What We Ate - April 24

Hello! Well, it's already Friday again and that means I get to share my meal plans from the week. If I was getting a grade for completed meals, it would be a 50%. Not so great, but that's how life goes sometimes. ON the bright side, we did have two great

Monday - Homemade Pizzas

Okay, this is the most requested dinner from Max, so I try to work it in at lest once a month. I usually buy the pre-made pizza dough at Traders Joe's and divide the dough into smaller pieces and let each person make a personalized pizza.

Our favorite toppings:

Pepperoni
Sun Dried Tomatoes
Pesto
Olives
Fresh Mozzarella Slices

No real recipe here. Just roll out the dough onto a baking sheet, maybe drizzle it with a little olive oil and add toppings. We sometimes as marinara and sometimes don't. Just depends on our mood. Bake at 425 degrees until the crust is finished and the cheese is melted.

Tuesday - Skinny Orange Chicken + Garlic Fried Rice

I had to laugh at the irony of doing a "skinny" recipe along with "fried" recipe. It all balances out, right? Technically the rice isn't fried, so hopefully it's not too bad.

Photo Credit

This was the first time I'd used the orange chicken recipe and it was a hit! Every last piece was scrapped from the bowl. I added a lot of broccoli to the chicken.

My go-to recipe for cooking broccoli is to spread it on a baking sheet, toss a little olive oil, salt and pepper on it and cooking it at 325 degrees in the convection oven for 10 minutes. The brocoli browns and gets a little crispy. Love it!

The Garlic Fried Rice recipe is one that I've made many times over several years and we all love it! I always double the recipe and then freeze leftovers for a future dinner. I also cut the amount of butter in half from the recommended amount in the recipe. Instead of the ham listed, we use Boars Head sliced peppered turkey.

Wednesday - Joe's Farm Grill

For some reason, most of our family was open at 5:30 on Wednesday and Ward suggested that we go out to dinner. Sounded good to me!

If you are ever in Phoenix, I highly recommend working in a visit to Joe's Farm Grill in Gilbert. My favorite menu items are the fried green beans, BBQ Chicken Pizza and the Bleu Cheese Burger.

Thursday - Little Caesar's and Smoothies

I had a great plan, but this night ended up being a bit crazier than planned. We were gone from 3:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Choir rehearsals, a lacrosse game and a couple of visits to friends filled our night. Little Caesar's was all we could manage since it was fast and the kids wanted pizza. I only ate one slice because honestly it's not my favorite. Once I was finally home, I made myself a smoothie.

Here's my go-to smoothie recipe:

1 banana
1 cup of frozen mixed berries
1 orange/cutie peeled
Enough almond milk to cover the fruit

Blend and enjoy! This makes to hearty servings.

Friday - Banana Bread

This isn't going to be our dinner, but I did bake up a bunch of banana bread today and so I thought I'd share the recipe. We had 9 very ripe bananas sitting on our counter and it was time to make some banana bread. I had pinned a no sugar, no oil, no butter banana bread recipe on Pinterest and decided it was time to give it a try.

I tripled the recipes (we had a lot of bananas!) and think it turned out deliciously. The tripled recipe made four mini loaves plus a regular sized loaf. I did mix a handful of mini chocolate chips into the regular sized loaf because I couldn't resist adding a little chocolate.

The good thing about skipping a couple of our planned meals this week is that now I'm ahead for next week!

Happy weekend to you.

Banana Bread and Birthday Cards

Hello!  Hope you are having a great day.

I'm enjoying bookmarking and trying out recipes that I discover through Pintrest. Last week I made this Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread and almost everyone in the family gave it two thumbs up. (Max won't eat anything with bananas, so he wasn't excited about the bread.) That just meant more for the rest of us.

The chocolate was perfectly soft and added a delicious touch to the moist banana bread. There are now a few more bananas turning brown on my counter so that I can make this again.

This recipe is my usual go-to banana bread recipe, but now I've added another favorite to the mix.

Also wanted to share a couple of cards that I made over the weekend. I used my Silhouette to cut the scalloped flower on the first card and then used the negative space for the second card.

The colors on this American Crafts paper are so festive and perfect for birthday cards!

My Favorite Banana Bread

One of my favorite things about this recipe is that all three of my kids love it, my husband loves it and I love it too! What better way to use up those unripe bananas on your counter than making some homemade banana bread for your family or friends?The Recipe:

2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 - 4 very ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
6 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I usually double this recipe and it makes about 6 mini loaves. Perfect amount for keeping a couple, giving a couple to friends and freezing a couple for later.

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Grease bottom of a 9X5X3 loaf pan.

Combine try ingredients. Then mix mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, melted butter and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients until just combined.

Pour batter into loaf pans and bake for about 55 minutes.

If you use mini loaf pans, the cooking time will be less. Watch the bread and remove when it's golden brown.

Enjoy!

Recipe from adapted from Cooks Illustrated Magazine.