Best. Lasagna. Ever.

May 7, 2013

My daughter packed double leftovers today. She wanted to try the quinoa with craisins and she also took some pasta salad. My son bought school lunch today. My hubby packed a peanut butter sandwich and fruit. I made another batch of quinoa and craisins and had another summer salad. Yum!

One dish that everyone really likes that I make is lasagna. Over the years I have perfected it. Well. Tonight's new recipe completely blew that lasagna out of the water. I can't believe how good this was and that we liked it more than my usual lasagna! I had a container of leftover lasagna sauce in the freezer. I wasn't sure if it was vegetarian or not. Ugh. It wasn't. I figured that the kids would want it so I asked my son. He said he didn't want meat. What? I went down the line and asked my daughter. Nope. Ok, into the trash it went and here is where the lasagna magic started.

I decided to do lasagna roll ups instead of a big pan of lasagna. Otherwise we have way too much leftover. I cooked the lasagna noodles. Meanwhile, I sauteed some onion, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil. I added some spinach and local white wine. I seasoned it with garlic wine seasoning and some oregano. I laid the noodles out and topped them with the spinach mixture. I topped it with freshly grated asiago cheese and rolled them up. I put a light layer of home canned spaghetti sauce on the bottom of a cake pan so the noodles wouldn't stick. I set the roll ups in it and then topped them with american cheese and mozzarella cheese. This was the time that I noticed that I had forgotten to top them with sauce before the cheese. Oh well. It will taste the same it just won't be as pretty. I topped them with sauce. I cooked them at 350 just until the cheese was melty. My daughter made us garlic bread by melting butter and garlic and then adding parsley, salt, and pepper. She is sticking to her vegan guns. She asked me to leave cheese out of her lasagna roll up. She also didn't want butter on her garlic bread so she just had a piece of bread with seasoning on it. I even bought her two types of almond milk today. She LOVED the coconut flavored one. My son said he would use the vanilla milk in his cereal but he didn't want either of them to drink on their own. I thought they were both good. I was surprised how similar it is to dairy milk. Yay for an easy switch!

After dinner, I wanted to use up some refridgerated biscuits that were nearing their expiration date. I saw that you could dip them in butter, roll them in sugar/cinnamon, and fry them into donuts. Ugh. DIP in butter? That just sounds like too much. Fry? No thanks. I had my daughter brush on a little butter (except on a few for her) and then I dipped them in the sugar/cinnamon. She said it was ok that the biscuit dough had butter and milk products in the actual dough. I figure if she wants to try being vegan it is ok to start out just by eliminating what we can without getting completely crazy about it. We baked them until golden brown (hers didn't brown up as much). Not quite as good as a donut shop donut but a good enough replacement for at home.

Comfort Food

May 6, 2013

Today turned into a great food day! The kids both packed peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. My hubby packed leftover grilled veggies and fruit. I love pasta for lunch. Give me a big bowl of pasta and home canned tomatoes and I'm a happy girl. I am trying to do healthier lunches than white pasta. I was thinking about my quinoa kale craisin pilaf that is a copycat of Gordon Biersch's. I wanted to change it up a bit.

I made quinoa and about half way through the cooking time I added in a handful of craisins. They plump up so nice when simmered and they give the quinoa a delicate sweetness. Yum! There was leftover salad from yesterday. It was a mix of romaine lettuce, spinach, red onion, mushroom, carrots, and tomatoes. I made a bed of that and added more tomato, cilantro, and avocado then topped it with the warm quinoa. Oh gosh. It was amazing. I think this may be the first time ever that I ate salad without salad dressing and I am a Ranch fanatic. The avocado and quinoa made dressing not necessary.  I can't wait to make it again tomorrow!!

I spent the day soaking and simmering a bag of dry black beans. It is cheaper than buying canned and healthier too. One bag of dry beans gave me five bags of beans to put in the freezer. I divided the beans into two cups per bag.

