The New Site is Up!!!

I'm still polishing the edges and fixing weird links, but come and find me! I'll be updating from now on over at www.thatswhatieat.com. And don't forget to follow my Facebook page, too!

Weekly Menu - March 3

So here's the story on the new site. I've had a good, long chat with godaddy, and apparently I bought the wrong thing from them and it's not possible to get it to do what I want it to do. The nice boys there have helped me switch stuff around, but it still means that I'll need to become a website builder extraordinaire. Since I'm not the kind of girl to back down from what I want, you can bet your britches that that's what I will do. Unfortunately that means that for now the new site has been scrapped as I figure everything out.

In the meantime, how about another menu? I briefly talked about this on the new page before it got scrapped, but I'm now switching so that I'm going to publish the past week's menu instead of the upcoming week. That way I can take pictures as I go and gather recipes for you better. I am also planning on publishing these on Saturdays instead of Sundays.

Enough yacking!

Sunday - Last Sunday was a family potluck. This was also the beginning of what I'm going to call sick week. This entire winter I've been watching people's Facebook statuses about all the yucky viruses floating around, and I kept being grateful that we were somehow missing out on every single one. And then Marquis brought home some horrid strain of influenza. Sunday he was affected, and yet he still (in a very sanitary manner) put some boneless pork ribs in the pressure cooker for our part of the potluck. Instead of attending, he then went to bed, poor guy!

Monday - Stuffed shells and salad. There is a good recipe for the shells here.  I doubled this and froze a bunch for later.

Tuesday - Pork chops with mustard cream sauce, roasted red potatoes and Brussels sprouts. I put the recipe for all three right here. It sounds like a lot and it looks fancy, but it sure comes together fast and easy!

Wednesday - Herb crusted chicken with feta orzo and broccoli. The recipe for the chicken and orzo is here. This is another super fast and easy meal that looks a little more fancy. The broccoli was just steamed and then I stirred in a little butter and some salt and pepper.

Thursday - Daughter #1 woke up coughing and feverish, and here's where our normal routine of a hot, homemade meal at the dinner table started to go to pot for the week. I ended up working right up until it was time to leave to take her to her 6:30 p.m. doctor's appointment (hooray for doctors who will work late!) and then we ate SunButter sandwiches in the car on the way. But hey, it was organic SunButter with homemade jam on organic 9 grain bread. That's got to count for something right?

Friday - This is the day that I started to get sick, too. I pushed through and took care of kids and got work done for the day, but I really just gave up on everything else. Marquis was wonderful and made dinner, which ended up being taco salad with some lettuce we already had cut up and some chili that we had made a few weeks ago. We made a gigantic batch and froze it in meal sizes. We also had a tomato and a couple of avocados that he chopped up threw on up. I love having stuff in the freezer we can grab in a pinch!

Saturday - One thing I like about doing the menu this way is that you get to see that we are real people, and while we try really hard to eat good things, we do have bad days and mess up sometimes. On this day daughter #1 was much more perky, though still definitely sick. I felt horrid and moved just enough to get the bare necessities done, and other than that I just sat in a daze. Daughter #2 decided it was her turn to get sick, too, and started with the fever and cough. Marquis was feeling better, but decided it would be awesome to get a pinched nerve in his back. We were all in pretty rotten shape, not even fit to warm up something from the freezer, and so the local Chinese food restaurant made dinner for us.

Herb Crusted Chicken with Basil Feta Orzo

(This recipe is adapted from the Cooking Light cookbook, Fresh Food Fast: Weeknight Meals.)

Herb Crusted Chicken

2/3 cup whole wheat panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
2 Tbsp Italian seasoning
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (I like to cut them down to "chicken nugget" size.)
1/2 tsp salt
5-6 grinds fresh black pepper
1-2 Tbsp olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Combine panko and Italian seasoning in a shallow bowl.
3. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper, then dredge in panko mixture.
4. Heat oil in a large, oven safe skillet over medium high heat.
5. Add chicken and cook 3-4 minutes until browned. Flip and cook 3-4 minutes on the other side, then transfer to oven for about 5-10 minutes or until done.

