Ahhh, Spring!

Weekly Menu

Monday: Lentil Stew

Tuesday: Salad Rolls

Wednesday: Poached Eggs over Potato Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Spinach

Thursday: Fish with Roasted Fennel, Carrots with Pecorino, Salad and Bread
Friday: Enchiladas and Salad
Saturday: White Pizza
Sunday: Pasta Bake, Salad, Bread and Cornmeal Cake with Blueberries and Whip Cream

Weekly Pantry List

Fresh garlic, olive oil, sesame oil, Hoisin sauce, flour, yeast, baking powder, smoked paprika, walnuts, raisins, balsamic vinegar, ground cumin, ground coriander

Weekly Grocery List

Feta cheese (optional to top lentil stew)

Pecorino cheese

Mozzarella Cheese (couple handfuls for pizza)
Monterey Jack Cheese (3 cups)
Boursin Cheese

Smoked salmon (I had some leftover, you only need about 6 oz)

eggs
Fish (we had sole)

4 bulbs of fennel
fresh thyme

2 lemon
1 Granny Smith apple
1 lime

2 bunches of spinach

4 small yellow onions

5 red skinned potatoes

5 large carrots

1 cucumber
1 or 2 zuchinni
1 tomato

Green lentils (1 cup)

Fresh ginger (about a 2 inch piece)

Fresh mint

Fresh basil

Cilantro
Mixed Salad greens
frozen corn kernels

Bean thread noodles

Corn or flour tortilllas wraps (12 x 6")
Rice wraps

2 carton of veggie stock

1 small can of tomato paste
1 19 oz can of black beans

Lentil Stew

Today we suited up to go to the park. The sun was gloriously shining down on us and so we had on warm sweaters, rubber boots (of course) and the girls had on their splash pants. As we walked down to the park Hannah splashed in every puddle. I don’t mean she casually walked through kicking up the water, I mean she stood in the puddle and jumped, rising her knees all the way up to her chest and then brought them down hard, sending sprays of muddy water all the way up to her little laughing face. It took us quite awhile to get to the park, considering the number of puddles there were, but it was very worth it to watch her face light up with sheer joy at each one! We got to the park and I looked around at the sea of white snow (for some reason I thought the play area would be clear of snow) and then I looked down at my children’s bare hands, I never have them dressed quite right. It didn’t really stop them. What is it about kids and putting pebbles on the slide? They loaded the slide with pebbles and slid down brushing them off, Hannah would then take a handful and plant them in the snow and the game would start all over again. Ahhh, spring!

Recipe

I’ve already included this recipe in this week’s post. It was the perfect meal for today, warm and filling after a day of playing outside, but the lemon and mint give it a nice light flavour. We had a couple of pitas that needed to be used so I sprayed them with olive oil, cut them in triangles and baked them at 350F for a couple of minutes a side until they were toasty but still chewy.

* Save a few spinach leaves for Wednesday’s dinner if you’re making it

I should note that the serving size of this recipe is for two, we find that it’s plenty for Dave and I and the two littles but if you’re serving more than that you may want to double it.

Salad Rolls

It seems that things go along, rather smoothly until it all hits in one morning. Today was that morning. To be fair it didn’t all hit, Hannah was her usual happy go lucky self, Harper is getting a cold and was incredibly clingy and demanding and although I feel bad for her because she’s getting sick, I was not all that sympathetic. I really just wanted to get dressed by myself without having all my drawers gone through and clothes littered all over the bedroom and down the hall. I wanted to brush my teeth in peace without having to continually take Harper down from climbing up on the toilet or take her out of the shower. I was only asking for five minutes. Five minutes that I give up without even thinking about most days but for some reason, on a day where it seemed impossible to get it, I needed it. So we compromised, she screamed outside my bedroom door in the hallway and shoved her little hand under the crack in the door (sad I know, but some days my sanity is worth more) and I ran around and got dressed, not in peace but alone. When I was done I opened the door and Harper happily toddled off to her room to play – Seriously!

Recipe

This is Hannah’s favourite supper. We had it for her birthday dinner even though it was the middle of winter. I’ve also made it with shrimp (same seasoning) and it can also be made with ground pork, chicken or turkey if you so chose.

Package of rice wraps

Bean thread noodles, 2 of the little nests

Package of tofu

Handful of fresh basil

Handful of fresh mint

Handful of chopped cilantro

1 cucumber, grated or finely chopped

3 large carrots, peeled and then peel them in long strips with the peeler

1 ½ Tbsp sesame oil

3 cloves of garlic, pressed

1 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated

½ cup Hoisin sauce, more if you like

Heat the sesame oil over medium low heat and sauté the garlic and ginger for a minute, crumble in the tofu and then mix in the Hoisin sauce, adding more sauce if you like.