This weekend I was talking to my hubby about being a vegetarian. So far I don't really miss meat too much because everything we have made has been really flavorful. I wanted to branch out though and make meals that are reminiscent of a meat meal (versus just adding beans to something). Today was the day. I wanted to attempt to make meatballs.

I found a recipe on Celiag16hubpages for meatballs that I wanted to try. It was a mixture of chickpeas, eggs, onion, parsley, oatmeal, bread crumbs, asiago cheese (recipe called for parmesan), pepper, salt, and worcestershire sauce. The recipe was meant for spaghetti and meatballs but I wanted to make mashed potatoes and serve the meatballs with the gravy. I made the potatoes half out of potatoes and half cauliflower. I tried a new gravy tonight too. The recipe is on Allrecipes. It is made from vegetable broth, onions, garlic, flour, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, thyme (recipe called for sage but I didn't have any), salt, and pepper. I also served it with a side of corn (frozen from the farmer's market). So how did our "meat" balls turn out? Wow. They were delicious. The kids and my hubby all had second helpings. The kids asked me to make them every Monday for Meatball Mondays. Even the texture was great. I think we will try them next time with spaghetti sauce. The gravy was delicious. My daughter doesn't like gravy and never eats it. Well guess what. She loved this gravy! All in all, today was a great food day. I can't wait to experiment tomorrow!

Turning Lunch into Dinner

May 5, 2013

Today was a beautiful sunny day. We spent the entire day outside which for us means grilling. I wasn't sure how we would be able to incorporate the deliciousness of the grill with our newly vegetarian lifestyle.

We found a recipe for black bean burgers on Food Network. It is a mixture of onion, garlic, black beans (half of the can left whole), cilantro, parsley, egg, cayenne, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper. My hubby grilled the burgers along with a basket of red and white onion, mushrooms, yellow squash, and zucchini. We topped the burgers with cheese (I had American and he had Pepper Jack) and a tomato/avocado/cilantro/lime juice mixture. I also had a layer of spinach on mine. Lunch was awesome! We got the great grilling taste and I don't feel like I missed out on anything by not doing a beef burger. It still wasn't quite the texture of beef but it was definitely something we will make again. The kids didn't have lunch with us. Are you ready to hear what they had? McDonald's. Ew. I only allow them to eat it a few times a year. I did have them try a bite of my black bean burger to see what they thought though. They both liked it and said they would like us to make them again.

We talked about today being Cinco de Mayo and knew we wanted some type of Mexican food for dinner. My daughter heard my hubby and I talking about vegetarian and vegan. She asked what vegan was. I explained the difference to her (vegan does not eat any meat or any animal products such as cheese, sour cream, ice cream, or milk) and she said she wants to be vegan. WHAT?! How does my ten year old have more will power than I do? Who knows if she will really do it or how long it will last. Either way, I am impressed with her for wanting to give it a try. We all agreed that we should make fajitas. The ones we made last week were so good that we were craving them again already.

My hubby grilled up red onion, red and orange peppers, and portabella mushrooms. We also heated up the leftover black bean burger from lunch and crumbled it into our tortillas. We then topped the black bean crumbles with the grilled veggies, lettuce, avocado, the leftover tomato/avocado/cilantro mixture, more cilantro (because really is there ever too much), sour cream, and mexican cheese. We served it with a side salad of romaine lettuce, spinach, red onion, carrots, tomato, mushrooms, avocado, and sunflower seeds.

I was plating my meal and when I sliced the fajita in half a few portabella mushroom pieces fell out. I grabbed one and popped it in my mouth. I started saying "mmmmmmmmmm" before I realized what I was eating. I was focusing on getting the plate ready for a picture and "forgot" that we were vegetarians for a minute because it tasted just like a piece of smoky beef. It must have been the paprika we used. I was surprised that the mushroom had enough texture to it to make it seem like beef. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you will be fooled into thinking that each bite of your fajita is beef. However, it really is a great substitute. Everyone really liked the black bean fajitas. My daughter made her salad and I handed her the bottle of Ranch dressing (it is the only dressing she eats). She hesitated and asked, "what's in this"? I told her milk. She decided to skip it and try Italian instead. She also skipped sour cream and cheese which are two of her fav's! Yay daughter!

