Weekly Menu: 7/29 to 8/2: Going Red-Meatless...and some peachy goodness

This week is all about veggies and chicken. 

We are steering clear of red meat in our house for a little bit! I'd rather not focus my blog on the terrors of foods so I will refrain from my tangent on red meat! I will say this though, buy only GRASS FED BEEF if you plan on eating red meat!!!Really that goes for any meat...buy free range, organic etc. I find this extremely important when it comes to red meat though!

You never want to eat too much of one thing anyway so its good to switch it up the meats in dinner selections. There is so much you can choose from...and if you don't want to do a meat dish opt for hearty veggies that will fill you up like mushrooms!

Weekly Menu 7/29-8/2

• Heirloom Tomato and Feta Open Faced Sandwiches
• Orecchiette Pasta with Melon, Pancetta and Feta
• Orange Marmalade Chicken with Arugula and Potato Salad
• Herb Roasted Chicken with Tomatoes Pan Sauce
• Orzo Pasta with Pesto and Chicken
• Peach Cobbler

 I'll admit we went a tad overboard on the chicken dishes this week. We wanted to do the pesto pasta with shrimp but we had chicken to use up and wanted to stay within our budget! Next week we will certainly be incorporating a little more variety!  

Stay tuned for recipes and tips from this weeks menu! 

I'll leave you with a glance at our peach cobbler from Alex's peach pickin' adventure on Sunday! 

I am not normally a fan of pies and cobblers but it seems like when you have 30 some peaches in your house you it is kind of expected to make a peach cobbler!

Happy Cooking

Weekly Menu: 7/22-7/26: One Of Those Weeks

Yep...it was one of those weeks.

One of those weeks where you are just burnt from the week before and the last thing you want to do is go to the grocery store or even make the list of the things you need from the store.

This resulted in what I like to call our semi-lazy week! Sunday and Monday were Chinese food and Brickhouse Tavern for us! Both of which were by. I means healthy for us, but it's okay once in a while to let the rules fly out the window!

Luckily Tuesday we got back on track with menu planning and eating at home!

We blew a good portion of the budget on the semi-lazy portion of the week so we had I find things we could make from what we already had available. Well we have a lot of goat cheese and a lot of chicken! So we started with that! Plus we took a menu item we didn't make last week and changed it up a bit for this week!

Weekly Menu 7/22-7/26

• Sunday- China Ocean ( our go to Chinese joint)
• Monday- Brickhouse Tavern (little pizza place by our old apt. complex, brings back fun memories0
• Tuesday- Spinach and Goat cheese Omelets.
• Wednesday- Grilled Chicken with Orzo and Goat Cheese Vinaigrette
• Thursday- Roasted Chicken with Green Beans, Red Skin Potatoes and Lemon.

Chicken Sausage and Peach Skewers with Green Beans

In keeping with the simple theme this week we turned to one of my favorite magazines, Real Simple for this recipe!

 These chicken sausage and peach skewers were beyond easy! We had some chicken sausage leftover in our freezer that we needed to use up so this was the perfect recipe. Plus it cut back on the grocery budget this week! We had green beans earlier this week but this recipe was a little different and we a bought a ton of green beans (the type we like, haricot vert, only came in a huge bag) so we needed to use them up as well! Like I've said before it is a good idea to buy things you can use several times throughout the week to help with the budget...with green beans you can put whatever type of sauce you want on them to change up the flavors.

All you need is: 

• 1lb green beans, trimmed
• 1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
• 3 tablesoons olive oil
• Kosher salt and black pepper 
• 4 fully cooked chicken sausage links, cut into 1inch pieces 
• 2 peaches, pitted and cut into wedges
• 8 ounces of french bread, cut into 1 inch pieces (we used Torta Rolls from Costco)
• Wooden or metal skewers 

 All you need to do is:

• Soak your skewers in water for about 10 minutes if you are using wooden ones and heat up your grill.
• Steam your green beans either on the stove top for 6 minutes or in the microwave for 4 minutes.
• In a medium bowl, combine mustard, 1 tablespoon olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.
• Add the green beans and toss to coat.
• In a large bowl, toss sausage, peaches, and bread with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. 

 

• Grill the skewers, turning ocassionally, until the sausage is heated through and bread is toasted..about 5 to 6 mins. 

 Dinner is done and the rest of the night is free to do what we need to do! 

Now that was simple!