Tex-Mex Quinoa

 Well, this recipe takes me back! I was searching for vegetarian recipes and it hit me - I have a tab on the side of the blog of recipes that I have found and made over the years and absolutely loved.

As I was searching through the recipes, I found one that we used to make all of the time, and I loved it.  It’s a Tex-Mex Quinoa, and it’s made with a recipe I found on Chelsea’s Messy Apron.  NOTE - I’m not receiving anything from sharing the link - I want to give credit where credit is due. The recipe is awesome!

I like this recipe for so many reasons. It’s a crock pot recipe.  We put it in the crock before we headed out, and when we got back - dinner was ready! The ingredients were easy to find, and overall it was relatively inexpensive. When you use the garnishes as Chelsea suggests, it elevates this plain looking bowl of  quinoa to amazing. My favorite garnish is Guacamole. (With a capital G.) 

We used to make this recipe for 5 of us.  (2 of those 5 being hungry teenage boys.) When we made it over the weekend, we ended up having enough for us to eat a really good dinner and to have leftovers for 2 days of lunch!  (Pictured above - one of my lunches, ready to go in the fridge.)

Whoop!  That’s a win!

External Link to Tex Mex Quinoa Recipe: https://www.chelseasmessyapron.com/slow-cooker-tex-mex-qunioa-casserole/#_a5y_p=2118221

Our Dinner Spreadsheet for this week.

Yesterday, I posted about my spreadsheet that I have been using for dinner. Actually, I have an entire workbook, with tabs for each week spanning about 20 weeks. At this point, it's easy for me to go back through the spreadsheet and pick and choose from past recipes or weeks based upon what we liked in the past and what our schedules look like for the upcoming week.

So, here is a copy of the spreadsheet that we are using for dinner this week. The only way I could easily share this was to do a screen shot, so the links aren't live. 

If you can see the teeny tiny print, you can see that I try to prepare meals for two days, or double a meal and freeze the extras for another day to make life easier for us when we get home from work on a weekday.  Both husband and I are able to access this from our devices, and pick up what we need at the store. What this doesn't show is that I will go through and use the strikethrough feature on any ingredients we already have in the house so that it's easy to see what we need for the week. 

Pulling together a shopping list from this is fairly easy and makes grocery shopping much less frustrating.

In case if you can't see the recipes, and need the links, here they are:

White Bean Kale Soup: https://midwestfoodieblog.com/white-bean-kale-soup/

Paleo Baked Butter Chicken: https://www.maryswholelife.com/paleo-baked-butter-chicken-meatballs/

The Freezer Meal we are pulling out of the freezer on Thursday night:  https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-chicken-and-wild-rice-bake-216431

Sheet Pan Chicken Tikka: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-chicken-and-wild-rice-bake-216431

Friday night is my own chili recipe, and prep meal for Saturday. Since I work Saturday, I'm off Friday and will have the time to do a quick meal prep.  I always like to have 3 or 4 meals in the freezer, and when I can, I make a roast on Sunday so that I can use the leftovers for the rest of the week.

What about you? How do you organize your meals for the week? 

Vegetable Pasta

I pick up a box of produce from our local farmer every couple of weeks.  For $25, I get a huge amount of vegetables that last for the better part of two weeks. 

It's also my favorite time of year - Asparagus Season! I just can't get enough of the tasty vegetables cut fresh from the plant.  So, I took a whole bunch of asparagus and combined it with my other favorite spring veggies and came up with this fantabulous dish!

Vegetable Pasta

Cook 1 box of macaroni noodles as directed on the box.
Drain pasta, and leave sitting in the colander.

In a skillet, saute the following vegetables in olive oil (slice them, cut them, anyway you want)
I used
Peas in Pods (sliced diagonally)
Onion
Asparagus
Mushrooms
Small Bell Peppers
Tomatoes

Season well with Mrs. Dash.
Add the macaroni to the vegetables, stir to combine.

Instant Pot

Disclosure Notice: This post contains Affiliate Links.  

Do you have an Instant Pot??


I bought one a few weeks ago, and it has changed my life.  Since beginning to work full time, dinner has been hit or miss.  I get home from work around 5:30, and dinner has been as late as 8 recently.

Since picking up this most wonderful of appliances, I have been able to put dinner together before I leave for work - or even the night before.  I cover the inner pot with foil and put it in the fridge.  When husband gets home at night, he pulls out the pot, removes the foil and puts it into the pressure cooker.  By the time I get home,  dinner is ready!  Even better, there's left overs for the next night's dinner.  Success!!!!

