Category Archives: food

Recipe Review: Oven Fajitas

In the last two weeks, I’ve tried a handful of new recipes. I’m always on the lookout for easy, tasty and healthy-ish recipes that my family loves…and I figured, hey maybe you are too! And if you’re like me, you’ve got a bunch of great looking recipes pinned on your food board on Pinterest, but you never get any further than that. Trying new recipes is scary…what if the whole family hates it…what if it takes way longer to cook then anticipated…etc, etc. So I figured when I try a new recipe, I’ll do us all a favor a write up a quick recipe review! I did this a while back with a few recipes and I’ve already looked back on it and thought,”oh yea, I forgot how good and easy that recipe was”.

This week? Oven Fajitas.

20130222-115928.jpg

Level of Difficulty: Um, you guys? To quote Geico…it’s so easy, a caveman could do it. I’m not even kidding. I prepped this dish the night before, including the seasonings. Tossed everything in a 9×13 baking dish, covered it in foil and put it in the fridge. When I got home from work the next day, I preheated the oven (400 F), removed the foil and popped it in the oven. I stirred once halfway through and 20 minutes later, dinner was done!

What I did Differently: Confession time…while I pinned what I can assume is an official recipe for this, I never actually looked at a recipe. I just used the picture on Pinterest as a starting point. The picture showed chicken being used, I used steak.

Serving Suggestions: While the fajitas were baking I heated up some black beans and made some guacamole. Then served it traditional fajita-style with tortillas, cheese and sour cream. Then next day for lunch, I had leftovers of steak, peppers and black beans…healthy and hearty.

PROS: I mentioned this to a couple of coworkers, I will never make fajitas any other way. Seriously…it was just too easy. It was also really good. The peppers didn’t get mushy. In fact, since it was cooked uncovered under high heat, they even got a little browned. And, it was a great way to “spice up” our Taco Tuesdays while still sticking with the general theme. Oh and double bonus? Anytime I made fajitas on the stove there were pans that had to be hand washed. Making them in the oven means less work during cleanup!

CONS: There really weren’t any. Unless you count the fact that Rylee didn’t eat them. But she’s kinda picky and I wasn’t expecting her to in the first place.

Would I make it again: ummm…YES! Absolutely. One hundred and eleventy percent. Probably sooner as opposed to later.

Now…Go forth…enjoy the revolution of oven fajitas! You’re welcome in advance.

Reviews to come: chicken enchilada pasta, peanut sauce chicken, coconut lime chicken and ranch chops.

Meal Planning Calendar {Free Printable}

So, step two in my meal planning is monthly meal tracking. After the month is over, I transfer all our my weekly meal plans onto a month calendar.

I started doing this about 4 months ago and I’m already questioning why I hadn’t started this earlier. There have been multiple times that I’ll flip back to previous months to see what we’ve had for dinner if I need to fill a slot on my weekly plan. It’s also a tool I use for keeping track of, and rating, any new recipes I may try.

It’s also kind of a fun way to look back and notice any patterns in our eating habits. For example, based on previous months, we eat turkey burgers, spaghetti or lasagna and roast chicken at least once a month.

Anyway, since making my weekly To Do/To Make/To Buy printable, I wanted something a little bit nicer (and more coordinated) than my current system of drawing crazy non-straight lines on a piece of notebook paper. Seriously…I can’t handle the crooked lines. It also wasted a lot of space…I don’t need an entire page for one month because I only keep track of dinners. So I created my sheet with 2 months on one page. {and people say I’m not green. Ha!}

Since my first printable seemed to be a hit, I wanted to share this one with you as well…

Monthly Meal Tracking

Download it: Monthly Meal Tracking Calendar

Download it – print it – use it – share it – do your thing

And I think it’s generic enough that you could use it for things other than meal planning as well.

Reese & Her Groceries

Oh my gosh, this child. Based on the way she stared at us every time we ate, tracking our every bite from plate to mouth, She was probably ready to start solids around month 4.

She’s officially been on solids since a couple days before her 6 months bday. Since then, we’ve recently added in a second feeding, so she eats lunch and dinner with us.

I’ve made most all of her babyfood thus far. {Actually, thats kind of a lie, my sister helped out with that as well and I’ve got a nice stockpile in my freezer courtesy of her garden and food processor. Thanks, Sis!} Since adding in the lunchtime feeding last week, I did buy a few jars just out of sheer ease of packing food for her on the weekdays.

