Menu Monday: Nourishing Body and Soul

 

                Good morning! I think our snowy mess is going to continue for just a little while! Hope you are well-stocked with food and fun to keep you comfortable while you wait. I spent most of yesterday being so, so thankful we made it home from our retreat before the snow flew with fury!

                It’s Monday, which means it is time to share with you some menu ideas from last week. I do have one quick note before I dive in. It’s true that I do prepare a large number of my dishes each week from Dashing Dish. While I am not one to subscribe to memberships to anything, I have been a subscriber to Dashing Dish for over a decade. It is worth it to me/us to pay the monthly fee because I feel like the recipes are completely worth the price! Having said that, I know it can be frustrating if you’re not a member to click on the links and not be able to see the recipe.

                I’ve learned that SkinnyTaste (which is a free recipe site) has many similar recipes to Dashing Dish. So I’ll start checking to see if I can find a comparable recipe whenever I share from Dashing Dish. If I can, I’ll note that! Hopefully that helps you…though I also maintain that this particular membership is worth it!

Monday: Leftover Southwest Chopped Salad With Chicken (Similar, free recipe here)

What I Loved: You might remember that last week I shared about this salad we made to take to our small group. I mentioned that I’d left out the chicken in the recipe, because I needed it to be a side salad that night. We had some leftover salad, so Monday night, I air fried a couple of chicken breasts, chopped them up, and added them to the salad. BOOM! Instant meal.

Tuesday:  Sloppy Joe Bowls

What I Loved: EVERYTHING!!! This was such a fun dish. I used frozen sweet potatoes, because you know I despise chopping potatoes. I also, based on the recommendation of a friend, used refrigerated fresh dill pickles from Aldi. They are so good. I love the flavor and freshness of them. I’ll be buying those again!! This was all the good of a sloppy joe without the carbs of bread – and I didn’t even miss them! This also makes six servings, so it was GREAT for leftovers!

Wednesday: Chicken Quesadillas

What I Loved: The seasoning on this was so good, and it was an easy dish for me to make ahead for Ryan – and then I was able to make mine later (after church). The next day we ate the leftovers without the tortilla because we were on the go and had no way to make a fresh quesadilla at mealtime.

What I Changed: The recipe called for avocado mango salsa, and that’s not really our love, so I just used avocado plain. So good.

Thursday: BBQ Sheet Pan Meat Loaf and Veggies + Apple Crisp + Ice Cream (Similar, free meat loaf recipe here)

What I Loved: We had friends stay overnight with us, and I needed a meal that was all-inclusive and easy to have on demand whenever they arrived. This fit the bill! I made a double recipe to be sure we had enough for four people…two of whom were guys…to eat. I lined the sheet pan with two bags each of broccoli and cubed sweet potatoes, and the eight mini meat loaves baked right on top of them.

I’ve made the apple crisp before and knew I loved it! It’s pretty quick to make when we use our apple peeler/corer/slicer, and it was so tasty.

Friday: Cheeseburger Soup at Mrs. Yoder’s

What I Loved: We were away at our marriage retreat on Friday, and we went to dinner at Mrs. Yoder’s Kitchen in Mt. Hope, Ohio. This is a traditional Amish-cooking restaurant, and Ryan got the buffet with all kinds of really great food! I opted for a bowl of soup and chose cheeseburger soup, because I’d never had that at a restaurant before. It had amazing flavor. The meat in the soup tasted flame-broiled and that smoky flavor permeated the entire soup. LOVED IT. Here is a healthy (much more than what I had, I’m sure!) make-at-home version!

                             

Saturday: Leftover Sloppy Joe Bowls

What I Loved: We arrived home RIGHT at dinnertime, and while I had plans to cook, I just scooted those plans right over to Sunday and went with leftovers instead. This warmed up so great and I loved how it came out!

Sunday: Pita Pizza Bar with Homemade Sauce + Chopped Salad

What I Loved: This was FUN FOOD! I picked out this menu plan specifically because we were hosting our friends, and I thought it would be fun to make with them. They ended up leaving our house early because of the bad weather forecast, but Ryan and I ended up making this and having a blast with it.

I have a marinara sauce recipe I’ve used for about a decade, and I still love it, but this one was so much faster to put together, and I thought it tasted great. It made far more than we needed, so I’ll freeze the rest.

The pizza bar was fun because we could use whatever we wanted/had on hand. I had turkey sausage, turkey pepperoni, banana peppers, bell peppers, mushrooms, mozzarella, and parmesan. You could swap out any other things you wanted. The pita bread made the perfect crust.

The chopped salad was easy to throw together. I didn’t add the olives or shallots because I didn’t have any, and I used Feta instead of parmesan, because it was easier. And I used our bottled G Hughes Italian dressing rather than making the homemade version – just for ease. One day I will try the homemade kind.

Snack: Granola Bars (Forgot to get a picture! 

What I Loved: These were very easy to make, and while a saucepan is required to melt together the honey and coconut oil, it’s otherwise a no-bake, no-cook recipe.

What I Didn’t Love: I opted out of the protein powder because I only had chocolate and didn’t want to use that in this particular recipe. But then there wasn’t any protein in this, and that proved to be not filling when I ate it. Ryan commented that these were also very, very sweet. That doesn’t really bug me, but he also wasn’t wrong about that. I think on my next round, I might put in PB powder where the protein powder would have been. Perhaps this will increase the protein and cut the sweetness? Or perhaps I will try this alternate recipe that is from a free site?