Lettuce wrapped Taco’s

 

Last night’s dinner was another home run!  I thought Ben was going to freak at this low carb change, but he really embraced it….clearly.

 

Seriously, that’s a lot of meat on a piece of lettuce!

All we did was make taco’s with our favorite fixin’s and instead of putting it in a tortilla wrap or hard taco shell we wrapped them up in a piece of boston lettuce.

Lettuce wrapped Taco’s

1lb ground beef

1 package taco seasoning
2 tbsp minced garlic
½ tsp cayenne powder
Boston lettuce

Our favorite toppings

Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream)

Shredded cheese
Onion
Tomato (not very low carb friendly though)

It’s a taco guys, just load it on. Do I really need to tell you how to make this?

I will give you one suggestion and that is to slowly good all the meat, drain the fat, and then add the taco seasonings and water. I use a base seasoning and then add to it!

 

Enjoy! Ben did:)

 

Crockpot Mongolian Beef (updated)

I love this recipe.  I make it frequently because it makes a lot of food and we always have gobs of leftovers, and they’re good leftovers!  Last time I made it and posted about it I forgot to take photos.  This time I remembered, even though this is a hard food to capture without it looking like a blob of food.

I modify the recipe slightly every time I make it because I’m always missing something but the end result is always just as good.  for example the recipe calls for wine, I prefer to drink my wine if I have it so I never include it in the crockpot, but instead substitute water.

Mongolian Beef

Adapted from: A year of Slow Cooking

 -1.5 lbs of steak (or any beef really I used a round last time and it was just as good)

-1/4 cup cornstarch - to dredge meat
-3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 fresh onion, diced very small
-1/2 cup gluten free soy sauce (I used Trader Joes brand)
-1/4 cup white wine (psh! Just double the white wine vinegar or water)
-1/4 cup water
-1/2 T white wine vinegar
-1 t sesame oil
-1 t molasses
-1 t ginger
-1/4 t black pepper
-1 t red chili pepper flakes
-1/2 T almond butter (or regular pb, I think either would taste great)
-3 T brown sugar

 Cut steak/beef into cubes and dredge in cornstarch.  I like to drop all the meat into a ziplock as I’m cutting it up and then I just drop the cornstarch into the bag and shake it all up. Much easier cleanup, and I hate wasting ziplocks but this is one meal that I don’t care at all because I don’t want cornstarch all over my kitchen!

 

In a mixing bowl wisk together all the other ingredients.

Put meat into the crockpot and pour all the other ingredients over the top!  Turn crockpot on and let it cook on low for 6-8 hours.

 

I serve mine over rice and it’s just delish!  Leftovers I sometimes put in a wrap with some rice, lettuce, and sour cream and its fantastic. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it!

My dinner concoction

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever written or typed concoction and I spelled it correctly!

On Monday night I took a beef eye round (I think that’s what it’s called) out of the freezer with the intention of looking something up online for a meal Wednesday.  Well this morning I was running out the door and realized I had forgotten about dinner.  So I threw the beef in the crockpot, smothered it in vegetarian stir fry sauce, 2 cans of ginger ale and set the timer.

We’ll see what it tastes like tonight and if its good I’ll need to come up with a name for it.  I plan on shredding it and if its needs it I’ll add BBQ sauce and Ben can make it into a sandwich.

Nothing like a last minute meal!

Meatballs

I think my husband’s dad fell in love with me the first time I made him meatballs.  I’ll occasionally be at the IL’s house and my father in law will give me a couple pounds of ground beef before I leave to head home, requesting meatballs.

I’ll say this, until I get this taking pictures of my food thing down, my meatloaf/meatball pictures will probably be the worst out of all my photos! Its just so dark and not awesome looking, but I can assure you they are tasty!

Meatballs

1lb of ground beef

¼ cup parmesean cheese

3/4 cup Italian breadcrumbs

1 large egg

2 tbsp of dried basil

2 or 3 tbsp of minced garlic (we like a lot of garlic so I’m always heavy handed on this)

1tsp of pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all items together in a bowl except for the ground beef.  Once all mixed together, add ground beef and work seasonings into your ground beef. I use my hands.  By mixing the seasonings before adding your ground beef ensures that you’re getting all the flavors evenly mixed throughout the beef. depending on how big your egg is or how wet your meat is you may need to add more breadcrumbs, just keep that in mind.

Roll into balls.  Now this step is going to be a bit of personal preference.  I like my meatballs medium sized….you can make yours as small or as large as you’d like.

Spray a baking sheet with Pam/Trader Joe’s spray olive oil and line up meatballs. 