It’s kind of funny to me, I’ve noticed that she’s more of a fan of the homemade stuff than the jarred food. I think it’s a texture thing. She seems to prefer a food that’s a bit more…chunky. Not too chunky, obviously, but it seems like if it were up to her, the straight pureed foods from the jars she could kind of do without.

We started her on avocado, but it seems lately she’s not as much of a fan as she was when we first started this food journey. Right now we’ve got sweet potatoes, squash, pears, the occasional mashed banana and green beans in the rotation. Of course there’s also the barley cereal miked with breast milk.

I’m trying to be better about documenting moments with something other than my iPhone, so I recently took some “real photos” of her chowing down.

DSC_0158


DSC_0159


DSC_0160

 

DSC_0161


DSC_0162

This girl seriously makes my heart melt. I can’t help but smile every time I look at her.

Oh and apparently she’s also going to be quite the little ham…no idea where she gets that from.

Weekly Meal Planning and a free printable!

I’ve been meal planning now for…I’d say at least 3 or 4 years.

I’m a creature of habit. For a very long time I used the same pad of paper to write out our weekly meal plan, our grocery list as well as my weekend to-do list. Well, that pad of paper ran out a couple of months ago and since then I’ve been struggling with my weekend system. {see what I mean when I say I’m a creature of habit!?}

Sure, I’ve downloaded a couple of meal planning printables I’d found ala Pinterest but none of them really suited my needs. What’s that old saying? If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself? I’m guessing a fellow type-Aer like me made that up.

Anyway, my point is, I put my computer skills to work and created my own weekly meal planner! I used it for the first time this weekend and I love it. It’s got a section for a to-do list. A section for meal planning. And a section for a grocery list. And since I’m a sale shopper and almost never go to just one store I’ve got it broken up for two different lists.

See? Isn’t it pretty?

20130211-101059.jpg

Anyway, I kind of really love it. So much so, I thought I’d share it with you!

Weekly Menu Planner

Weekend Planner
 



Download it! Use it! Enjoy! Share with all your meal-planning friends!

If you use it, let me know what you think!

Happy Monday, Friends.

Thoughts in my head…

I’ve got about eleventy-billion one-quarter written blog posts swirling around in my head. Instead of either a) trying to find time to finish them all or 2) just flat out not even starting them, I figured I’d toss all these random thoughts into one blog post…like a goulash of sorts. {For the record? This will be the only kind of goulash allowed in my house.}

****

We moved the changing table we had in the master bathroom out. It’s been in there since before Rylee was born. Not sure how I feel about this.

****

This weekend I unpacked the 3-6 month clothes and officially put away the newborn clothes. I’m kind of sad about it. I did keep a few of my favorite pieces out to save…like what the girls wore home from the hospital…don’t tell Andy, he’ll totally make fun of me. Now we need to figure out what we’re going to do with all of the outgrown clothes. I’m going to look into donating it.

****

Reese started rolling over last week. Now she’s rolling over and reaching for toys. Yesterday, Andy said she rolled halfway across the room just to get something. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

20121113-122759.jpg

****

Time really needs to stop. Or at least slow down. Because…just…yea…

20121113-122910.jpg

****

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m really looking forward to decorating for Christmas. I blame pinterest.

****

Sometimes, when I have leftover homemade mexican food for lunch, I wait until really late to eat because I have this feeling that if I go into the lunch room to heat up my lunch the kitchen crew, who happens to be 90% Mexican-American, will totally judge me for my “not really authentic” enchiladas, empenadas, nachos, etc. Totally dumb. I know. {I KNOW!}

****

I finally updated my “weekly dinners” tab up there. I promise I’ll be better about updating that {though not a hard thing to promise considering I hadn’t updated it since…oh…April.}

****

I’m just over a week into my “no outfit repeat” challenge. I posted about it here. Ask me how I feel about it in another two weeks.

20121113-122840.jpg

****

Rylee is still struggling with me sometimes. I know it’s because she’s reaching out for my attention. I really need to be better about that.

****

There has been some major construction going on in the office. It’s been really loud. And annoying. So things at the office are booming…both literally and figuratively.

****

I’m wearing some new shoes today. I won a free pair of shoes at the PNWBlogger Holiday Party from Blowfish Shoes. I really needed a new pair of brown flats. I am in love. They are so comfy! And their customer service was fantastic to boot. {see what I did there!?}

20121113-122736.jpg

****

And last but certainly not least!? It’s Tuesday…you know what that means? NCIS & Tacos, suckas!!!