Food, Food, Food

It seems that food has been a very large focus in our house lately.

Ok, for me it seems like food has been a big deal. Made from scratch, nutritional, and delicious food. The kind that is lovingly prepared using the best ingredients I can find (and afford). New foods to get excited about, old foods to get reacquainted with.

Emma and Jared, on the other hand, could really care less if we ate cereal and PB&J every day for every meal.

But, seeing as I'm the one who plans the meals, shops for the ingredients, and makes the food,  they get to deal with enjoy what I come up with.

In case anyone feels this might be unfair, I use to ask Jared and Emma, every single time I was planning the meals, what they would like me to cook. After weeks of getting, "Mac and Cheese" from the little one, and only slightly better suggestions from the bigger one, I decided I would just do what I wanted.

About the time I decided to get a little more structured with our meals, Kira, over at Oops, I Craft My Pants offered up this fun freebie.

Not only do I love the artsy meal planner (as well as just about everything that Kira does), I am at the point were I seem to agree with the statement as well. 

So, each week has a basic flow to it for food. 

Monday- homemade pizza (At Jared's request)

Tuesday- Something new and interesting 

Wednesday- Warm It Up Wednesday (a fancy way of saying leftovers)

Thursday- Brinner night (Breakfast for Dinner). Would also most likely work out to be meatless.  

Friday- Mac and Cheese (sometimes with added ingredients, sometimes not)
Saturday- Spicy Saturday (tacos, enchiladas, chili, etc.)
Sunday- "Traditional" Meat and Potatoes kinda meals.

So far this week, we have had:

Monday- I don't remember, but we didn't have pizza, because we actually ordered Papa Johns on Saturday and ate that all weekend. I was pizza'd out.

Tuesday- Veggie Sushi! Made with rice, nori, avocado, cucumber, and carrots. 

(I used this tutorial/recipe)

For me anyway. Jared complained so much about the vinegar concoction that I was making to add to the rice (yes, it did smell like vinegar, which was a bit over powering, but was it really necessary to state, "I am NOT eating anything that smells like that!"), that when I actually made the sushi, I didn't offer him any.

His loss, the sushi rocked. My technique needs some lots of improvement, but seriously, for my first ever attempt I think it came out awesome. So awesome that I made two, and ate both of them. All. By. My. Self. Yum.

Lucky for Jared and Emma, I had also planned to make Octopus.

This was a pinterest find. Love pinterest. 

In my mind I envisioned lots of ooh's and aah's from Emma about how cool it was that they looked like octopus. Reality is never what I imagine. She gave me this weird sideways smirk looking face as I gave her the plate. "They look like jelly fish." Yeah, I guess. Turns out she didn't really like the hot dogs with the noodles stuck in them. Made them taste funny. 

Jared, thankfully, ate his without complaining. 

Wednesday was indeed leftovers- bean and ham soup and other odds and ends that had been in the fridge. 

Thursday- Today is Thursday. While we didn't have Brinner, everyone seemed to enjoy tonights meal. I had some left over cooked chicken breast that I really needed to use up. So, earlier today I made some more tortillas, so we could have  

quesadillas. 

I shredded the chicken then heated it up in the skillet with some chopped red pepper and onions that we are growing ourselves (another pinterest idea). 

While the chicken was heating, Emma was nibbling pieces of shredded chicken, mozzarella cheese, and warmed up tortilla, and I was mixing up some guacamole. 

Once the chicken was heated, I moved it to a bowl, tossed a tortilla into the skillet, threw some cheese on top, added a scoop of chicken, a bit more cheese, then topped it with a second tortilla. Using the main part of the skillet as a weight to press my quesadilla together while they cooked in the cover of the skillet worked out wonderfully. I guess the hefty weight of the skillet is useful for more than an arm workout. 

When we had stopped at the grocery store for the avocado for the guacamole , I also picked up some ice cream so we could have this

 for dessert. Homemade with love from scratch chocolate chip cookies with (store bought) vanilla ice cream. I think this might have to be a once a month dessert, planned and added to the menu/grocery list so we can also make the ice cream. Emma and I have made homemade ice cream before, but we are not allowed to make it very often for the simple fact that we (Jared and I ) end up eating the entire batch in one or two sittings. 

Funny enough, I think my meal planning might just work out despite the fact that, just today, Jared made the comment that I should buy some more sushi next time I was at the store. My reply was, "I just made some!" To which Jared dared to say, "But I didn't get any."

Maybe that will make him think twice next time about criticizing the smells coming from the kitchen. But, because I love him, I did pick up an extra avocado at the grocery store.  

And just for the fun of it, a few photos from our walk yesterday. Puddle jumping was required :)

It would have been awesome to get the picture between these two.