Weekly Menu

Monday:
Beef Tacos with Homemade Taco Shells
Hominy
Refried Beans

Beef Tacos:
Saute onions (1 small) for several minutes until soft. Add spices- cumin, chili powder, and pinch cayenne pepper. Stir together and add ground beef to pan. Cook until no longer pink, and drain if needed. At this point I added a can of chili. I do this to make the meat thicker and hold together better, instead of dry, crumbly ground beef. I read in a cookbook that you can add tomato sauce and chicken broth and let that thicken it up. I will try that next time, but I already had the chili.
Homemade Taco Shells
I used flour tortillas, because I had more of them than corn (and I wanted to see how it would work with flour). Heat vegetable oil in skillet. Hold one side of tortilla in the oil, and hold up the other side, out of the oil.Flip tortilla and brown other side of tortilla.Stand upside down to dry and cool.

Tuesday:
Mini chicken pot pies
fried squash
The pot pies were not great, I need to tweak the recipe I used. The fried squash was good, though. I dredged it in milk (seasoned with salt and pepper) and then flour, also seasoned with salt and pepper. Fried in vegetable oil- Yum!
Wednesday:
Spaghetti with Simple Tomato Sauce

Thursday:
Orange Chicken
Rice

Orange Chicken
Full Bellies, Happy Kids

3 lbs. Chicken, cut into bite size pieces
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 cup of cornstarch
4 beaten eggs with a little milk
oil

Sauce:
1 1/4 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of ketchup
1/2 cup of water
2 tablespoons of soy sauce

Beat 4 eggs together and add a little milk. Mix cornstarch, flour and garlic powder together. Dip chicken pieces in the flour then egg. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Place chicken in casserole dish.

Sauce:
Combine all ingredients and bring to a boil over medium-low heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved and ingredients are blended.

Pour sauce over chicken

Bake for 45 minutes or until chicken is cooked thoroughly.


*Ok, this was GOOD. I love Asian food, but we don't have it all that often, so I love when I find a good recipe I can make at home. This is sweet, but tasty. Maybe more soy sauce next time, and less sugar or ketchup. But, I really liked it and will be making this again.

Friday:
Pan seared steaks with worchestershire-butter pan sauce
Three Cheese Pasta Bake
(Sorry, no pictures. Didn't have my camera last night)

Three Cheese Pasta Bake
*from Southern Living
1 8-oz. penne pasta (I used 12 oz. accidentally, it was fine)
2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
1 1/2 c milk
1/2 c half and half
4 oz. shredded white cheddar
1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese
8 oz. shredded gruyere cheese
1 tsp. salt (needs more)
1/4 tsp. pepper
pinch of nutmeg

Cook pasta according to directions. Lightly grease 11x7 baking dish.
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour; cook, whisking constantly, 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk and half and half (do this slowly or sauce will not thicken at ALL), 3-5 minutes. Stir in cheeses, saving 1/2 Gruyere, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Stir together pasta and sauce and pour into lightly greased 11x7 dish. Top with remaining Gruyere.
Bake for 15 minutes until golden and bubbly (mine needed 20).
*This was really good. I knew my hubby would love it and he did. It went well with the steaks.