I really am enjoying this gizmo.  Not only is it a pressure cooker, it's also a slow cooker.  You can also saute your stuff - IN THE POT - before you set it to pressure cook or to slow cook.  And the insert is stainless steel and goes into the dishwasher to clean.  No ceramic insert to wrangle into the sink and hand clean.

My Mom had a pressure cooker that she used frequently when I was growing up.  However, I remember many battles with the rubber gasket and the counter weight on the top.  The "chick-chick-chick" sound that it makes as it reaches it's target temperature and weight is one of those constant memories of my childhood and family dinners.  The Instant Pot doesn't make that "chick-chick" sound, but it does flawlessly and quickly cook just about anything.

Shrimp Stir Fry

Daughter and I were looking for a quick and easy dinner earlier this week.  We both work 5 until close at our respective jobs, and we leave home at 4, so we aim to eat something hearty around 3:30.  Monday afternoon, we were searching for something but didn't want to go to the store, so we foraged in the refrigerator and freezer.  We decided a stir fry would fit the bill quite nicely.  We were missing ingredients we normally use, but hey, necessity is the mother of invention.  Let me tell you, this was a quick and tasty stir fry!

Shrimp Stir Fry

1 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced
1 large sweet onion, cut in half and sliced into strips
2 cups cooked rice

For the Sauce:
3 TBSP soy sauce
2 tsp cornstarch
2 TBSP dry sherry
1 tsp sugar
1 TBSP crushed red pepper

Mix the sauce ingredients in a measuring cup or mason jar, set aside.

Over medium-high heat, pour enough olive oil into the bottom of a skillet to cover the bottom of the pan.
Stir Fry the carrots until mostly done - about 4 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add the onions, cook for 2-3 more minutes, stirring constantly.
When the carrots and onions reach your level of done (I like my carrots to be soft, but still have some crunch.  The onions should be almost translucent.)

Add the shrimp.  Cook until the shrimp is pink.  Turn the heat under the pan off, but keep the pan on the burner. 
Give the sauce one last stir to mix up anything that's settled on the bottom of the glass, and then pour over the shrimp and veggies.  Stir until the sauce is fully incorporated into the vegetables and shrimp.

Serve over rice.

Apple Chickpea Hash

Note: This post contains links to a third party website.

source: https://nu.spoonuniversity.com/recipe/apple-chickpea-hash/

Daughter found this amazing recipe online a couple of weeks ago.  She's made it for dinner three times in the last two weeks.  It's tasty, it's filling, and it's healthy!  We made it over the weekend, and we found ourselves doubling the recipe, it is that good.

The ingredients are simple: Garbanzo Beans, Apples, Onions, and Kale.  It takes less than 30 minutes to assemble this fantastic meal!

Quick, easy, filling and healthy!  It's what's for dinner.


You can find the recipe here: https://nu.spoonuniversity.com/recipe/apple-chickpea-hash/

Short Cuts to Home Cooked Meals

Everyone knows, it's healthier and cheaper to make your own dinner from scratch every day.  Meals for a large family easily come in under $20.  BUT - everyone also knows that making meals from scratch can be time consuming.  When you're hungry and in a hurry, that doesn't bode well for a home cooked meal.

Everything cut and measured for dinner.  Just dump and go.

If you're willing to invest a couple of hours over a weekend, you can easily get yourself ahead of the game, so that dinner is quick and easy, even when you get home from work and have to turn right back around and be out the door in an hour for soccer practice.

These are simple and easy tricks that I've been doing for years, long before the internet was a "thing". Now that our kids are grown and we have more time, I still find myself prepping for the week ahead of time because most nights, I really don't want to chop a bunch of vegetables.

Go shopping early on the weekend, and get your vegetables for the week.
By early, I mean early - before 9 am, if possible.  If you frequent farmer's markets, you know that earlier is better as far as finding the best produce.  The same goes for the grocery store.  Get out there early so that you can get your weekly shopping done and get on with your day.

Pre-Prep as much as you can.  This means you need to have some idea of what you'll be eating for dinner each night.  If you're not certain what you're going to eat each night, pre-prep the vegetables you tend to use over and over again.  Mince the garlic and store it in an airtight container.  Same goes for onions, celery, and bell peppers.  Each one gets stored in it's own container.

