Meal Plan (and recent recipe trials)

I'm still cooking breakfast for the kids every day. I usually eat before they get up.
(Coffee, Toast with peanut butter and a banana almost every day. I like it and it doesn't take much brain power first thing in the morning. Keeps me full till my snack 3 hours later.)

Dinners this week:
~Portabello Mushroom-Garlic Burgers, Fresh Veggies and Hacienda dip
~Basic Cheese Pizza, Salad with Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing
~Flank Steak with Chimichurri Sauce, Roasted Broccoli with Cumin and Chipotle Butter, Black Beans and Rice
~Orange Crumbed Baked Chicken, Brown and Wild Rice with Walnuts and Cranberries, Stir Fried Cabbage
~Pork Chops with Corn-Bell Pepper Relish, Black Beans
~Chicken with Feta and Tomatoes, Herbed Brown Rice, Baby Lima Beans

As for recent recipes...

The Basic Cheese Pizza Recipe from WW New Complete Cookbook was great! I use the whole recipe for the crust and make two pizzas for our family.
A single recipe of the Basic Tomato Sauce was more than enough to make Pizza for our family twice. (4 plus pizzas) One note: The second time I made the pizza recipe I just chopped the fresh basil up and added it to the tomato sauce rather then sprinkling it on the cooked pizza as the recipe suggests.

We had the Portabello Mushroom-Garlic Burgers on Sunday. The recipe is from WW in 20 Minutes, page 234. Roger and I absolutely LOVED these and we will definitely be making them again. We weren't even the least bit tempted by the beef burgers we fed the rest of the family for Sunday dinner. In fact, they seemed a little intrigued by OUR "burgers". LOL Maybe we'll grill up some portabello burgers for a family dinner this summer.

I served the burgers with fresh veggies and hacienda dip. I usually make hacienda dip with a block of full fat cream cheese and jar of salsa and we eat it with corn chips. I wanted to try it with fat free cream cheese to see if it would make a yummy dip for veggies. It did. But I had to mix it in the blender due to the texture of FF cream cheese. I'm not sure how often I'll make this as reading the ingredients label of the FF cream cheese made me a little uneasy about having it very often. But it was tasty and the crunchy veggies made the potato chips on the table easy to resist.

I made the Linguine with Creamy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce from WW in 20 Minutes (page 218) it was really, really good. I was delayed in taking this picture so the sauce separated a little but, trust me, it was a very good recipe. I'm sure we'll have it again. Next time I'll use whole wheat dried pasta rather than fresh as the recipe calls for. Fresh is pricey and I'd rather have the added fiber of whole wheat. And if you decide to try this recipe don't forget that Dollar Tree sells 12 ounce bottles of roasted red peppers for $1 versus $3 or $4 at the grocery store.

I served the Linguine with Creamy Roasted Red Pepper Sauce with Focaccia from WW New Complete Cookbook (page 71). I opted not to use the suggested toppings. I just sprinkled on some grated parmesan and figured the points out on the points tracker. It was 1 or 2 points per 1/12th of the whole loaf. The Focaccia was really good too. A little crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. Very nice to mop up extra sauce. We'll have it again.

The Spaghetti and Meatballs recipe from WW New Complete Cookbook (page278) was not so great in my opinion. I'll find another recipe that is points friendly if I decide to try again. I've never been a huge fan of spaghetti though so who knows when that will happen. LOL