Place the noodles in a heat proof bowl or pan and pour boiling water over them and let them soak for a minute until tender, drain and place in a bowl.

Fill a pan or pie plate (big enough to soak the rice wrap in) with warm water. Set up all your bowls full of your fixings on the table and let everyone build their own. Soak a rice wrap until soft (less than a minute), spread it out on your plate and top with noodles, tofu, cucumber, carrots, mint, basil, cilantro and then roll, tucking in the sides and eat.

You can make or purchase a peanut sauce to dip these in if you like but we just like them plain, sometimes I add an extra little squirt of Hoisin in them.

Poached Eggs over Potato Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Spinach

Today my parents took Hannah to a play and Harper and I hung out together at home. I bought her a new bathing suit yesterday for her swimming lessons and she saw it come out of the laundry and wanted to try it on. She spent the rest of the day in it and every few minutes she’d stop, point to it and say, “Mommy bought that for meeeeee!” She gets a lot of hand-me-downs and so I guess getting something new was very exciting for her. I wonder if I should be concerned about the level excitement for consumerism in her.

Hannah had a great time with my parents, they took her to see a play, to the BDI for ice cream (which is an outdoor ice cream shop that must of have just opened for the season), and then when she wasn’t ready to come home they took her back to their place and played Monopoly Jr.! Its funny how you never quite get the full story from her right away but as the evening went along she continued to talk about her day and give us new little tid bits here and there. When I was putting her to bed she talked about her ice cream cone for a full five minutes (to sum up, a huge chocolate and vanilla swirl – it made me want one).

Recipe

This recipe is on this post from a couple of weeks ago. I had some smoked salmon to use up from the sushi and I was hunting for another recipe when I remembered this one. It’s a common complaint around here that we try new things and then kind of forget about them so I thought I would make this again. I didn’t quite have enough potatoes so I used half sweet potatoes and it was no better, no worse.

Fish with Roasted Fennel, Carrots with Pecorino, Salad and Bread

It was a dreary day today, no sun. It was the perfect day to head down to the bakery and get some yummy treats, play a game of Scrabble Jr. with Hannah and lay in bed with the girls reading Where’s Waldo after Harper’s nap. Harper kept yelling, “Valdooooo!!!!!” But I am feeling very tired and drained, it’s been so sunny lately that I forgot how much I can be brought down by the grey sky.

Recipe

It was a first for the fennel and it was so tasty – a definite make again. The fish was nothing very exciting, Dave wasn’t wild about the topping but I liked it. I really like anything with cilantro, both girls ate it without much comment.

Fish

4 fillets of fish (or however many you need, we had sole)

zest of 1 lemon

handful of cilantro

1 clove of garlic

olive oil

salt and pepper

Chop up the cilantro, lemon zest and garlic together until fine. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium high heat, season fish with salt and pepper and cook in pan, depending on your fish and size of fillet it will take various times, ours were just little and took about a minute a side. Once fish is cooked sprinkle/rub with cilantro mix and squirt with a little fresh lemon juice if you like. I was hoping to get a thicker fillet and BBQ it but even with all the spring thaw there is still a mountain of snow in front of the BBQ…I suppose I could shovel.

The recipe for the fennel bake came from epicurious and had a four fork rating (out of four, if you are unfamiliar with the site). It was simple but does take an hour and 15 minutes to bake. This is the full recipe but I halved it and cooked it in a small square glass dish (2 qt) instead, same amount of cooking time.

4 bulbs of fennel (about 3 ½ lbs), cut horizontally into 1/3-inch-thick slices 

2 tsp of the fronds (the little dill looking greenery on the ends)

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced diagonally into 1/3-inch-slices

2 tsp fresh thyme

½ cup pecorino cheese, grated

1/3 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly oil 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Layer sliced fennel and carrots in dish, sprinkling layers with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with thyme, then cheese. Drizzle with oil. Bake until vegetables are tender and top is golden brown, about 1 1/4 hours. Sprinkle with fronds.

For a salad I just threw together some baby greens, half a thinly sliced granny apple, ¼ cup raisins and 1/3 cup walnuts and drizzled a little olive oil and balsamic over top. We also had a nice slice of fresh cracked wheat bread from Stella’s Bakery!

Veggie Enchiladas and Salad

Today we went to story time at McNally Robinson. We use to go all the time and then this year I kind of forgot about it. Hannah asked last week and we forgot, so this week I wanted to take them for sure. We were in luck, as it is the week of spring break there was a guest story teller, Al Simmons. He was excellent and Hannah was enthralled with all the stories and songs. Luckily the it only lasted about 30 minutes because Harper was only distracted for about 20 of those minutes and so I spent the last 10 trying to entertain her without making too much noise or having her run off. All in all it set the tone for a very good day.