Cook once, eat twice.  This is my mantra.  There's a movement out there called "Once A Month Cooking".  Basically, you give up two days a month to prepare all of your meals for the month.  One day is for shopping, and the second day is for prepping, cooking, and freezing.  I remember when I did once a month cooking.  It was nice to have all the food ready to go, but I was exhausted at the end of my two days.

Peppers are cut, spices are measured.

On Sunday, roast two chickens.  (The oven is going to be on anyway.)  After dinner, pull the chicken off of both carcasses and put them into freezer containers in the serving you will use for a recipe.  The bones go into a stock pot - either to make soup for another night during the week, or to make broth to freeze and use later.

Are you making a lasagna or casserole for dinner?  Make two.  Serve one for dinner, and then freeze the other one for another night.

If I know what I'm making for dinner, I will cut all of the ingredients and assemble them together so that all I have to do is dump it into the pot and cook.  I've even gone so far as to measure all of the spices and put them together in a container to make assembly go faster and easier.  (I've been known to leave post it notes on the veggies so the husband or kids can start it.  See those peppers?  I left the ingredients and cooking instructions on a post-it note on top of the container.)

For my lunches, I'll assemble salads in a mason jar a couple of days in advance.  I've found through trial and error that you really don't want to assemble one of those salads more than three days out - they get a little wonky after that.

Crock pots are wonderful resources.  Put food in, 8 hours later, you have a meal.  But if you're like me, cutting food on my way out the door can be overwhelming.  Enter crock pot freezer meals.  Assemble all of the ingredients in a bag, and freeze.  Pull it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge the night before, toss it into the crock pot first thing in the morning, and dinner is DONE.

3 prepped meals, ready for the freezer.

You can follow my Freezer Cooking Pinterest page here. 
My Slow Cooker Pinterest Page is here.

For our dinner tonight, I pulled a package of pre-cooked shredded chicken and pre-cooked black beans out of the freezer.  I am going to mix them up into two separate pans of enchiladas.  One vegetarian and one meatatarian (without cheese).  I'm planning on having rice on the side.  Last night, while I had time, I mixed up the spices for everything into separate little mason jars.  I'll dump the spices directly from the mason jars into our protein mixtures.  Since we are gluten intolerant, we'll use corn tortillas.  I'll be serving this with a light salad of some kind.

What do you do to help speed up dinner preparation in your house?

Vegetable Quinoa

I'm working my way through the backlog of stuff that we have in the freezer.  I want to eat through as much as we can so that I can defrost it and get it ready for the garden goodness I will have coming my way this summer! 

I have an odd combination of veggies, meat and some Chipotle Chiles in Adobo sauce.  I had bought a can of the chiles for a who knows what reason when I was still spaced out on drugs from my colonoscopy, and I ran them through the food processor and made a paste out of them.  I froze what I didn't use in tablespoon size heaps on a cookie sheet, and then stored them in a plastic baggie.

This particular night found me staring at the bag of frozen chile piles and a bag of "southwest blend" veggies.  The blend included black beans, corn, onions, and pablano peppers.

As I was foraging around in the cupboards, attempting to figure out what this could become that wasn't another batch of chili, I hit upon a bag of Quinoa.

We make a Quinoa Pilaf on a fairly regular basis.  What if I tried making a "Southwestern" pilaf?   I was hungry, so it was worth a shot.

The result was fantastic.  We really enjoyed the flavor mix.  Didn't even have any leftovers!  (I'm going to have to make this again so that I can get a picture to add!)

Southwestern Vegetable Pilaf
2 cups Quinoa, rinsed
3 cups vegetable broth  (or water and a couple of broth cubes)
1 bag of Southwestern Vegetable mix frozen vegetables
2 TBSP of Adobo Chile mix

Bring quinoa and broth to a boil, add the Adobo Chiles, lower temperature and cover, simmer for 20 minutes.  Stir occasionally, and add extra water to keep Quinoa from sticking to pan as necessary. 

Add more water to the Quinoa if necessary to keep it moist and not sticky, then add the bag of frozen vegetables.

Stir it all together.  It should take about 5 minutes for the vegetables to warm up enough to eat.

Enjoy!!!

Winter Squash Stew with White Beans and Kale

photo: Bettina W.