Have you tried a vegetarian meal? We are a week and a half in and with all the flavorful food we have had I haven't really missed beef/pork/chicken. I hope the longer we stick with it the easier it will get to think of ways to change some of our favorite "meat" meals into vegetarian substitutions.

Not even bacon...

April 3 & 4, 2013

We have had a busy weekend so far which is why yesterday's post and today are combined. Yesterday I had to head over to my friend's house as soon as I got the kids on the bus in the morning. Her neighborhood was having yard sales so I brought stuff over there to sell. I decided to pack my lunch. I brought the leftover pasta salad. My hubby picked up the kids after school and then headed over to my friend's house too.

Our three friends were going to grill up some steaks. Uh oh. Can we handle being around that delicious smell? Then came out the real test. Bacon. My hubby LOVES bacon. That is probably the one food that he could eat at every meal for the rest of his life and still ask for seconds. How did we do? Did we fall off of the vegetarian wagon? Sort of. My hubby  brought us some salmon to grill. It isn't "meat" in my book although it was still the first time we have had it since starting our new journey. We didn't even taste any bacon. Wow! We also stuffed up on grilled potatoes, corn on the cob, broccoli, cauliflower, and pasta salad. Yum. We started talking about what we "are". We don't feel like vegetarians partly because it is so new to us and partly because we will eat fish. It was funny that we had that conversation because we got home and a tv show talked about pescatarian. Huh? I never heard of that. It is a vegetarian that will still eat fish. Hey, that's us! Ha.

Today was another rummage sale day so we just had a quick Subway lunch. The sub I had was just as delicious as it was when I used to add turkey to it. Today I had provolone cheese, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, green peppers, and banana peppers. My hubby also had a veggie sub. My son had ham and my daughter wanted a big salad.

After the rummage sale, we had to get ready and head out to our friend's daughter's first communion. We were pretty hungry by the time we got out of there so we just went to Chipotle for dinner. My daughter was all set to have a tofu taco. Then the lady told her that they didn't have tofu. My goodness. You would have thought she had told my daughter that her birthday was taken away. Ha. I asked her well what do you want then? She pouted and said "I don't want meat". Ha. Ok. She had rice, beans, and lettuce in her taco. My son had a cheese quesadilla. Hmmmm. Interesting. I guess they aren't missing meat too much! My hubby and I had rice, black beans, green pepper/onion/mushroom mixture, lettuce, pico de gallo, sour cream, cheese, and guacamole on our tacos. I asked the lady to just put a little black beans. I was surprised that I didn't even notice them in my taco. I love that I can have healthy items but not feel like I am missing out on anything. It was awesome. It was like a combination of a fajita and a taco. We were on our way home trying to think of a name for it. Tacita's. Faco's. I laughed so hard at faco that the kids said I sounded like Santa Claus. Huh?!

Sorry that I don't have any delicious looking food pictures for you today. Don't worry. Tomorrow should slow down for us and the deliciousness will ensue!

Philly Cheese Fakes

May 2, 2013

My daughter surprised me this morning. She made her brother's lunch while I got to snuggle with my coffee. Yay for sweethearts! She packed him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some yogurt. She even used markers to write a sweet message to him on his sandwich bag. She bought school lunch today. I was in a hurry to get my errands done so I just heated up some of the leftover cilantro lime quinoa. I mixed in some avocado, sour cream, and mexican cheese.

I tried a new recipe for dinner tonight. Dreamfields Pasta had a recipe for Sesame-Soy Edamame & Pasta Salad. The recipe called for edamame, radishes, cilantro, and green onions. Eh. I never buy radishes. I like a lot more veggies in my pasta salad. I used the recipe as a guide but added the veggies that I had on hand. I used red onion, celery, orange pepper, purple cabbage, carrots, peas, and edamame with bowtie pasta. Now on to the dressing. It listed vegetable oil, pickled ginger, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, hot sauce, and garlic. Hmmmm. I rather olive oil. I tried rice wine vinegar once and didn't like it so I used red wine vinegar instead. I didn't have sesame oil so I just used more olive oil. Hot sauce? No thank you.