Put into oven and check in about 10 minutes.  At this point you’ll probably need to flip them or at least look at them every 5-7 minutes, they’re small and can easily burn.  I like to flip often to try and get all sides of the meatballs browned so that when you put them into sauce they don’t fall apart.  Your meatballs won’t stay nicely lined up like when you first put them on the baking sheet, by the end of all my flipping they’re all over the pan leaning on edges.  Hey, I like things browned and crispy.

Take meatballs out of oven once they looked cooked.  I would say this process shouldn’t take more than 25-30 minutes.  Again, if you made small meatballs this is probably too much time. You have to be the judge here.

Let cool and try one!

If you’re going to make homemade sauce directly following making meatballs, save the grease, or pour it directly into your sauce pan.  Recipe for homemade Pasta Sauce coming soon!

Looking at that meatball makes my mouth water!

You can also freeze meatballs.  If you’d like to do this just let them cool and then store in a freezer bag, and then put that freezer bag inside another.  Its imperitive that you let the meatballs cool all the way though before storing in the freezer. If you don’t the meatballs will more easily get freezer burned because the moisture in the ball will cause frost to form on the meatballs.

Lasagna Roll Ups



Last week one of the girls on a local blogging board that I frequent mentioned making lasagna roll ups…the ones she made had spinach in them and I was interested to try.  But then I starting thinking about how much I needed to make some homemade pasta sauce and that starts with the grease leftover from making meatballs, and before I knew it I wanted lasagna.  In the roll up form. 

And how do you curb a craving like that besides just  eating it?!

the nice thing about roll ups is that your meal is portion controled for you, I get 1 roll.  If I have a whole pan of lasanga in front of me I want the corner piece, and if i'm going to eat lasagna why not just have a big piece.....see where my problem is.

Lasagna Roll Ups

1 box of lasagna noodles

1 med. size container of Ricotta Cheese

1 large egg

Pasta sauce – I used homemade you can use whatever you have in the house. I suggest having a large jar available

1 bag of shredded mozzarella cheese

Parmasean cheese

Meatballs – chopped into small bits (use my meatloaf recipe to make meatballs, recipe to come soon)

Cook box of lasagna as directed on box.  I prefer to leave it a bit al dente though since I will get cooked in the oven. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix ricotta cheese and 1 large egg together.  At this point while my noodles are cooking I line everything I need to make the roll ups out on the counter.

Once noodles are cooked strain and run under cold water. I pull the noodles apart and hang them over the edge of the colander in order to keep them from sticking together.  Line several noodles up next to each other on a cutting board. This is where you start the layering process.

Take a heaping tablespoon of ricotta cheese mixture and spread it out on each noodle.  Next top with chopped up meatballs.  You can go as heavy or light as you want when layering here.  I love ricotta so I am always a bit heavy handed with it…but it’s up to you, they’re going to be yummy no matter what.    Next top each noodle with the mozzarella and parmesan cheese and a little bit of sauce. Not too much sauce here, you don’t want the noodles drenched in sauce, and in the end we’ll put more sauce on top of them so don’t worry about them getting dry.

In a baking dish (like a 9x11 pyrex) spoon a couple tablespoons of sauce and spread it out making sure to cover the bottom of the entire dish.

Start laying your lasagna rolls into dish.  Keep them tight together if possible in order to ensure they stay nicely rolled up.

Continue process until all noodles are filled, rolled, and placed in baking dish.  Top rolls with sauce, and a little bit of mozzarella and parmesan cheese.   Cook in oven uncovered for 20-30 minutes.  Everything is already cooked so really you’re just waiting for all the sauce/cheese to melt together and for the cheese on the top of the dish to get a little brown

Let cool for about 5 minutes before you serve. And enjoy!

My evening in pictures

Yesterday was a hard day so I decided to take pictures of all the things that made me smile: the dogs they totally ignored me when they came in last night and went to cuddle on the sofa. don't judge we have a cover on our sofa so the dogs don't get it dirty.  my husband putting up fall decorations, the dogs, dinner (meatloaf, roasted sweet potatoes, and salad), and my husband playing with the dogs, and then the boys sleeping:) love.

Weekly Menu

I must get back into planning meals for my family.  I have been beyond terrible lately, and while nobody is eating poorly we’re eating the same food over and over again and then also as leftovers.  So I’m going to make a conscious effort to get a plan in place and keep it. 

At one point I was so good about meal planning that I would spend an entire day making freezer meals and storing them for days when I didn’t feel like actually cooking, or days that I worked or went to the gym late and my husband was at home trying to figure out what we should be eating.  I think since the weather is getting colder and I won’t be outside as much I’ll have more time to make freezer meals.

