MENU MONDAY - 3/20/17

We had a couple changes to the last menu. First, some of us attended a catered meeting and came home with leftover Famous Dave's. We ditched one of our planned meals one night in favor of those leftovers and some frozen veggies. Second, our homeschool group's science fair was on Pi(e) Day, They ended up having a pie potluck at the end of the fair and we contributed a creamy lemon pie.

I also wanted to mention that in the last menu I'd said we were going to use the avocado dressing from this roasted veggie salad for our taco salads. It was a non-dairy substitute for sour cream and it was so good! I hate avocados and love sour cream, but I definitely prefer the avocado dressing over sour cream. It had the same texture as sour cream, but way more flavor because of the lime juice in it.

NEW RECIPES
* pineapple dipping sauce - There's nothing healthy about this whatsoever, but it sure tasted awesome on our Hawaiian chicken strips.

COOKING IN ADVANCE (These are often spontaneous projects, so they'll include things we did at the last minute the previous week and/or plan on doing in the upcoming one.)
* peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like we do once or twice every week

BREAKFAST
* oatmeal with a rotation of the following toppings - brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix x4
* doughnuts at church
* egg & veggie scramble
* granola (store-bought, which never happens around here)

DINNER
* leftovers (every Sunday so that we can have a day off from cooking)
* almond maple chicken / brown rice / new recipe
* unstuffed cabbage roll soup (from the freezer) / toast
* crockpot beans / brown rice / optional toppings of olives & tomatoes
* chipotle chicken / brown rice / roasted brussels sprouts with balsamic vinegar
* quinoa salad with apples & almonds (skipped last week because of the Famous Dave's leftovers) / cukes and carrots
* black bean & couscous salad / roasted radishes / lemon garlic cucumbers

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* fruits and vegetables (I'll pull some hummus from the freezer this week for people who want a veggie dip.)
* peanuts and dry roasted almonds
* popcorn with nutritional yeast, regular salt, or seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post.)
* new recipe

I'm most looking forward to the soup (partly because I love it, partly because it's an instant dinner), quinoa salad (haven't had it in a while, great blend of tastes and textures), and lemon garlic cukes (easy, tasty, healthy). Oh, and the two new recipes. I'm hoping they're good enough to share with you next week!

What was the last homemade meal (or part of a meal) you were able to pull out of the freezer?

Note: Any chicken breasts, 93/7 ground beef, applewood smoked ham, or pork tenderloins in our menus are from Zaycon Fresh. We've been making bulk purchases from them for a while and have been pleased with their products.

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