Tag Archives: dinner

What’s for Dinner Week 4

Have you ever woken up from a deep sleep and felt fuzzy or disoriented? That’s almost how the weather feels lately, doesn’t it? Some days the sun is shining and its warm and feels like spring and then the gloom and chill settles back in. It is almost like mother nature can’t decide, hit the snooze or go to the gym. This is the transition time from winter to spring. It takes awhile to wake back up and sometimes it might even feel like we are still dreaming.

In Chinese Medicine transition times are when the spleen/stomach system are most active. You can think of this as the core of our bodies, the center. Foods that are bland or mildly sweet (like wheat and sweet potatoes), and yellow and orange foods deeply nourish the spleen/stomach and digestion and help keep us grounded in times of transition.

I’ve included recipes this week for my family to help nourish the spleen system. Check back for a new chocolate chip recipe I’ve been playing with later this week too.

coconutsoup

Coconut Lime Butternut Squash Soup

Yellow Curry Chicken and Vegetables (basically crock pot chicken in trader joe’s curry with broccoli and peas over rice) 🙂

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

Corned beef and cabbage

homemade pizza

 

What are you cooking up this week?

 

What’s For Dinner?

Arg! Does panic arise for anyone else when you hear these words uttered? I know I do.

A few years ago we started making a weekly menu and only shopping for what we needed instead of buying odds and ends and making multiple trips to the store and always feeling like we didn’t have what we wanted/needed. It helped me become a pretty good cook, freed up some time and saved us some $$ and reduced some food wasting.

Because what we eat changes each season I thought it would be fun to share our weekly menus. I’m sure not everyone will like every recipe but most of them are kid and budget friendly and are geared towards supporting health in the season we are in. So if you’ve attended a winter yogapuncture class or are curious about how to be more in harmony with the season here is what is cooking in my kitchen.

I’ll share pictures on facebook and Instagram if you’d like to follow and post the recipes that aren’t already floating around on the blog.

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I had the rare opportunity to get to the grocery store on a Sunday instead of during the week and all by myself. What a treat! It felt so good to fill my cart with lots of nourishing food. Whole food makes me feel better even before I eat it. I grabbed a frozen orange chicken for dinner tonight and cooked up some quinoa in beef broth with sautéed broccoli and bok choy with some sliced avocado on top. Quick easy and a balance between naughty and nice.

Here it is, the weekly menu (in no particular order):

lentilbowl

Green Lentil Nourish Bowl

stew

Lentil Stew (Add a 1/2 cup of orzo to the soup to make it a hearty meal)

Rainbow Meatloaf

Marinated, roasted chicken with Brussel sprouts and rice (first try)

Spaghetti squash with meatballs in a cream sauce (first try)

So, I have to ask, what did you have for dinner? 😉

Minestrone Soup Recipe

I had lots of garden goodness to process so I made a big batch of soup. Its the perfect day for soup today isn’t it? Do you make your own broth? Its super easy to do. I was scared of it until I started reading all the benefits of “bone soup”. Last year we joined our first CSA for meat and eggs and it really opened my eyes on how we eat. Before then we almost never had any bones in our meat. I learned how super simple it is to get several meals out of one piece of meat when you use everything. (as a side note we all lost some weight and feel better 🙂

For this recipe I had recently cooked a whole chicken in the crock pot (I used the chicken for a coconut stir fry with lots of veggies and enchiladas verdes with homemade tomatillo sauce straight from the garden). I took the bones and the juices and kept them in the crock pot and added whatever I had on hand: garlic, celery, carrots, scraps of veggies etc and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (that helps extract the marrow out of the bones into the soup where all the good stuff is) and let it slow cook for 12 hours or so then strained everything out.

All veggies for this soup are a mix of my garden and the store. We started with leeks, garlic, eggplant, carrots, celery, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, brocoli, and mushrooms.

leeks, garlic, mushrooms, white beans (lung/large intestine)

carrots, yellow and orange peppers, yellow tomatoes (spleen/stomach)

zucchini, celery, and brocoli (liver/gall bladder)

home-made broth (kidney/urinary bladder)

 

Start with a few pieces of nitrate free bacon. We got ours from farmer Nick. Cook that up with some leeks and garlic until brown then add the rest of your veggies. We like a hardy soup so I usually fill up 2 or 3 cereal bowls of cut veggies. Cook the veggies for a few minutes then add some tomato paste or homemade canned/stewed tomatoes and 6 cups or so of chicken broth. Add whatever seasoning you like or have on hand; I used thyme, oregano, parsley and some garlic salt. We also added in a cup of white kidney beans and a cup of dry brown rice pasta to make it a meal. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes.  Enjoy!