I thought it would be interesting to do a post on a week of meals for Fraser and I. I also had a few new recipes I wanted to try, so I thought "hey, perfect thing for a blog post!".
We started off the week with some delicious and simple marinated steaks and baked potatoes! Yum. We normally buy our marinating steaks from Costco, which come with two JUMBO steaks for about $20. These steaks are super thick and can sometimes be tricky to cook properly so that they're not tough (I don't like my steak where it looks like it should still have a pulse). So this time around we tried some other marinating steaks they had that came in a 4 pack for $24 dollars and weren't as thick. Holy crap they were delicious.
I marinated them for 3 hours in the fridge with the Diana's steak marinade and a bit of salt and pepper. Wowza they were sooooo tender, it was melt in your mouth delicious. This is when Fraser announced we would be having steak on a weekly basis. Ha. The baked potato was as good as a potato can be - a little butter, salt and pepper. The shining star was obviously the massive piece of mouth watering meat. Even the leftovers the next day were tender and soft. Yum.
The next day I wanted something a little lighter. So I made us bacon ranch/caesar turkey wraps (Fraser had ranch, I had caesar), with some tomato basil soup. Super easy and quick to get on the table. I used the following "ingredients":
- 6 grain Dempsters wraps
- Roman Lettuce
- Oven roasted turkey deli meat
- Half fat mayo
- Bacon
- Ranch or Caesar dressing
*It would be delicious to add some cheddar or mozzarella cheese, but since Harper is lactose intolerant and while I'm breastfeeding - I can't have cheese :(
The soup we had was one of Campbells that come in the cartons (next to their broths), tomato basil. It was not my favourite. It's a very heavy soup, lots of cream and butternut squash. It's also not the healthiest, I much rather prefer their tomato and roasted red pepper soup. It's more than half the fat of the other one and is nice and light.
In the end though, for a quick and simple meal, it was pretty tasty. And Fraser loves anything with bacon!
The following night I tried something new, baked sweet and sour chicken over rice. OMG. This was amazing! Possibly one of the most tastiest things I've made in a while. It taste like Chinese food you would order from a nice restaurant but nice and fresh!
Here is the recipe and cooking directions:
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Amazing restaurant quality sweet and sour chicken that you can make from home!
Ingredients
- 3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1½ cup cornstarch
- 3 eggs, beaten
- ¼ cup canola oil
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 4 tablespoons ketchup
- ¼ cup white vinegar
- ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon low sodium soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon garlic salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and season with salt and pepper.
- In separate bowls, place cornstarch and slightly beaten eggs. Dip chicken into cornstarch then coat in egg mixture.
- Heat canola oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook chicken until browned. Place the chicken in a 9 x 13 greased baking dish.
- In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine sugar, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic salt. Pour over chicken and bake for 1 hour.
* I made an extra batch of the sauce because I made a ton of chicken so their would be lots of leftovers, and we like everything saucy :). I also added cut up green onions to put on top.
Seriously, if you like Chinese food, you need to make this!
I then made lasagna soup and home made garlic bread.
This is Frasers, which I topped with mozzarella cheese.
This is mine without cheese. It was still super duper yummy!
Here's my garlic bread. Just butter, garlic and parsley. No cheese unfortunately.
Here is the recipe and cooking directions:
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil, divided
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 1 large yellow onion, diced (2 cups)
- 3 - 5 garlic cloves, to taste, minced
- 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 (14.5 oz) can petite diced tomatoes
- 1 (14.5 oz) can crushed tomatoes
- 2 1/2 Tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tsp dried basil
- 3/4 tsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tsp dried rosemary, crushed
- 1/2 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley, plus more for garnish
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 8 lasagna noodles, broken into bite size pieces (6.5 oz)
- 1 1/4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (5 oz)
- 1/2 cup finely shredded parmesan cheese (2 oz)
- 8 oz ricotta cheese
Directions
- Heat one tablespoon olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Once hot, crumble beef into pot, season with salt and pepper to taste and cook, stirring occasionally until browned. Drain majority of fat from beef and set aside (you can drain it all if you want it to be healthier I just like the little bit of flavor a small amount of the fat gives). Heat remaining 1 Tbsp olive oil in pot, add chopped yellow onion and saute until it begins to soften, about 3 minutes. Add in garlic and saute 30 seconds longer. Add in chicken broth, diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, oregano, rosemary, fennel seeds, thyme, sugar, parsley, the cooked ground beef and season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring just to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, prepare lasagna noodles according to directions listed on package, reserving 1 cup pasta water before draining pasta.
- Add cooked pasta to soup along with 1/2 cup - 1 cup pasta water as desired. In a mixing bowl, using a fork, stir together mozzarella, parmesan and ricotta.
- Ladle soup into bowls, dollop with a large scoop of the cheese mixture and sprinkle with chopped parsley.
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