Meg's Meal Planning

pizza

Week of September 6th

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Holy cow, how is it already September!?  Why does the summer go by so quickly, but winter hangs around forever!? I’m already missing those long days, but I’m really looking forward to crock pot season! I was kinda in the fall mood this week, which you can see from some of the dinners!

  
Monday– Taco salad. We used the left over ground turkey from last week’s taco Friday and turned it into a salad with cheese, diced tomatoes, salsa, and chips.

Tuesday– Stuffed peppers with chicken sausage, rice, apple and dried cranberries.  This is one of our favorite dinners! We’ve tried it with different types of chicken sausage, and this time we used feta and spinach.  We also love cooking extra stuffing and taking it for lunch the next day.

Stuffed peppers with chicken sausage, rice, apples, and dried cranberries

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup white rice
  • 1 cup low sodium chicken broth
  • 2 large bell peppers
  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • 2 chicken sausage links, I used feta/spinach this time
  • 1/4 cup chopped apple
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries

Steps

  1. Prepare rice as package directs, substituting chicken broth for water. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Cut top of peppers, remove seeds, and rub with olive oil
  3. Place peppers cut side up in baking dish and roast for 30 minutes
  4. Meanwhile heat large skillet over medium heat, saute sausage until lightly browned, add apples and raisins until soft
  5. Stir in cooked rice and heat through
  6. Fill peppers with sausage mixture

Wednesday– Pasta, good ol’ fashion pasta. I’ve missed it all summer, so it’s about time to bring it back. I am embarrassed to say we didn’t make the sauce, it’s from a jar…ekkkk! But once it cools down a little, sauce season will start!

Thursday– Homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese. Nothing fancy, but the tomato soup was made with tomatoes from our garden! YUM, can’t wait to make more and freeze to have in the winter

Friday– Homemade pizza.  I’m enjoying these last days of summer using my fresh tomatoes and basil.  For the pizza, I preheated a pizza stone for 30 minutes at 475 degrees, then added sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. Bake for 10-12 minutes and top with basil.

Cooking with Hope

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My sister, Hope, is a junior in college and will be living in a house next year with NO MEAL PLAN!  I remember being in her shoes and being so nervous thinking, “What the hell am I going to eat!?”  She has the same fears and wants to learn some easy meals to make next year.

The Cooking with Hope series will feature meals we make together over the next few weeks until she leaves for school. The first meal is homemade pizza!

We made two pizza pies – the first is your basic Margherita pizza and the second was a pesto pizza with spicy chicken sausage and sun dried tomatoes.  We experimented cooking the two pizzas by preheating one pizza stone, but not the other. And let me tell you, BIG mistake not preheating both of them. The preheated stone gave the dough a nice crispy crust! Once both pizzas were prepared, we cooked them together.

  

Margherita Pizza

Ingredients

  • Pizza dough
  • Pizza sauce
  • Sliced fresh mozzarella
  • Handful fresh basil

Steps

  1. Roll dough on cookie sheet or pizza stone
  2. Spread pizza sauce on dough, top with fresh mozzarella
  3. Bake at 475 for 15 minutes (for the Margherita pizza, we didn’t preheat the cookie sheet)
  4. Slice basil and top on pizza once it’s done cooking

Pesto Pizza with Spicy Chicken Sausage and Sun Dried Tomatoes

Ingredients

  • Pizza dough
  • Pesto, click here for recipe
  • Olive oil
  • 2 Spicy chicken sausages, sliced thin
  • Sun dried tomatoes
  • Shredded mozzarella cheese

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 350 and heat pizza stone for 15-30 minutes. I only preheated it for 15 minutes because I was too hungry to wait the full time, but it will make the dough even more crunchy!
  2. While the pizza stone is heating, drizzle some oil olive in a frying pan. Saute the chicken sausage until no longer pink in the middle. I used only two pieces and froze the rest.
  3. After 15-30 minutes take out the pizza stone and carefully spread your dough out. Remember it’s hot! Turn oven up to 475 degrees
  4. Spread a layer of pesto. Add your shredded cheese, then top with chicken sausage and sun dried tomatoes. Cook both pizzas together for 15 minutes or until the crust is turning brown.

Pesto Pizza

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This was an easy week night recipe, especially since I already had the pesto made up. If you don’t, no worries, it’s still simple to make. I used the pesto I made from sorrel. Click here for the pesto recipe. And I used store bought dough.

I LOVE fresh basil!!

 

Spray pizza stone and roll out dough, use flour if needed

 

Spread pesto on top


Ingredients

  • 1 package of store bought dough
  • Fresh pesto, click here for pesto recipe 
  • Mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 1-2 tomatoes, slicked
  • 5-6 basil leaves, sliced

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Spray a cookie sheet or pizza stone and roll your dough out. Use flour if sticking to rolling pin

3. Spread pesto over dough

4. Add shredded cheese

5. Add slicedtomato

6. Bake for 12-15 minutes

7. Add basil slices

Week of June 14th

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Week two with my CSA farm box. This week I received sage, asparagus, lettuce, snap peas, spinach, bok choy, and arugula (But I gave the arugula to my mom).  I again tried to plan my meals around what I got in the CSA.  The bok choy, asparagus, snap peas, lettuce, and spinach were pretty easy to use, but MORE sage!! Both weeks I got a large bunch of sage, so I froze a lot of it this time around. Click here to see everything I made with the items form week two. 

Monday– Pulled pork sandwiches with baked beans and lettuce.  I have to admit I didn’t make the pulled pork or the baked beans.  I stopped by my parents house after picking up the farm box and my parents insisted I take some of their leftovers home…ok fine twist my arm!  But I did add the fresh lettuce for a healthy side, topped it off with carrots and red peppers.

Tuesday– Chicken breast stuffed with sage, dried cranberries, and gorgonzola  with a side of grilled snap peas. This recipe is unbelieveable! It tasted like something I would order in a restaurant!  The original recipe calls for dried apricots and goat cheese, neither which I have, so I substituted for what I had in stock.

Wednesday– Steak and bok choy stir fry. I have never cooked with bok choy before, but it was pretty easy and this recipe was a one pot meal!

Thursday– Homemade pizza with pesto, fresh mozzarella, and tomato. I used the sorrel pesto I made last week.  I followed this recipe, but used shredded mozzarella instead. Click here for the pesto recipe. 

Friday– Dinner party!  We had a few friends over for a Friday night bbq. Since I enjoyed many of the recipes I made last week, I made them again tonight.  This way I was familiar with recipes instead of trying something new for the first time.  The menu for dinner tonight was BBQ chicken with sage/cheddar biscuits, summer pasta salad, and corn on the cobb.  For dessert I made lemon shandy bars that were oh so ooey and gooey!