I have all the recipes I need and all the ingredients I need for a weeks worth of meals. Making dinner is a snap and it's so easy to stick with the plan.

So what's on the menu this week? Glad you asked!


Monday: Slow Cooker Sesame-Garlic Chicken

Tuesday: Atkins Meatloaf

Wednesday: Asian Pork

Thursday: Baked Chicken Breast

Friday: Tater Tot Casserole

Saturday: Almost "Bourbon" Chicken

Sunday: Crustless Spinach Quiche.


Do you menu plan? What's your favorite meal to put in your plan?

Christmas Baking

I'm not exactly a huge fan of cooking, but I love baking. This year, as we were tight on money, I decided to bake for friends and family in lieu of gifts. Well, I suppose I gifted baked goods! I just thought I'd share what I did.

The main thing was a red velvet cake in the shape of a Christmas tree thanks to a tin foil tree-shaped pan I got from Safeway. Honestly, I can't even call what I did baking. It was just too easy.

Yup. I used a box mix. Not only is this mix amazing, but I really, really needed the time I saved not mixing my own.

It's always helpful if you have a little cutie to clean the beaters for you...

Once the cakes are done baking (about 30 minutes in small pans like this), you have to cool them completely. I kept them out on the counter for 15 minutes, then froze them. You can just let them come to room temperature, but not only does freezing them drastically reduce the cooling time, it makes it a lot easier to frost and decorate later on. You don't really need to freeze them solid. Just make sure they're cool and firm.

Time to decorate! I ended up only needing 1 can of frosting, but depending on how much you love your frosting, it's safer to have two cans handy! I used cream cheese frosting and Duncan Hines makes an amazing cream cheese frosting! No cuties were available to lick the spoon when I was done, so I was forced to take the job upon myself. It was awful, but someone had to do it.

I sprinkled the cakes with green sugar to give it some tree-like color. I considered just tinting the frosting green, but I decided that it just wouldn't be a proper red velvet cake if it had green frosting. I also threw on some red sugar for excitement. I used red sparkle gel for the garland and my expensive blue sugar balls that my husband knocked off the counter and into the garbage the day after I bought them. I'm not bitter, but I'm really disappointed I only got to decorate three cakes with them, considering they cost $5! It's ok though. It was my fault for letting him into the kitchen in the first place!

The next thing I made was Peanut Butter Chocolate Almond Bark. You can't really call this baking either because it's so easy! Pour anywhere from a half of a bag to a full bag of milk chocolate chips into a foil-lined pan and then about a half to three-quarters of a bag of peanut butter chips on top of that. Stick the pan into a pre-heated oven (about 350 is what I did) and let it melt for a few minutes. You'll know it's ready when the chips still hold their form, but are pretty shiny. Take the pan out of the oven and swirl a knife through the chips to get your pattern.

Sprinkle toasted almonds on top while the chocolate is still hot and melted and bang the pan on the counter a few times to get the almonds to settle into the chocolate. You can toast almonds really easily by laying them out on a pan and putting them in the oven for a few minutes. You'll know they're ready because they'll start to smell really good. Scientific, I know. Put the pan in the fridge for an hour or so to harden the chocolate, then break it all apart and package it. Try not to eat too much between the pan and the package, even though it's really really hard to resist. 

I just lined a really cute gift box with wax paper. This really needs to be refrigerated, or else the chocolate gets a little soft and you might end up with a mess. Incidentally, you'll want to refrigerate a red velvet cake as well, if you frosted it in cream cheese frosting. You can take it out of the fridge about an hour before serving to bring it up to room (aka, yummy) temperature. 

The last thing I did, which was not baking at all, was make candy sleighs. These are so easy to make (are you sensing a pattern here?) and I think they're just adorable.

I found an image for these on Pinterest but when I clicked through, it went to a blog called Just Say Sew and I couldn't find the candy sleighs anywhere on her site, so I don't know if credit belongs to her or who came up with these clever little sleighs. Either way, it was really easy to figure out how to make simply based on the picture. Glue dots are your best friend here. Don't listen to naysayers who say it's cheating (CHRIS). It's not. Use those little Hershey's Nuggets candy bag, 2 candy canes and a Kit Kat. 

Put glue dots on each of the bottom corners of the Kit Kat bar and attach the candy canes. 

Stack those bad boys in the shape of a pyramid, using glue dots to hold it all together, then wrap it in ribbon. Easy peasy!

Work in progress...

All done! Six candy sleighs all in a row. I really like these little things and I'll definitely be making them again next year. 

So that's what I made this year. I also cross stitched a little Santa Claus ornament for my tree, but never got a chance to finish it, so that will be hanging on my tree next year. I'm debating leaving my Christmas decorations up until after New Years, but honestly, I've had them up since the middle of November and I'm ready to get back to normal, so I guess it's off to tear down Christmas for me!