Meal Plan: Easy Does It

This week's menu posed a bit of a challenge for me. Since I had to work this weekend, I didn't have an opportunity to do any prep cooking for the week ahead — that means everything has to be prepared the night we plan to eat it. We're both looking down the barrel of a very full week — so meals have to be quick and simple to make. And last but not least, the fridge is full of unused items — time to get creative and utilize them!

Dinners:

• Sunday: Pizza, salad
• Monday: Portobello ravioli with tomato-shiitake sauce*
• Wednesday: Quick pork ragu^ with pasta*, zucchini
• Thursday: Bulgogi (Korean BBQ beef), brown rice, sweet & spicy cabbage
• Friday: Choose your own adventure pork tostadas

Lunches:

• Green salad
• Mango, bacon, spinach, and cheese sandwiches

Snacks:

• Apples
• FF American cheese
• RF Wheat thins

Sources: * Cooking Light The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook: Over 350 delicious, easy, and healthy meals

Notes: ^ I will be making both pork tenderloins in the slow cooker and then shredding them. Half will be used in the quick pork ragu and half will be used for the tostadas.

Make Ahead:

• Portion lunches
• Make provolone cheese toasts

Grocery List:
coming soon

BLT Salad with Buttermilk Dressing

I frankly have no idea why it took me so long to make this recipe. I have had it bookmarked and back-of-mind ever since it appeared on Steamy Kitchen. Maybe I kept thinking it was "too simple" or "not exciting enough."

But, as it turns out, what I am enjoying most about this recipe is how simple it is. It was simple to make, blends some of my fave flavors, and works great as a lunch. Let's just say, this BLT Salad is much more than the sum of its parts.

I started off by roasting center cut bacon in the oven. I chose center cut bacon because it is lower in calories and fat than regular bacon, so you can get a little more bacon bang for your points buck. Then, I omitted the oil called for in the recipe and simply tossed the bread bread cubes in the small amount of rendered bacon fat on the baking sheet. Just using this small amount infused the bread with a ton of delicious flavor. Then everything gets tossed together with a chopped tomato and the dressing.

About the dressing... I did make extensive changes to that. I don't use mayo, so I substituted ff sour cream and made the dressing as instructed. It tasted awful. I ended up throwing in a bunch of salt and pepper, parsley flakes, onion powder, garlic powder, and a last scrape of grainy mustard in a jar at the back of the fridge. It tasted better. My guess is that the dressing was supposed to taste like mayo on a BLT sandwich, but it definitely wasn't my cup of tea. When I make this again in the future — and I will be making this again in the future — I will continnue to refine the dressing recipe a bit more.

I haven't calc'ed out the points yet, but I'm thinking it's probably somewhere around 5 for a single serving: 2 oz french bread = 2, 3 slices center cut bacon = 2, dressing = 1, tomato and lettuce = 0. 

Recipe also appears in Everyday Food: Fresh Flavor Fast: 250 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Any Time of Day.

Asian Pork, Noodle, and Vegetable Salad

This recipe for chicken (we used pork), noodle, and vegetable salad appealed to me because it included some new (to us) ingredients, utilized leftovers, and was basically a complete meal in a single bowl. Gotta love that!

We chose to eat the salad warm, rather than cold, so we made a few modifications. First, we soaked the carrot matchsticks with the rice noodles for about 5 minutes to warm and soften them a bit. We used zucchini instead of water chestnuts because we like them better. We warmed the leftover shredded pork and zucchini together to save a little time. For the dressing, we reduced the oil to just 1 T. Once everything was done, we tossed it together and served!

It was a delicious meal. I loved how easy it was to put together. It made about 6 servings, so we had several servings leftover for lunches, and the salad has held up quite well. We're definitely looking forward to making this again soon!

Makes 6 servings. Points (old) per serving: 1 oz rice sticks - 1; 3 oz pork = 3, veggies = 0, dressing = about 1.

Meal Plan: Excitement All the Way!

This week's meal plan features (almost) all new recipes! The trick to featuring new recipes in a busy week is to make sure that the recipes use familiar techniques, so you're not stuck learning on the fly while everyone's waiting for dinner to get to the table!