We had this for dinner last night, and used the Hubbard Squash that was in our half bushel.  This was a recipe that I found on the Whole Foods website.  You can find it here. The soup was very, very tasty.  We had no leftovers, so you know it was a good recipe!  The only complaint that I had about this recipe was that there was too much Kale.  The next time I make this, I am going to use half of the recommended amount of Kale.   There is one note I read in the comments that I wanted to point out.  The recipe calls for Apple Cider.   Make certain that you use Apple Cider.  (not apple cider vinegar)

We are not yet finished with the winter squash.  I have a Cinderella Pumpkin, 3 Acorn Squash, and something else that I don't know.  I have at least 3 more squash based meals to eat, as well as 4 cups of frozen pureed pumpkin that I made earlier in the fall when I pureed the pumpkin for the Black Bean and Pumpkin Enchiladas.

Pumpkin Purée

I bought a half-bushel of winter squash at the local farm stand before they closed for the winter.  A

half bushel of squash is a lot of squash - by the way.  It it was only $15- an irresistible bargain. And good gosh, is it healthy for you.  I did promise when I bought the squash that I would share with you how we used it all up.   

Over the weekend, I made pumpkin puree.  Puree is the basis for a lot of pumpkin dishes.  When you buy a can of pumpkin from the store, you are buying pumpkin puree.  But the stuff fresh off the vine (technically, off of the vine and sitting in a cool spot in the house) tastes even better.  Especially when the pumpkins you are using are little heirloom varieties!  My half bushel of squash included 4 little pumpkins.  (Some people call these sugar pumpkins.  They're smaller than the pumpkins you use for Jack-O-Lanterns.)   We gave the outsides of the pumpkin a quick rinse in order to get rid of any dust that may have accumulated on them since we brought them home.  I pre-heated the oven to 350*, and covered a jelly roll pan in olive oil. 

Here is how we made our pumpkin puree:

1) Sliced the pumpkins up into smaller chunks.  I tried to leave them in halves, but they weren't snugging up next to each other in the pan as well as I would have liked.  So, I sliced them down a little more.  After slicing them down, remove the seeds and the stringy parts around the seeds.

2) Place the pumpkins, cut side down but with the skins still on, onto the pan.  I probably should have used 2 pans, but since I really didn't want to clean 2 pans, and I wanted the pumpkins to steam as much as possible, I just kept snugging them together as tightly as I could.  Eventually, I had to layer a few extra pieces on the top.  (I really didn't want to wash another pan!)

3) Bake the pumpkin in a 350* oven for an hour.  When the orange middle part is soft enough to pierce with a fork, you are finished.  Pull the pumpkin out and let it cool for a while.  Remove the skins from the pumpkin "meat" - either by pulling it off with your hands, or using a knife to cut the rind off.  Put all of the pumpkin into a large bowl.

Now, you can puree your pumpkin in a blender.  In a food processor.  In a food mill.   With a hand or stand mixer, or with a potato masher.  I really wasn't in the mood to clean a lot of extra dishes, so I opted to smash my pumpkin down with the potato masher.  Since the pumpkin was already so soft, mashing it down took me just a couple of minutes.  It took me longer to pull the rinds off of the baked pumpkins than it did for me to mash these guys up.

4) Once the pumpkin is all mashed and smooth, let it cool and then transfer it into containers for freezer storage.  I put one cup of pumpkin into each bag, because almost every recipe I have seen for pumpkin stuff calls for 1 cup of pumpkin.  Seal the pumpkin bags, and lay flat for freezing. 

5) I laid my pumpkin puree on a cookie sheet to keep it flat, and then put it in the freezer.  I left two cups of pumpkin out.  I put them in glass jars in the fridge, to use today and tomorrow.

From the 4 little pumpkins, I ended up with 8 generous cups of pumpkin puree.

The first of the two jars of reserved pumpkin will be used to make GF Pumpkin Muffins, which I'll freeze for my breakfasts this week.

The second jar is going into Pumpkin Enchiladas.  I had some fantastic Pumpkin Enchiladas at a restaurant last month, and this recipe looks very similar to what I had there. 

Delicata Squash

Have you had one of these beauties before?  I had never really seen them until a couple of years ago, as part of our CSA delivery.  (Community Supported Agriculture)

source: Burpee

I know yellow summer squash.  And I know zucchinis.  But Delicata?  What on Earth are those guys all about?

Delicatas are an heirloom variety of squash, harvested in the fall.  Their skin is softer than that of a Butternut, and is edible.  They are similar in taste to a Butternut.  Unlike other winter squash, Delicatas will only last a couple of months.

Care of all winter squash is much the same.  Wipe them down with a very mild bleach solution, and then store them in a cool, dry place.  (This is what a Root Cellar is for!)