Basil Feta Orzo

1/2 box orzo pasta
2 Tbsp freshly chopped basil
1 (3.5 ounce) package feta cheese
1/2 tsp salt
14-16 grinds fresh black pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil

1. Cook pasta according to package directions and drain (make sure to buy whole grain orzo for really clean eating).
2. Combine all other ingredients and serve.

Pork Chops with Mustard Cream Sauce

(This recipe is adapted from the Cooking Light cookbook, Fresh Food Fast: Weeknight Meals.)

Pork Chops with Mustard Cream Sauce

4 Boneless pork chops
1/2 tsp salt
2-3 grinds fresh black pepper (per pork chop)
Olive oil
1/2 cup chicken broth
2/3 cup half and half
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper.
3. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and then the pork.
4. Cook 3-4 minutes per side, then transfer to an oven safe dish and place in oven to finish cooking.
5. Add broth to the skillet, scraping the pan to loosen up the yummy bits of pork that are left. Stir in remaining ingredients and allow to simmer about 6 minutes or until it starts to thicken up.
6. Spoon sauce over pork and serve.

Roasted Red Potatoes

1 pound small red potatoes, cut into bite size pieces
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic salt
14-16 grinds fresh black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Add all ingredients to bowl and toss.
3. Pour into baking sheet and bake about 20 minutes until brown and crispy.

Best Ever Brussels Sprouts

1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 pound fresh Brussels sprouts, the ends trimmed off and then halved
1/2 tsp salt
14-16 grinds fresh black pepper
1 Tbsp honey

1. Melt butter in a skillet over medium high heat.
2. Add olive oil, Brussels sprouts, salt and pepper.
3. Cook until the Brussels sprouts start to caramelize and turn brown, about 6-7 minutes.
4. Stir in honey and cook for about another minute, then serve.

Weekly Menu - February 17

This is probably (hopefully!) going to be the last thing I post on this blog, and I will have everything transitioned to my new website very soon! But for now, here is this week's menu.

Monday - Hawaiian haystacks. This is left over from last week, we had a change in plans (best weekend ever!) and just never got to it. There is a great recipe for it here.

Tuesday - Pork tacos. The recipe for the pork is here, and the tortillas here. I'll top them with a bunch of lettuce, tomatoes and avocados.

Wednesday - Outside in crockpot tamale pie. The recipe is here. This is so simple and always is a big win at our house. We'll throw more diced tomatoes and avocados on the top and have some green salad on the side.

Thursday - Chicken broccoli stir fry. We'll be using this recipe except I'll be using olive oil instead of the peanut oil, because I don't feel like an emergency room trip with my peanut allergic little sweetheart. We'll serve this over brown rice.

Friday - Salsa verde chicken with cornmeal dumplings. I love this one! The recipe is here and we'll have a green salad on the side.

Saturday - Lasagna and salad. This is going to be a super easy one, we had lasagna about a month ago and we just made a few extra and froze them. I love having easy meals ready to just pull out of the freezer! My cute hubby made this without a recipe because that's how he rolls, but if you are more comfortable with a recipe, here are a bunch of different ones that sound super yummy.

Sunday - Asian turkey cabbage cups. This is one of our favorite recipes of all time. The recipe for it is on my family blog, here. Everyone we have fed this to has just loved it. Yum!

New Kitchen Introduction

My new kitchen is far from new. Instead of a gorgeous, shiny granite countertop, we have a white one with lots of gold flecks, probably installed when the house was built in the 1940s. Oh, it's ugly, and I hate that I can never quite tell if the counter is clean or if there are bits of food sneakily hiding among the flecks. But at the same time, this crazy old countertop speaks to me. (Does anyone else have their houses speak to them? No? Hmm...) It tells me about countless pie crusts rolled out on that gold-flecked surface, bread kneaded, vegetables chopped and meals prepared. It tells me about the things we could do together, and is excited about the pie crusts that I have already rolled out, the bread that I have kneaded and all the meals that I have already prepared in our little old kitchen.

