My First Make-a-Meal Monday post for link-up’

So an online friend and fellow Home School Review Crew blogger started a new link-up this week that is right up my alley.  Cassandra of My Blessed Mess posted about her new link-up and I felt I wanted to participate.

With a husband in the military, three sons (all at or above 6 feet tall) and a daughter who is 16, mealtimes are important around our home.  Also, we try to do one major shopping trip a month, so having a plan for what we are going to eat is important.  Since I just found out about this link-up today, I want to concentrate on how we plan for our meals.

My primary method of meal planning is using my wall calendar.  I buy the Amy Knapp calendar from Amazon.  I love the size of the squares for this calendar and the fact it has a place for meals.  This allows my husband or sons to pull out what we need either the night before or in the morning.

Here is a sample picture of our calendar.  For example, for tomorrow, we are planning on having riblets we bought from our local grocery store, Baked Beans with Brisket (bought at Sam’s Club), broccoli, and canned corn.  Depending on how time goes in the morning, I may try to make homemade Naan to grill.  I am planning on using a recipe I found on the Simply Whisked site.  You can see the recipe here.

Once we actually cook the meal, I will add pictures.

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Tasty Tuesday’s – March 20, 2018

This past week, I discovered an amazing place to buy fresh produce. It is called Bountiful Baskets. Unfortunately, it is not available everywhere, in fact, we had to drive two hours to San Antonio, which is the closest site to us. Bountiful Baskets is a food co-op where people pay a contribution fee for a basket or can pay more for certified organic.

We decided to purchase one regular basket along with several of the additional offerings, We purchased 50 pounds of potatoes, an herb basket, and a St, Patrick’s Day basket. With those, we received carrots, celery, potatoes, kale, a butternut squash, cabbage, pears, and even two grapefruits,

 

I wish I had taken pictures of everything, but that did not happen. However, I know we will participate again and I will be sure to take pictures and share with you all.  Here is one picture of some of the produce we got including the box of potatoes, the herb basket and the St. Patrick’s Day basket.

Here is a picture of the potatoes. We were very pleased with the quality of our food.

Also, this weekend, my husband and I discovered a new place to eat called Zoe’s Kitchen that serves a blend of Mediterranean and Southern food combined. I had their steak stack sandwich with a Greek salad. Dennis, my husband, had the steak stack and their marinated slaw. The food was fresh, flavorful and very satisfying.

So what have you been eating?  I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to read what other members of the Home School Review Crew have to say this week, click here or on the graphic below.

 

Tasty Tuesday – For February 20, 2018

 

I am back again today with another Tasty Tuesday installment.  This past Friday my husband had off for a long weekend for President’s Day.  We had to drive to Corpus Christi for a doctor’s appointment for me.  When we do day excursions like this we tend to take one of our children with us for one-on-one time.  Our youngest son who is seventeen went along for the ride this time.  We tend to try to pick places to eat that suit the personality and tastes of the child/children we have with us.  So this time, we saw a sign for CiCi’s Pizza and decided that was a good place to stop.

With three sons in our family, we have found buffets tend to be the perfect place to come.  Unfortunately, this time, a school bus full of other teenagers arrived at the same time we did.  Now having three sons of my own, I know teenage boys can eat a lot! I repeat teenage boys can eat A LOT!  The food was okay but not as great as we remembered.  Our son loves to get the Hawaiian pizza from CiCi’s that has ham and pineapple on it.  They had a Hawaiian pizza, but unfortunately, it did not have one of the two required ingredients, which mad our son disappointed.

For one of our other meals, we had my husband’s fried chicken.  This is something he has mastered the art of cooking.  We take a pack of drumsticks, all-purpose flour and some cornmeal for the coating.  He mixes it together, coats the chicken and proceeds to fry it in a cast iron fry pan.  It comes out amazing.  We served it with Western Beans from Aldi’s, mashed potatoes (that I added some of the sauce from the beans to my potatoes), and green beans.  All in all, it was a really good meal.

Tonight we are having Mexican for dinner.  What are you cooking at your house?  I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to see what other members of the Home School Review Crew are posting about this week, click here or on the graphic below.

Tasty Tuesday -Baked Chicken and More

My tasty Tuesday meal this time included baked chicken, stuffing, steam broccoli, deviled eggs and mashed potatoes. I want to focus on the chicken, however.

 

We purchased our whole chicken at Aldi since it will be lactose-free. My husband or my oldest son always rinse the outside and inside well before we season it, We first coat the inside with olive oil and herbs and spices. I used a blend of Kick’n Chicken seasoning from Weber, salt, pepper, and parsley, This time I also added rosemary to the blend.

 

Then we repeat the process for the outside of the chicken. We lay the chicken breast side down in a cast iron Dutch oven and then either cook using coals or in the oven for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  We like the skin to be crispy, which is why we tend to cook it outside using coals – where the coals are placed under the Dutch oven and on top of it as well.  But the oven works when the weather is not the best for cooking outside.

To save time, I use stuffing mix I buy at Aldi as well.  But I kick it up by sauteeing onions and celery that have been diced (about 1/2 of a white onion and about 2-4 stalks of celery depending on the size.  I use lactose-free butter that we buy at Sprouts, which my children call ice cream butter because of the wrapper.

So what is one of your family’s favorite meals to have or what is one of your favorite meals to prepare?  I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to see what other members of the Home School Review Crew have to say this week, click here or on the image below.

Tasty Tuesdays – Oriental Food

Today I am starting something new on the blog – Tasty Tuesdays, where I will share some of our favorite foods along with some recipes occasionally.  For this first installment, I am going to share some of our favorite oriental food.

Over the weekend, our daughter stated she wanted to have teriyaki chicken on a stick.  So being the dutiful mother I am, I immediately went online to find a recipe for Chicken Teriyaki.  I found a recipe and we bought a family pack of chicken tenders to use.  Of course, when we got home I discovered we did not have any teriyaki sauce.  So again, I went online to see if I could find a recipe for homemade teriyaki sauce.  I had all the ingredients so I whisked up a batch and started marinating the chicken. Then yesterday, we started the rest of the preparations. Here is the chicken on the skewers we were going to cook them on in the broiler.

One of the other things my husband and I were really wanting to eat was egg rolls.  So a month or so ago, when we were in the commissary, we bought egg roll wrappers.  We used bacon, shredded some cabbage and thinly sliced carrots to put in them.  We took some flour and water to make a paste to seal them.  I wrapped them and my husband did an amazing job of flying them.  They turned out delicious.

We also took cabbage that was finely chopped and diced some onion and stir-fried it as well with some soy sauce.  We also took onions that were thinly sliced and sliced some zucchini and stir-fried it to make what our favorite Japanese Steak House in Jacksonville, North Carolina calls Japanese french fries.  Both of these dishes also turned out amazing.

Finally, we made stir-fried rice with rice, onions, carrots, garden peas, and scrambled eggs along with soy sauce.  We used three cups of rice, one bag of garden peas and approximately 3 carrots.  This also turned out amazing.

We used teriyaki sauce that we bought at Aldi after we made the homemade sauce.  The only thing I wish we could have had was chinese mustard and duck sauce for the egg rolls. Otherwise, the meal was fantastic.

So what are some of your favorite things to eat?  I would love to hear from you.  If you would like to read other posts from members of the Home School Review Crew, click here or on the graphic below.

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