Moo Shu Veggies

I haven't been feeling very inspired lately to cook. Luckily, my husband has been very inspired by some Jamie Oliver recipes and he's been making fantastic roasted chicken, with the most amazing roasted parsnips with a honey glaze. I did do some cooking/baking over the weekend, but wasn't terribly excited with the results. I made 2 loaves of bread that came out so-so. I really need to find a good sandwich bread to make. Mine were too "fluffy", as jim said. Whatever else I made was so unexciting that I can't even remember it!

Anyway, I'm thinking that the next meal I should try will be Moo Shu Veggies. It's about the only Chinese food I really like to eat and boy do I like it! And the real push to make it is that I know it's something that Stella loves as well.

I found the following 2 recipes that look good.
@Eating Well
From Cooking Light

Seems easy enough. I'll probably get some egg rolls from Trader Joe's to go with. Stella loves to dip. I probably won't get around to making this until over the weekend. Tonight I was planning on making a Lentil and Chorizo soup and I was also planning on making Eggplant Parmesean this week. I've really been trying to plan ahead, but I can never seem to think further than maybe 4 days.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted with the Moo Shu results.

Giveaway on Coupon Geek

My friend Jaycie is giving away a great Food Storage Kit on her blog Coupon Geek. Even if you're not interested in the giveaway you should check out her blog for great listings on deals and she's doing a much needed series of posting on 31 Ways To Save On Your Grocery Budget.
I need all of the help I can get with that!

Frozen Food

Here is an excellent little article by Mark Bittman about how to use your freezer. As with most things in my life, I need to get better at this. I really wish there was a class just on how to best use the freezer, maybe there is and I just need to get better at finding that class. I never feel sure about what to freeze, how to freeze it or how long it can last in the freezer. I have freezer fear! This article helps ease that fear a bit.

Also, check out Bittman's blog: Bitten--all on nytimes.com

For the Frugal Family

I just found out about the npr contest to make meals for a family of 4 for under $10. There are over 300 entries, which means tons of ideas to feed your family for $10!

While scanning the comments I came across a link for Healthy Entrees Under $3 Per Serving.

Breadfast Ideas

I know my blog is called "Dinner Ideas 101", but the main focus for me is to try to find food for any time of the day that is healthy and simple. Ideally, I want slow (whole) food that is not stressful or overly fancy. I want it to be a normal part of my life, not a special occasion.

With that in mind, whenever I find something that I think helps me to achieve that I will post it here. This article, 27 Ideas for a Healthier Breakfast, seems to fit perfectly. I really love the idea of sweetened brown rice with fruit for breakfast, seems like a great change from my usual oatmeal or granola. I do feel that if I start off with a healthy breakfast I'm much more capable of making it through the day feeling energetic and staying sharp, which, as a full-time working mother is pretty amazing.

Golden Bowl

Tonight we're having "Golden Bowl" for dinner. A friend of mine showed me how to make this many, many years ago and it's been a staple ever since. The way I usually do it is by just steaming some veggies (usually something like potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, onions), deep frying some tofu marinated in soy sauce and mixing it all with some brown rice. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast. It's a great recipe because you can use whatever veggies you have on hand really.

Here are 2 other examples that I found:

The Grit Restaurant Golden Bowl

Vegetarian Times Golden Bowl

Cleaning Recipes

Here's a great article on creating your own cleaning supplies. Not really a dinner recipe, but good for that mess that cooking creates.

Food + Puppies = ...

No, it's nothing gross! It's really quite excellent. I just found this site called recipepuppy.com through another site called lifehacker.com.

recipepuppy.com lets you list ingredients that you have on hand and then lists out possibilities of what to make with said ingredients. I need all the help I can get lately. Here's a link to the page on lifehacker.com, it gives a few hints for better usability.

Tuesday

Tuesdays tend to be a bit hectic for us. We leave home early and get home late. To help deal with the stress we've been really good about either throwing some pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning or making enough of a meal on Monday's to ensure left overs for Tuesday nights dinner. I made a 4 lb roast chicken on Monday thinking that would do it but there was barely anything leftover to make a proper meal the next night. Being low on cash I had to try to figure out what other ingredients I needed to get that would add substance to the bit of chicken that was there, be cheap, plus it had to be something that Stella would eat.

Amazingly I think I did a pretty good job of putting together a fast, cheap and healthy meal. I headed to Trader Joe's where I bought a box of butternut squash soup, some salad greens and mushrooms. At home I had a bit of chicken and a can of cannellini beans. I added the beans to the soup then made a salad with mushrooms, carrots, shallots, and a homemade vinaigrette that included a spoonful of yogurt (Stella's idea)and the basic olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Dijon mustard. Stella loved it and even had 2nds of the soup (earlier she told me "no, I don't like soup"). If only I could've had the time to bake the bread dough that was in the fridge, it would've been totally perfect!

Someday I will remember to take photos of the things I make!

Naan

I've been looking around for a recipe for naan and this one on Manjula's Kitchen looks good with easy to follow instructions. There's even a video (which always helps me really understand a recipe).

For more naan recipe's check out my new favorite blog The Kitchen, which it looks like is brought to you by those involved with Apartment Therapy, one of my favorite blogs for decorating ideas and wishful dreaming. Looking for something interesting and a bit non traditional to do with naan? Try this: Flatbreads with Goat Cheese, Caramelized Onions, and Basil--also found on The Kitchen. Oh my!

Leftovers 101

Here's a great link for leftover idea's.

One potatoe, two potatoe...

Grow 100 lbs of potatoes in 4 square feet

Or in a bag?

Banana coconut cake

Banana Coconut Cake



Looks good to me.

Nigella Lawson's Lamb Shank Stew

I've made this several times and I love it. Nigella Bites was the show that got me totally into cooking. She makes it seem easy and carefree. The thing that really won me over was how she would just eyeball ingredients, that was like a revelation to me. What, I don't need to be exact? I can use what I have or work around it? Excellent!