Zenful Expressions

All kinds O’ ball
Mark and Cody – Football
Niko and Mark – Baseball

Tomatoes – Time to cook some sauce!

Organized! – I spent the day organizing my kitchen drawers!

My Gift – Niko attended Chattacon and brought me home this ring!

Birds

Dog School – Louie felt like coming to school today!

Every week I sit down and peruse several different websites, my cookbooks, and my handwritten tried and true recipes to make healthy meals for my family of five. I tend to use what I find as a base and add my own twist to each recipe, hoping to come up with my own tasty concoction to use over and over again.

Here is this weeks menu:

Monday – Spaghetti N Meatballs

Tuesday – Polish Sausage and Cabbage Soup

Wednesday – Heavenly Chicken Lasagna

Thursday – Mexican Shepherd’s Pie Leftovers

Friday – French Bread Pizza

Saturday – Leftovers

Sunday – Leftovers

You can find all the recipes, and photos for my meals here on my blog, and you can see my full menu plan here on this calendar.

Beauty Salon - Ty got her “hair did” by her DeDe today!

Zucchini bread is not only delicious, but very easy to make. Below is the base recipe for two loaves, but I always at least double this and freeze my loaves to eat later or share with friends. I have step by step photos to add to this post… I just have to find them FOUND – LOL!

2 C. grated zucchini
3 C. all purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 C. vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour two loaf pans. Grate zucchini into a bowl and set aside. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a second large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

This was a request from a close friend that knew I had an abundance of mushrooms that needed to be cooked, and I have never made this before – nor will I eat it, as I do not like mushrooms. I did taste test the sauce and it was very tasty with a “kick”. Those who love mushrooms would really love this accompaniment to a meat dish or with chips.

I made alot since I had lots of mushrooms to work with, so here was my recipe – you can adjust for less.

3 six oz pkg baby bell mushrooms, chopped
3 six oz pkg white mushrooms, chopped
1 cup yellow pepper, chopped
1 white onion, chopped
2 jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 to 2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. salt
2 limes, squeezed
2 tablespoon olive oil

Saute mushrooms in large skillet over medium heat, about 6 minutes. Set aside. Saute onion, yellow pepper and garlic until onion is translucent. Add mushrooms back to onion mixture and saute for about 5 more minutes – do NOT remove juices, and add a bit of white wine or water if it seems dry. Mix in spices. Remove from heat and let cool for 10 minutes. Add juice from lime, and olive oil. Let cool completely and transfer to jar.

I did not use cilantro in this because I had none, but it would be best to add that in too; 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro added with the lime juice and oil.

I ended up with two jars of salsa with the above amounts. You can leave one in the refrigerator for use with dinners, and put the other in the freezer (less a bit for expansion – also, I used plastic jars – mayonnaise containers is what I put mine in) for later use.