I found a recipe on Taste of Home for Philly Cheese Fakes. Ha. I liked the idea but wanted to change a few things in the recipe. I sauteed some red onion, garlic, red and orange peppers, and baby portabella mushrooms in olive oil and then added in some local white wine. I seasoned them with salt, pepper, paprika, and the garlic wine seasoning from the Melting Pot. I filled hamburger buns with our mixture and then topped them with provolone and muenster cheese and stuck them under the broiler.

I loved the pasta salad. The recipe had me at cilantro and ginger is one of my fav's! I had made it about an hour and a half before dinner so the dressing had soaked in a little. I will probably need to add more to it tomorrow. Everybody liked the salad. My daughter was part way through her salad and said that we should have put cheese in it. I told her she could add some if she wanted to. Did she go to the fridge and get out cheese? Nope. She went to the cupboard, grabbed the bottle of nutritional yeast, and put a ton of it on her salad. My hubby laughed and she replied "what, I like cheese". Ha! I never would have thought that she would embrace some of my weird new finds. My hubby said the sandwiches were really good. I will definitely be making those again!

Grocery savings

May 1, 2013

My daughter finished our grocery week off the right way. She packed her lunchbox with half of a ham sandwich. Why only half? She wanted to also bring a container of the leftover veggie crumble taco "meat". Wow. My son decided to buy school lunch today. I got to meet up with a few friends for lunch. I had a few questions for the waiter and it was my first time explaining that I wanted to keep it vegetarian. I felt kinda weird. Is that going to go away? Anyway, I ended up having sauteed pea pods, their biscuits, and the salad bar. Where else can you load up on spinach, romaine, carrots, peas, cheese, sunflower seeds, craisins, and cucumbers? Yum! My hubby was on his own at home for lunch. He texted me a picture of his ooey gooey muenster cheese sandwich. Looked good!

My pre-challenge weekly average at restaurants was $80. We actually ate out quite a bit this week. We went to Subway as a family, TGIF on a date, and Ruby Tuesday today with the ladies. I spent $70.18 which is a savings of $9.82. The kids packed lunches enough times to save us $14. My pre-challenge grocery shopping weekly average was $175. Today I spent $12 on cleaners/toiletries. I spent $3.29 on impulse items. I decided to try black eyes peas (no clue what I will do with them) and a greek yogurt for my hubby and one for me to try. I spent $99.34 on food. I spent $5.08 on gossip magazines. Good thing most of the racks were empty and they only had two of the four that I like. After adding in their surcharge and taking out my coupons, I spent $122.97 out of pocket. That is a savings of $52.03. This brings our weekly savings to $75.85 for the week. Our grand total savings is $3,268.87 in 196 days! So I didn't hit my $100 mark this week. This challenge is about saving what I can when I can. I'm not going to quit meeting up with friends every once in awhile or going out for lunch with my family. I'm happy with my savings this week. It also made me think of something else. My pre-challenge spending is an AVERAGE. There were weeks when we spent over $200 on groceries. I don't think I have ever gone over our average since starting this challenge. It would be interesting to see what I spent over the entire year last year and compare it to a complete year of challenge totals. Hmmmmmm.

I really didn't feel like cooking dinner after being gone all day. My hubby had to work through dinner so I decided to do it quick and easy. There was a partial bag of five cheese tortellini in the freezer. I grabbed a jar of my home canned spaghetti sauce. A jar of home canned green beans, an apple, and some yogurt were our sides. I love having home canned items because not only is it fast but I don't have to feel like I'm feeding my family unhealthy food just because I'm too tired to cook. Love my garden! How did the chobani go? The kids really liked it. I thought it was ok. I like yogurt a little sweeter but this stuff has double the protein as regular yogurt so I'll make an exception. Ha!