For the longest time, these guys could only be found in the fall in farmer's markets and at farm stands.  Recently though, I've been seeing them at some grocery stores.  If you're looking for something to "break in" winter squash, Delicata is an excellent way to begin!

Roasted Delicata Squash

One or more Delicata Squash - cut in half lengthwise and seeded.
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Heat oven to 350*.  (Since we have just the two of us, I make this in the toaster oven, on a small baking pan.)

Slice the squash about 1/4" thick.
Place in pan.
Add a glug of olive oil
Add salt and pepper to taste

Stir together until all of the squash is evenly coated with the salt, pepper and olive oil.

Bake in a 350* oven for 30 minutes or until squash pierces easily with a fork.

Serve immediately.

Pinto Beans

Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot!

Who doesn't love a great pot of pinto beans?  They're cheap and easy, tasty, and oh so full of protein and healthy for you!

Oldest child is heading off to grad. school in the fall, and he will be cooking for himself.  Middle child will be living in an off campus apartment.  He will still be using the on campus meal plan, but he is working hard to learn how to cook cheap, easy, and healthy foods.

With that thought in mind, we made a pot of pinto beans the other day.  Not only are they filling, you can save the leftovers, mash them up and fry them to make refried beans, or you can use them to make fillings for burritos or enchiladas, (and freeze to eat later), or you can freeze just the beans and then add them to chili or just heat them up for a filling dinner on another day.

A thick, delicious bowl of pinto bean soup.

The night before, you are going to want to pick through the beans to make certain there aren't any rocks or small pieces of debris mixed in.  Rinse the beans thoroughly under running water and then place in a pan, covered with about 2 inches of water overnight.

The next morning, drain the beans, add more water to cover, and bring to a rolling boil.

Add the beans to your slow cooker, and set it on low.

To the pot, add:

*NOTE- this recipe is for TWO pounds of dried pinto beans.

One large, or two medium onions, diced

Two or three cloves of garlic, diced

2 tsp. chili powder

2 tsp. cumin

2 tsp. oregano

1 can of diced green chiles

1 or 2 cans of diced tomatoes

Cover, and cook on low for 8 hours.  Stir well before serving.  Serve as a soup.


Costs:
Canned Tomatoes: $0.55
Pinto Beans, 2 lbs. $1.89
Diced Green Chiles $0.50
Onion (produce stand) $1.00

Total:  $3.94

For the second night, we made enchiladas.

I used this homemade enchilada sauce recipe I found on Pinterest.  http://www.littlespicejar.com/homemade-red-enchilada-sauce/

We drained the liquid out of the beans, reserving all of the liquid.  The beans were smashed down, and then fried.  We used the leftover liquid from the pot to thin the beans.  (Can you believe a lot of recipes ask you to throw away that bean broth and just use plain water?  What a waste of that protein filled tasty broth!) My Mom and Grandma both used to fry their beans in lard... I'm not quite ready to go back to lard to fry my beans, even though it's REALLY good!

Put about 1/4 cup of beans down the center of a corn tortilla.

Roll it up, and place the enchilada, seam side down, in a 9 x 13 inch pan.

Pour the enchilada sauce over all.

If you don't have dairy allergies in your family, you can layer cheese over top of it all.

I served this with a spinach, berry, and red onion salad from ingredients I picked up at one of the local produce stands.

Costs:
Corn Tortillas: $1.50
(but I didn't use all of the tortillas.  The other half of them will be used in another meal.)
Tomato Sauce: $0.49.
1 jar chipotle peppers: $1.50
Veggie Broth: (I make my own, so????  I really don't know how much this would cost. I pulled a couple of broth cubes out of the freezer for this.)
Spinach and other goodies from the produce stand: $3.50

Unfortunately, we didn't have any leftovers for a third night of beans.  Who would have thunk it?  2 pounds of beans served 5 people 2 very decent meals.  (Oldest son ate 4 bowls of bean soup, husband ate 3.  I have some very big eaters in my family!)

If you're tracking the costs, we got 2 meals for 5 people for a little over $11.  If you're looking at the number of servings, we had 20 servings for $10.93.  That comes out to $0.55 a serving.

I know, making the enchilada sauce from scratch took a little extra time.  So did the veggie broth.  However, I am able to control the sodium, sugar, and other additives in these foods.  So to me - it's well worth my time.  (Enchilada Sauce and Broth both can hide gluten and msg, both allergens for our family.)