What is easier than a sheet pan dinner?! I cut up carrots, celery, onion, butternut squash, and cabbage. I tossed all the vegetable components in olive oil and salt and then spread them out on a foil-lined sheet pan. They went into a 425F oven for 30 minutes. At the 15 minute mark I added the sausage. I served the vegetables and turkey sausage with two mustards.
Not only is the cooking a snap, the clean-up is minimal too!
John did his usual great job grilling the hamburgers. I added a slice of onion, some lettuce and tomato on mine along with ketchup on top and mayo on the bottom. This is the first time using pretzel rolls and the verdict was six thumbs up. I ate my burger with a knife and fork. It was just too slippery to try to hold it in my hand and it would have been gone too fast! Eating finger or hand-held food with a knife and fork is a great diet tip. If you slow down your eating, you will notice that you are getting full and maybe do not need to vacuum up everything on your plate. I often use this technique with tacos. Two open faced tacos are way more filling than two hand-held ones!
Our daughter had some bacon ends in the freezer and I defrosted a small handful and put them into our salad along with tomatoes. The rest of the salad came from a package. Terrible to say but I am much more likely to eat salad if I don’t have to wash, spin, and cut up the lettuce. It is not economic but it is certainly easier.
Red lentils turn bright yellow when you cook them. They are quicker cooking than brown lentils and really take on the flavors of the spices. They also tend to break down a little. In Wednesday’s quick and easy vegan dish we added chopped collard green stems while the lentils were cooking. I made a chiffonade of the collard leaves and served them raw under the lentils. The greens were dressed with a little olive oil and seasoned with salt. For a heartier dish serve the lentils over rice.
Tuesday’s dinner was a spin on what I usually call classic chicken dinner. We used rotisserie chicken that John gently warmed up in some packet chicken gravy that had the addition of sautéed mushrooms.
I steamed the butternut squash. It only took about 25 minutes. Sometimes I make it in the Instant Pot but today I was aiming for fewer pots and pans to clean up. I transferred the cooked squash into a bowl and mashed it up with a little butter and salt. I warmed it up in the microwave right before dinner.
Asparagus was $1.77 at Lucky’s California this week! These days I am always looking for good sale prices. It helps to make up for the still too expensive eggs! I cooked the asparagus in the previously used squash steaming pan in a little water until they were tender.
At the 6 o’clock position on my plate is a little blob of polenta left over from last night. It tasted good with chicken gravy too! Waste not, want not.
I suppose that this is pretty much shrimp and grits except I think of grits as being whiter and the Bob’s Red Mill package says it’s polenta. Having lived in North Carolina twice you would think I would be an old hand at grits but actually I never ate them while I was there. John used to eat grits with red-eye gravy but it never appealed to me.
Well, so much for my history with grits, John made our polenta with a ratio of one part polenta to six parts salted water, 2 bay leaves, and 2 garlic cloves. We took turns stirring and cooked it for twenty minutes. In the last 10 minutes we heated up two pans and cooked the shrimp and broccoli.
I really like this easy meal! The polenta acts as a kind of sauce for the broccoli and shrimp. I wonder what other protein you could serve like this. Chicken?
My Breakfast for Dinner this Sunday was kind of like a deconstructed shakshuka with scrambled rather than poached eggs. I started by stir-frying mushrooms, onions, garlic, carrots, and broccoli stems. Then I added a can of Rotel (spicy tomatoes). I finished off the vegetables by adding kale and the broccoli tops. In another pan I scrambled two eggs and laid them atop the vegetables. A drizzle of olive oil finished my dish.
This was way too much for me to eat for dinner! I ate about half the vegetables and all of the eggs. I saved the rest of the vegetables to put into a spicy vegetable-tomato soup on Monday for lunch. Clever me!
This week’s menu includes a couple of things that I did not get around to last week. This week I am sticking to the menu for sure (famous last words!) Also you will see the inclusion of an extra day. This is because I am taking some time off from every day blog writing until April. I may post occasionally if I come up with a dinner that is new or special but I will definitely be posting again regularly starting the week of April 2nd.
We used tilapia as our fish in our corn tortilla tacos. John cooked the seasoned fish in a pan on the stove top in a little oil. They only take 3 to 4 minutes per side. I prepared a salad that included pepitas, corn chips, various lettuces, and tomatoes and dressed it with ranch style dressing. We also each had a handful of tortilla chips.
John briefly seared the tortillas over the open flame on the stove. In addition to the fish that I broke up in chunks I put spicy avocado sauce, green onions, cabbage, yogurt crema, and cilantro on my taco. I like tacos but they are always eaten too quickly. Once you pick them up they are hard to put back down without falling apart!
I have gone off the menu again! It is so cold and wintry today that I felt like a warm bowl of soup. Plus my leeks needed to be used before they got any older! The amount of heavy cream you use is up to you. On Friday we used 1/2 cup which is my upper limit for heavy cream. Actually considering that three of us ate the soup and we have some left over, it really isn’t that much cream per person. Our daughter added more cream and Tabasco because she wanted it creamier and spicy. Recipes are merely a jumping off point for you to do you!
With John opening cans and me chopping up vegetables we were ready to make this stew in no time. If you have canned chickpeas, Rotel, ditalini or other small pasta, and vegetable or chicken stock all you need fresh are an onion, carrots, celery, and some sort of greens. Usually we have those ingredients on hand.
My recipe is adapted from the New York Times recipe of a similar name. When you cannot think of what to make for dinner this is an easy go-to. It is also great for leftover lunches. It can be made vegan, vegetarian, or omnivore.
Omnivore 