The cupboards are also probably original from the 1940s. The drawers stick, and then they protest loudly and squeakily when you finally succeed in getting them open. But oh, the space! We obviously like to cook, and with that comes a lot of different gadgets and dishes. We can fit all of our cooking stuff into these cupboards! It's fantastic! 

I also love that I can look out the window as I do dishes, and that while I'm standing there the heater will kick on and warm up my toes. Doing dishes isn't so bad when you have warm toes and a good view!

Then there is the oven. We have had a few chats, me and this oven  And not the happy kind like me and my kitchen counter. The stove part is just fine, we are so very happy to have a gas stove again! But the oven and I have our differences. I think it should cook at 250 degrees when it says it is cooking at 250 degrees, and it believes it can just cook at whatever temp it feels like on any given day. Despite that I have still made it work very hard and am figuring out how to bake when I have no idea what temp the oven will be. Good times!

"Why are you taking my picture, mom? Sheesh!"

Those double doors are our new pantry. But do you see that other door on the right? That's a pantry too! Anyone who knows us knows that oodles of pantry space is not just a want, it's a need. And I must say, it's glorious! I love all the room we have now. Of course, we are also going to have a ton of food storage downstairs, but this should hold enough of the stuff we like to have close by.

These next pictures are not of my kitchen, but they will be greatly affecting my kitchen in the coming months. The picture above is the side of the house, showing six of our thirteen fruit trees. Thirteen! I'm still reeling over that a little bit. Also, on the far right along that concrete wall is a row of raspberry bushes. 

This picture is trying to show the rest of the fruit trees and our garden. The garden area is gigantic! I'm so incredibly excited about the possibilities that lie under that snow, but at the same time very, very intimidated. I am taking a gardening class right now that I really hope helps, as I have been known to be really good at killing gardens. 

Running all along one side of the house is a long strip of strawberry plants. With all this fruit in our yard, I see A LOT of canning and jam making and dehydrating in my future. I have ordered our seeds for the garden and I can't wait to get started! 

So there you have it, my new kitchen, with a little bonus peek at the garden thrown in. I can't wait to show you more of the yummy creations that will be coming out of our new home!

Weekly Menu - February 10

My baby brother is engaged! He just told us today and I am so super excited. His fiance is very cute and sweet and I am so glad she is going to be part of our family. What does that have to do with this week's menu, you ask? Well nothing, but who cares! It's just so exciting that I had to share!

Monday - Chicken roll ups and salad. I'm going to take cooked chicken and mix it with cream cheese, chopped celery and a little garlic salt. I'm then going to make roll dough (here is a recipe for whole wheat rolls) and bake them until they are golden. Brushing the tops with butter (the real thing! No fake, plastic margarine here!) before cooking makes them extra yummy.

Tuesday - Chicken pot pie. There is a great recipe for this here.

Wednesday - Clam chowder. There is no recipe for this, Marquis just wings it and it turns out amazing every time. The closest I could find is this recipe.

Thursday - Shepherd's pie.  I had previously made this recipe and doubled it, freezing the second one. This is going to be a wonderful fast and easy dinner, which is great because on Valentine's Day the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time in the kitchen!

Friday - Pan seared oatmeal, fruit and yogurt. I love this recipe, although we just use regular maple syrup because I'm lazy. We'll have fruit and homemade Greek yogurt on the side.

Saturday - Porcupines and salad. This is a recipe that Marquis's mom makes and that he ate all the time growing up. I've always wanted to try it and I'm not sure why we haven't before. We'll be using his mom's recipe, which I'm not going to type up here, but this recipe is fairly close. We will be using brown rice for ours.

Sunday - Hawaiian haystacks. I usually see recipes for this calling for the cans of condensed cream of whatever soups, which I used to use without thought, but now I just can't even touch. I found a great recipe for the real thing here that I can't wait to try, yum!