Menu Week 97

Monday - lemon fusilli with baby spinach (instead of arugula)
Tuesday - apple mustard pork skewers & dried currant cous-cous
Wednesday - bacon wrapped hamburgers & tin foil veggie packets
Thursday - Grilled chicken & southwest cracked wheat salad
Friday - eat out
Saturday - sloppy joe sliders (because things taste better when they're small!)
Sunday - I have no idea. Really.

Oatmeal Cookie Peach Cobbler

Peaches are divine when simply prepared: nice big chunks in a bowl with a sprinkle of sugar and a couple of tablespoons of cream. There's nothing like it. Second best is this dessert: Oatmeal Cookie Peach Cobbler. I found it in my Cooking Light magazine a couple of months ago, but I'm not sure what about this is "light." It certainly doesn't taste "light" and the big scoop of vanilla ice cream I add doesn't help either.




I've made it several times, but never using the exact recipe from the magazine. I cut it down and make just 3 or 4 ramekins of cobbler, adding a bit of cinnamon to both the cookie dough and the peaches.




If you would like the full recipe, here's the link. Otherwise, here is what I did:
















Oatmeal Cookie Peach Cobbler
(makes 4 servings in individual ramekins)

TOPPING

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup softened butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 beaten egg (beat one whole egg in a small bowl, but only pour half of the egg into the batter)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon


FILLING

3-4 large peaches (or 4-5 small to regular-sized peaches)
3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons lemon juice
pinch of cinnamon

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare topping (cream butter, sugars, vanilla & egg then add dry ingredients). Do not over mix. Cover and chill for 30 minutes.

Peel peaches, then slice. Place in a bowl. Add the remainder of the filling ingredients (sugar, flour, lemon juice & cinnamon) and gently toss to coat peaches.

Spray 4 ramekins with cooking spray and divide peaches evenly between them. Top with cookie dough. I use my fingers to spread dough evenly over peaches so it seals them completely in. I also make sure my cookie dough does not go above the rim - but it does go right up to the rim. Place on a baking sheet (sometimes the peaches bubble over) and bake for about 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees. (Cookie topping should be light brown.) Serve warm from the oven!

Menu Week 96

First the important stuff...

Monday - grilled chicken, lemon fusilli & some crusty bread
Tuesday - grilled meatball kabobs, corn on the cob & potato wedges
Wednesday - cobb salads
Thursday - hawaiian beef terriyaki skewers, grilled pineapple
Friday - eat out
Saturday - mushroom & ricotta raviolis w/ pesto sauce
Sunday - french toast, buttermilk syrup



You may have noticed that I haven't been very faithful about posting menus EVERY week. I do always make a menu, but on busy weeks my menu looks like this:



This is last week's hand-scribbled list of meal ideas. I shop for this list and then each night, depending on what else we have going on, I whip up one of the listed meals. Super busy nights call for either a yo-yo dinner, or a quick trip to some fast-food place. At the end of the week any meals that weren't made get carried over to next week (like last week's Lemon Fusilli and Cobb Salads.)

Hopefully once school starts our schedule will ease up and I'll have enough time to menu plan AND cook well!

An Easy Dinner on a Summer Evening

We're starting to get some tomatoes ready to eat from our garden, and of course we have plenty of basil. I had all of these great things in my fridge, leftover from other meals (well, except the pasta). So I tossed them together for an easy summer meal. We ate it warm that night, but I thought it was also delicious as a cold salad the next day at lunch.




It's not really a recipe, but here's what I did -

1 batch of basil pesto (link here)
1 bag whole wheat rotini pasta (spiral shaped pasta)
1 batch oven dried tomatoes (link here)
2 grilled chicken breasts
parmesan cheese for topping

Toss together and serve!

Menu Week 95

Monday - Cedar Plank Salmon and Roasted Corn Relish
Tuesday - BBQ Chicken Sandwiches & corn on the cob
Wednesday - Fresh Pasta Primavera
Thursday - Grilled Chicken & Chickpea Salad
Friday - eat out
Saturday - Tostadas
Sunday - French Toast w/ Buttermilk Syrup


This week's treat: Oatmeal Cookie-Peach Cobbler (We had it last week and it was so good we'll be having it again this week!)