Monday Meal Planning

Cooking Light Edition

Every weekend (well, okay, almost every weekend) I sit down and plan meals for the upcoming week using the sales ad from our grocery store, the latest collection of recipes with which I'm infatuated, and a healthy dose of input from my husband. This week we decided to eat really, incredibly healthily, since over this weekend we ate about a week's worth of calories and cholesterol. Damn that delicious, fattening, free food made by a good friend.

Also, just as a note, we don't usually have leftovers for dinner, because we eat them for lunches. But! If you don't do leftovers for lunch, you could probably cut out a few dinners from this list because there will be plenty of leftovers if you're cooking for two like I do.

Anyway, last night I sat down with all the recipes I tore out of Cooking Light for the year 2006, and started flipping through trying to find yummy, healthy recipes for this week, and I think I've done just that. Let me know if any of the links don't work and I'll send you the recipe instead.

Here goes:

Monday: The Big Salad (can you tell we're Seinfeld fans?) and Rolls
Basically, just throw whatever vegetables you have along with some sort of meat (usually 1/4 thick slice of deli turkey, diced), maybe some cheese (usually feta or queso fresco, Americanized version, which basically means pasteurized). We also really like the Pilsbury frozen dinner rolls. They're flaky and crusty on the outside, which makes them absolutely heavenly.

I also usually whip up a dressing for the salad, so here's my dijon vinaigrette recipe: whisk together 2 parts olive oil, 2 parts red wine or rice wine vinegar, 1/2 part dijon or spicy brown mustard, 1 clove minced garlic, and salt and pepper to taste.

Tuesday: Cajun Quiche in a Rice Crust, with a Bibb-Strawberry Salad

The salad is basically 1 head of bibb lettuce, some strawberries, hulled and quartered, sweet onion, and bottled poppy seed dressing.

Wednesday: Sesame Noodles w/Chicken and leftover Big Salad (minus meat and cheese)

Thursday: Pasta Fagioli Soup, whole wheat english muffins w/garlic butter, and leftover Big Salad (minus meat and cheese)

Friday: Open Faced Falafel Burgers and cucumber salad (recipe found in this post)

Be sure and read the reviews for helpful hints for the falafel burgers recipe; it sounds like the recipe is good but may need a few tweaks to be great.

Saturday: Dinner out. Even I'm not Super-Wife, I can't cook seven days a week.

Sunday: Greek Pasta with Tomatoes and White Beans, leftover cucumber salad, and rolls.

Try this recipe with whole wheat pasta, like Barilla Plus.

Bake: Mudslide Cookies

I try and bake something every week. This is mainly for two reasons. First, I call my husband the Candy Monster, and not without reason. He loves his sweets. Secondly, I love to bake and find it incredibly relaxing, so this is my zen. And these cookies are AWESOME. Sprinkle the finished product with a little powdered sugar to dress them up.

So there you go. Let me know if there are any questions. I'm looking forward to sharing this with you all every week, and better yet, it's a way for me to look back and see what I've cooked for when I'm out of ideas for what to cook.

Enjoy, and happy eating!