"Taco" broiled sandwiches

April 30, 2013

Today was a day full of food experiments. My daughter packed a ham sandwich and my son packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. My hubby packed hard boiled eggs, banana, fruit cup, apple, broccoli, and cereal bars for his breakfast and lunch.

I saw a lunch idea on Pinterest. A piece of bread is topped with mozzarella cheese, tomato slice, and green onions then put under the broiler. Hmmmm. Good but I know I can make it better. I looked in the fridge. There was still one leftover sweet potato/bean patty. I am not going to call it a "burger" anymore because it just wasn't that texture. Anyway I warmed up half of the patty and then spread it over two pieces of bread. I then topped them with spinach, green onions, tomato, avocado, and cilantro. I looked for cheese and found a five cheese white blend and some mexican. Hmmmmm. Which one? Nah, both! I did one bread of each and stuck them under the broiler. It only took a few minutes to get all melty. I grabbed my mountain dew (because what is a healthy meal that isn't washed down by something bad for you right?) and headed for the couch. I made the mistake of taking a bite of the mexican cheese bread while I still had the remote in my hand. I couldn't put my food down long enough to choose a show and get off of the guide channel! I finally set my food down when there was about a bite left....and only because I needed my napkin. Ha! The white cheese one was good but not as good as the mexican cheese one. I'm not sure if next time I will toast the bread first so that it gets a crunch. I mean really. If I couldn't set it down long enough to breathe (ok, to turn the channel) then why mess with it!

The kids needed an after school snack. I saw that there were three bananas and half a box of strawberries that needed to be finished up. I settled on trying a muffin recipe from Once a Month Mom. They were actually pretty healthy: banana, strawberries, applesauce, honey, butter, vanilla, flour, baking soda, and cinnamon. The kids loved them. They each had two muffins but I had to cut them off when they wanted a third!

I decided to go with tacos for dinner with a side of cilantro lime quinoa. I went to an amazing blog Inspired by Sam (ok, so she is my cousin I may be a "little" biased). I tried her recipe for the quinoa. I had a few problems but I totally blame myself not her recipe. I didn't measure the cilantro but I don't think I had nearly enough for the recipe. Anyway, it wouldn't chop up very well in my processor probably because it wasn't very full. I shouldn't have been such a cilantro hog this week!! Also, we liked it but it was a little too limey for us. I should have tasted along the way as I added the lime juice. Oops. For the tacos I tried something new. I tried to embrace our newly found part time vegetarianism and bought a bag of veggie crumbles to replace ground beef. I. Was. Scared. I poured it out of the bag and it surprisingly looked like crumbled beef. I may have ruined the texture when I added water along with the taco seasoning packet. It turned it into more of a bean texture. We topped our tacos with romaine lettuce, green onions, cilantro, taco sauce, sour cream, tomato, avocado, and mexican cheese. So what did everyone think? My son wanted the leftover pasta with alfredo sauce (which was part beans) but I asked him to try a bite of tonight's dinner. He took a bite of the "meat" and said it was really good on it's own. Then he took a bite of it mixed in with the taco toppings and said he couldn't taste it. My daughter loved it. She finished her taco in record time and then went back in for a second scoop of just "meat". My hubby said "they tasted like tacos".  Wohoo!! Oh, and I had an accidental mixture on my plate. The quinoa was great when I mixed it with the toppings that fell out of my taco. It cut the lime just enough so I went back and had a mini taco salad.

Side note: My son hung out with me while I scrolled through Pinterest this morning. He read the word "vegetarian" and asked what it was. I told him it is when you don't eat meat. He then asked, "am I a vegetarian"? I still don't feel like a real vegetarian. Today was day six. I think because we have the intention of eventually adding meat back to our meals a few times a week that I feel like a liar if I say I'm vegetarian. Well. My hubby is down 5-6 pounds and I am down 1.6 pounds (that's 1 POINT 6, not 16, ha) in the past six days. The only change we made is eliminating meat....not eliminating ice cream. Good god, no! I'm a vegetarian this week....and I feel great!