meal plan monday

Happy monday!

I know it's been a while since I did a meal plan Monday, but better late than never, right?!  This meal plan is full of veggies and all kinds of goodness (BBQ, a peanut Thai sauce, and some tacos--three of my favorite things, at least), and I think you'll really enjoy it.

Speaking of vegetables, my dad came over and tilled up a garden in my backyard this weekend, which I'll probably be writing about soon because...  I'm so excited!  Of course, we only got the garden going after a lovely Mother's Day brunch full of brioche french toast with creme patisserie and caramelized bananas.  I hope you got to share a "sweet" day with your mama, too!

Coming later this week:  homemade spaghettios in abundance and the story of a little girl who stubbed her toe and lost some dogs (and some bets at the racetrack, for that matter).



monday:  chopped thai chicken salad

recipe from pinch of yum.

This is so good!  I would definitely only use half a head of lettuce next time, and I would certainly double the dressing (I love extra sauce with everything).  I also just used a firm, but still pretty ripe mango in place of the green papaya, and it was delicious!

 

bbq tofu bowl

I don't know about you, but I have a serious case of the Mondays today.  Then again, I feel like I'm going to have a serious case of the Mondays everyday until the middle/end of June, so maybe it is just me.  Per my mom, it's because I simply can't stand using those white cardboard cake boards from Michaels.  What can I say?  I must just bake cakes like it's my job (it's not).

With the double holiday this weekend (umm... Derby Day + Cinco de Mayo, of course!), I'm sure you celebrated at least one of the holidays, as well, and are sitting there with your own case of the Mondays, too, regardless of whether you've got any of those inconvenient cardboard cake boards bogging you down.

Saturday, I went all out and celebrated both the Derby and Cinco de Mayo with my mother, father, sister Mia, and Nick.  We had some of these slow cooker beer carnitas tacos and some of these Kentucky Derby Pie chocolate chip cookie bars while watching Orb win (Was anybody else rooting for Itsmyluckyday?).

sweet potato fries with vanilla dipping sauce

Spring holidays have turned me into one of those cook-on-the-weekend-for-the-whole-week kind of people.  I've quite enjoyed relaxing and having dinner already "done," but it's left me without any meal plans.

Last week, I did make some homemade spaghettios (I used this recipe from Picky-Palate except with a whole brick of white cheddar and no shredded chicken), but those are gone, so I guess that I'm going to have to get back to the whole meal planning thing.  At least this Thai chopped chicken salad is making it much easier to do that.

On the subject of all things delicious, I accidentally over-baked my banana bread (yes, it's probably one of my top posts because I reference the recipe so often myself...) last week, too, and I turned them into chocolate-dipped banana bread truffles.  They're so good that even the dogs loved them (note: I didn't share the chocolate part with them).

spring birthday extravaganza shenanigans

Celebrating Mia, Hannah, and Nick's birthdays this past weekend was... so much fun.  Their spring birthday extravaganza was, of course, a weekend-long giant food fest.  Here are the highlights in pictures.  :  )

For Hannah's birthday on Friday, my mom picked up some of the best steaks from Edwardsville Frozen Foods, a cute small-town small business.  My mom also refers to it as "the meat locker," which apparently makes it sound like a gay bar name... but, as you can see from the picture below, they obviously only sell literal meat.  :  )

We also did chocolate fondue for Hannah's birthdays and served it up with pound cake, rice krispy treats, and fresh strawberries.  We were also supposed to have some "cake balls" to dip in the chocolate fondue.  They were supposed to be made from cake leftover from Mia's birthday, but... I really messed those up.  Let me just tell you that if you ever want to make cake balls, don't try to add the cake to the frosting:  add the frosting to the cake.  It really does not take a full batch of frosting to make cake balls, and you might just render the whole batch inedible if you add the full batch of frosting.  Especially if you try to subsequently thicken it with cooked oatmeal!