Recipe

We had veggie enchiladas adapted from My Adventures in Food. I have to be honest when I was making them I wasn’t so sure about the sauce and I thought they were going to be too saucy. I also found that some of my corn tortillas split when I rolled them and I used a few flour ones as I ran out of corn one but non of that mattered they were very good and very simple.

4 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs ground cumin, divided
2 cloves garlic, pressed
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ c all purpose flour
¼ c tomato paste
3 c vegetable broth
Salt and pepper
1 onion, chopped
1 bunch fresh spinach leaves
1 can (19 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained
1 ½ cup of frozen corn kernels
3 c grated pepper Jack cheese (12 oz)
12 corn tortillas (6-inch) or flour
Fresh cilantro, chopped

Salsa

Sour Cream

Preheat oven to 375F.

Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil over medium heat and sauté garlic, 2 tsp cumin and coriander for 30 seconds. Add the flour and tomato paste and stir to form a rue and then whisk in veggie stock until smooth. Bring to a boil, stirring often, reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 8 minutes until slightly thickened and set aside.

In a large pan heat remaining olive oil and sauté onion and the rest of cumin until soft. Add corn, beans and spinach and sauté until corn and beans are warm and spinach is wilted, remove from heat and stir in 1 ½ cups of cheese.

Lightly spray two 8” pans, warm tortillas in the oven slightly and then fill each one with filling, placing seam down in pan side by side. Top with cheese and then pour sauce over and bake for 20 minutes, serve topped with cilantro, sour cream and salsa.

For the salad I had little on hand and tossed some mixed greens with a chopped tomato, the juice of ½ a lime, leftover cilantro/lemon/garlic mix from the fish and a few good drizzles of olive oil.

White Pizza

Today I headed down to the United States for the day with a friend, Fargo to be exact. We went down to get some floor samples from a hardwood flooring place and do a little shopping. It took just over three hours to get there, we shopped for five or six hours (which is quite amazing because neither one of us are major shoppers), had dinner and then drove home. It was very exciting because in the morning I emptied my purse of all toys and diaper paraphernalia, I considered packing a snack for us and then realized that there was no need, we could stop or deal with being a little hungry until we were able to stop, I felt so free. To top off our fancy free day trip, instead of taking her van we borrowed her mom’s zippy little Yaris. It was a very fun day!

Recipe

While I was off shopping, Dave and the girls made this pizza slightly altered from The Cooking Photographer, and being the great husband that he is, he even took photos for me. They all loved it, I had a taste when I got home and it was very tasty, but they did say that it was a little too greasy – perhaps you could lessen the cheese a little to help out with the grease factor.

1 recipe pizza dough

1 (5.2 ounce) container Garlic & Fine Herbs Boursin Cheese

Mozzarella, shredded

Very thinly sliced onion slivers

Parmesan cheese, shredded (or the leftover Percorino)

1 or 2 zucchini, cut into thin rounds

3 cloves of garlic, pressed 

Olive oil

Place the zucchini rounds in a bowl and toss with olive oil, garlic. Grill on each side until grill marks form. Place back in the bowl and set aside. Leave the grill on. we still can't get to our BBq and so grilled in the oven on a rack at 350F for a few minutes a side.

Roll out your dough and place on a pan (greased or lined with parchment)

Place the Boursin cheese in a bowl and microwave for 20 to 30 seconds until creamy. Stir and spread thinly over pizza.

Top pizza with some mozzarella, onion slivers, grilled zucchini and parmesan.

Bake pizza in 400F oven for about 10 minutes, checking often.

Pasta Bake, Salad, Bread and Cornmeal Cake with Blueberries and Whip Cream

You know sometimes you have those days where you just feel like you could actually sleep the whole entire day and still sleep well at night, this was one of those days. I wish, now that it has come to an end, I could go back and be more productive but it's too late and now I just need to vow to be better tomorrow. It rained all day and so I am using that as an excuse for my laziness, but really I think I just didn't get up and go soon enough. I did rid the house of three boxes of clothes that do not fit my girls anymore (always bittersweet) and so that felt good (don't be fooled, I had the boxes packed days ago I just drove them somewhere today). We also found Hannah a rain jacket after looking here and in the states, we got the last rain jacket in her size at Zellers today and it is very flowery and fun just like her.

We were spoiled with a lovely dinner at my parents again tonight and so I only have the idea of a meal to offer along with my best wishes for your week!