Monday

Salmon Burgers. The recipe is from Better Homes and Gardens. For this I cut out the Dijon (my husband doesn’t like mustard) and made my own dressing. For the dressing I mixed about 4 tablespoons of mayonnaise (I use the light, real stuff), with about 2 teaspoons of grated lemon, and 2-3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, and then I threw in about 2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley. It was so yummy!

Our side: salad..with fresh lettuce from our garden! Yum!

Tuesday

Chicken pita with tzatziki. This recipe is from Real Simple. It was really good! Our mint is quite potent, so I may reduce that in the future.

Side: grapes. tomatoes

A common thing I do for meals is make a kid version for Super A, as I did here.

Wednesday (This is when things start going downhill as far as cooking…be prepared HA!)

Chick-Fil-A courtesy of my sister. We had all three boys and no husbands for dinner that day, so we went for take-out.  Our usual is the chicken nuggets, with french fries, and some sort of drink (lemonade/milk).

Thursday

Steak-Out. My husband picked this up for us on the way home, and I was super glad because I did not feel like cooking! We usually get the steak tips, with baked potato, salad, and rolls. Super A had a cheese quesadilla with salsa (his request).

Friday

Scene Lounge. It’s kind of a tapas place. We were out running errands, while Super A was hanging out with his aunt and uncle that night. We tried the kobi beef burgers, the sweet potato fries, the california roll (sushi), and a calamari and shrimp plate.We liked the burgers and the fries the best! We sat in a half couch…we don’t get to be cool anymore that often. Hahaha.

Saturday

Back to cooking! We made tacos.

Sunday

Hamburgers to finish up the week. We had left-over buns from the salmon burgers and wanted to use them up before they went bad! We got the pre-patted 85/15 kind. My husband usually marinates them in some Worcestershire sauce and McCormick meat seasoning.

Side: chips and grapes

Monday:  The Pioneer Woman’s Mini Meatball Sandwiches.  Contrary to popular belief, my sister and I did not plan out our week of meals together.  We do, however, spend an enormous amount of time together and we have some sort of sister ESP going on.  I tried this meal thinking that my two boys would love it.  It is a meatball on a slider bun — what fun!  I served it with pasta salad (from a box, we like the Kraft Caesar using the creamy option) and grapes.  Handy M ate all the pasta salad and grapes, but didn’t like the sandwich due to the melted cheese – WHAT?!  Little J ate the grapes, the bun and then turned and proclaimed himself DONE.  We actually thought he tried the meatball, but fear not,  he actually just slipped it to the Bailey-dog!

Tuesday:  My husband and I ended up with a mini date night, so we ate at P F Chang’s (Dynamite Shrimp & Lettuce Wraps – Yum!) and did some birthday shopping — for me!  The boys had spaghetti with their grandparents.

Wednesday:  We had another one of the Pioneer Woman’s 16 minute meals, her Beef & Bean Burritos.  These were a hit among all of us.  They are like a short cut beef enchilada.  A perfect meal since it was a work day for me.  Little J had a cheese quesadilla.  Since it was a work day, our side was chips!

Thursday:  Tonight’s meal was an oldie but goodie and I know the recipe has graced this blog’s pages in the past.  We had tuna casserole with green beans and mac & cheese.  Everyone in my house eats this, and it is quick to fix on a work night.  We tried the new Kraft Homestyle Creamy Parmesan Alfredo and Handy M proclaimed it delicious!

Friday:  My birthday!!  My boys took me to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant in town!

Saturday:  Today was my Birthday Party Day!  In our family, we rarely celebrate our birthdays on the actual day, so we have our “real birthday” and then we have our “birthday party day.”  We celebrated at my parent’s house and we had Tony Roma’s ribs, beans, potato salad, bread and a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake.  My sister already recapped the rest of the party in a previous blog post.  Life is always a party when the boys are around!

Sunday:  We grilled flank steak for dinner tonight.  I used this marinade recipe from the Fly Through Our Window blog.  It is fantastic, especially if you let it marinate overnight.  I served it with twice baked potatoes and corn.

So, there you have it — our week of meals and my first blogging experience!  See you again in a couple of weeks!

The lighting is not great, but I got tired of trying to find good lighting on a rainy, cloudy day.

And now a craft. Sesame Street is all new this week (finally!) and so I have a few craft/learning projects correlating with the episodes. Today we learned about camouflage (I also learned I don’t know how to spell camouflage). I should really start looking words up. I’m getting a complex about my spelling abilities.

This craft was very simplistic. We just took red paper and then scraps of crepe red, yellow and green paper and glued them on the paper. Then we talked about how the crepe paper was similar or different from the red paper. And we read the book “The Mixed Up Chameleon” by Eric Carle.

Finally a recipe. For the Auburn game on Saturday I made turkey chili. Here is my easy recipe.

Turkey Chili

Ingredients

1 lb of ground turkey

1 bottle of beer (I used Sam Adams…just don’t use any light beer)

1 15 oz can diced tomatoes

1 small can (I think they are 6 oz) tomato paste

1/2 diced yellow onions

1 15 oz can white cannellini beans

1 tsp lawry’s seasoning salt

1 tbs cumin

1 tbs chili powder

Shredded Cheese

Directions:
Put all ingredients except shredded cheese in a crockpot. Cook for 6-8 hours. Top with cheese!

New paint. Finally. I can stop being the woman crawling the pale yellow walls of our house (have you read that short story? I think it was meant to terrify those of us who spend a majority of our time at home).

By the way the paint is a Sherwin Williams knock-off of Benjamin Moore’s Gray Horse color. I got the color idea from this post on Urban Grace Interiors Blog. I couldn’t be more happy with it. In fact I was so excited by the new color I decided I needed to do some other (yet far less expensive) re-do’s. I got super inspired by this post. And from that I created…

Blah.

Fabulous! All with bottles found around the house.

So now that I have discussed all those items…it’s time for Super A’s phrase(s) of the day:

“Pick-e- Up Please” (when he wants to be picked up)

“Where ‘bastian? Where Paddington? I really miss them” (when he is thinking of his doggies at my parents)

“Spider, right there! Spider, right there!” (he has a meticulous eye that is able to catch the tiniest spider…or piece of fuzz. Guess it’s time to vacuum.)

Right under where Super A is sitting there is a clear statement on the truck that says…DO NOT SIT ON THIS TOY.

And finally…

Must Try Brownies.

It’s from Giada at Home. You can find the complete recipe here. It combines raspberry, brownies, and white chocolate. I’m thinking this will go over well when it’s my turn to bring snacks at Bible Study this fall!