Hopefully as I get back into this routine I’ll be able to start sharing recipes and pictures with you too!

Sunday – steak, roasted potatoes, asparagus

Monday – semplicita angel hair & artichokes w/a side salad

Tuesday – Dinner at the farm (my IL’s house, family dinner)

Wednesday – pork tenderloin, with either sweet potato mash or sweet potato fries

Thursday – leftovers

Friday – meatloaf, roasted butternut squash, and a side salad

Saturday – not sure yet.

That’s it!  Week one we’re using only food that we have in the house.  I have so much beef we need to eat and why not eat from our supplies.  I am terrible about having a craving for something and buying more food for the house when we already have plenty to eat.  So this week out of all the meals above I had everything in the house except for the asparagus, score!!

Mongolian Beef

Have I mentioned before how much I love the crockpot?  Generally I try to use it during the week, but this past Saturday was kind of a busy day and well I had a hankering for some beef! Ha. OK that’s not entirely true. We were supposed to leave town and stay at a friend’s beach house and I figured I would want to play on Saturday not slave in the kitchen. So I decided  I would bring my crockpot with me to the beach and we could have a nice simple/a bit fancier crockpot dinner waiting for us at the end of the day. But then our plans fell through and I couldn’t get Mongolian beef out of my head!

I had made this once before when we had friends over on a Friday night to celebrate their quickie wedding. I knew I couldn’t be slaving in the kitchen all day and I knew when I got home from work I would have other things to do besides cook a main dish.  And I really didn’t want to do chicken in the crockpot for a wedding celebration.

So I didn’t take any photos, honestly it isn't the prettiest looking dish. Hopefully you make it and can take photos for me! wishful thinking? OK..OK.. I’ll make it again, twist my arm.

Oh and I also want to note that I know this recipe has a lot of ingredients but the only thing I didn’t have in the house was the molasses. Who keeps molasses? Well not me.   I served it over rice with some steamed veggies, but you could certainly eat in a wrap (I totally did this like 3 hours after we had dinner, hey that’s why I work out so much, so I can do just that)

Enjoy! – Mongolian Beef

Mama's Meatloaf

I’ve never understood it when people say they hate meatloaf. I remember the foods of my childhood that I hated like orange roughy with stewed tomatoes on top, but meatloaf was never in that category.

I make meatloaf about once a month…OK well maybe not that much, but on a fairly regular basis.  I was asking my little sister what she wanted to eat this week and she said meatloaf.  She never made it on her own when she lived in North Carolina and my mom doesn’t eat meat anymore so she never made it for her when she would go home for a long weekend. So last night we had meatloaf and roasted potatoes.  Here is a go at me writing my own recipe, or rather trying to explain what I do. Thank goodness meatloaf isn’t difficult.

Mama’s Meatloaf

Serves: great question maybe 3 or 4 people

1lb of ground beef

¼ cup parmesean cheese

3/4 cup Italian breadcrumbs

1 large egg

2 tbsp of dried basil

2 or 3 tbsp of minced garlic (we like a lot of garlic so I’m always heavy handed on this)

1tsp of pepper

Dump all ingredients into a bowl and mix together with your hands.

Depending on how big your egg is or how wet your beef is you may need to adjust the amount of breadcrumbs. start with 3/4 of a cup and add more if necessary

Form into a loaf in a baking dish and surround with chopped up potatoes. I generally toss potatoes in the same flavors i'm using with dinner: basil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Bake at 425 degrees for 45-60 minutes.

 

The end pieces are my favorite because they get super crispy:) dip that in ketchup and its amazing.  My MIL cooks her ketchup with the meatloaf. like she spreads it all over the top of the meatloaf before it goes in the oven. so the ketchup is cold. I just don't get that. don't do that. I mean I guess you can if you want but I can assure you its much better my way.

Ben asked me to take a picture of his plate last night. I don't put ketchup directly on my food but I told him his plate certainly looked good enough to share with everyone.  but i'm a dipper:) 

I also freeze my meatloaf.  It is an easy meal to throw together after you've unloaded your groceries.  Just add all ingredients together for the meatloaf, form loaf in a disposable pan and cover with foil.  Then put in a freezer bag. 

The day you want to have the meatloaf for dinner, take it out of the freezer that morning, I leave my on the kitchen counter while I'm getting ready for work and pop it into the refrigerator as i'm running out the door, and by the time you get home from work it should be dethawed and ready to throw in the oven.  All you'll need to do is make some potatoes and a salad!