Dinners:

• Sunday: Salad and leftovers
• Monday: Baked pasta with spinach, ricotta, and prosciutto (almost Meatless Monday)
• Tuesday: Honey-hoisin pork tenderloin (one of our favorites!), mashed potatoes, green beans
• Wednesday: Chili garlic beef with asparagus and cashews, steamed rice
• Thursday: Roasted pork tenderloin sandwiches, baked chips, broccoli
• Friday: Texas chili*, corn bread, salad (held over from last week)

Lunches:

• BLT salad with buttermilk dressing

Snacks:

• Pineapple chunks in strawberry gel
• RF string cheese

Source: * Slow Cooker Revolution

Make Ahead:

• Prep BLT salad
• Portion lunches
• Pre-cook pasta
• Make honey-hoisin marinade
• Roast cashews (we have raw ones on hand)
• Make rice
• Make pork spice rub

Grocery List
coming soon

Portobello, Broccoli, and Red Pepper Melts

It is safe to say that, last week, I was all salad-ed out. I got a little behind on my weekly lunch planning, so I had to grab lunch at my work cafe, and all they had that was (a) available and (b) fit my tastes was salad. So last week was pretty much salad after salad after salad until I just couldn't take anymore!

This week, I wanted to keep lunches healthy, nutritious, and point-friendly, without having to go the salad route. These portobello, broccoli, and red pepper melts fit the bill perfectly!

There are so many things to love about this recipe! For one, it is quick and easy to make. Everything just goes on a baking sheet under the broiler and becomes all kinds of delicious. Another, this vegetable mix is divine! It would make a great side dish on its own! Then it gets placed on  bread, topped with cheese, and then broiled again until all melty. Yum, yum, and more yum.

This dish is also very (old) points-friendly, too, if you omit the garlic/mayo sauce called for like I did. (I really didn't think it needed any sauce at all.) I used just a teeny bit (less than 2 t) of olive oil on the broccoli, so points for that per serving are negligible. The total for this lunch was just 7 points for a nice hearty helping. Veg = 0, 1 oz cheese = 3 (I used regular Swiss because I had some to use up, but the points could be reduced if a low-fat or fat-free cheese was used), 3 oz ciabatta = 4 (also could reduce this by using a different bread).

All in all, highly recommended!

Review: Alexia Sweet Potato Fries

Tonight, we enjoyed FauxBQ pulled pork with roasted green beans and Alexia Sweet Potato Fries. The fries were really delicious! They turned out sweet and crispy in the oven, which is rare for sweet potato fries. And, a big 3-oz. helping (as shown below) was very low in points -- just 3 points! We will definitely be enjoying these again soon.

The rest of our meal was also quite delicious. To make the FauxBQ pulled pork, we simply added 2 pork tenderloins (1 pack) to the slow cooker with 1 C beef broth and 2 t liquid smoke to give it that wonderful smoky flavor. Because we were going to be using the leftovers from tonight's dinner in another meal later in the week, we kept the flavoring light. A little more than 6 hours later, dinner was done!

This is a very (old) Point-friendly meal: 3 oz pork tenderloin = 3, 2 T bbq sauce = 1, green beans = 0, 3 oz sweet potato fries = 3.

I have no material connection to the producers of Alexia Sweet Potato Fries. I just really, really liked their fries and wanted to let the world know.



Meal Plan: When You've Got the Planning Blahs...

This is a meal plan sure to cure those ol' meal planning blues. Familiar favorites, a few new selections, and a little help from the slow cooker add up to one boredom-busting week of home-cooked meals.

Dinners:

• Monday: Skillet spaghetti with spinach*
• Tuesday: FauxBQ pork, sweet potato fries, roasted green beans
• Wednesday: Beef & broccoli, brown rice
• Thursday: Asian noodle and vegetable salad with leftover FauxBQ pork tenderloin** 
• Friday: Texas chili*** and low-cal fixins, cornbread muffins

Lunches:

• Portobello, broccoli, and red pepper melts

Snacks:

• Luna bar
• Pineapple chunks in strawberry gel

Sources: * The Best Skillet Recipes: A Best Recipe Classic, ** Cooking Light The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook: Over 350 delicious, easy, and healthy meals, *** Slow Cooker Revolution