Days, 1,2 and 3 at the Park Household

Glad to hear that everyone is so excited about the Eat at Home Challenge.  I see we didn't do it in 2012 so I'm glad it's back for 2013.  One person who was not excited was Nathan.  When I told him we couldn't go to Tim Hortons he started to cry big alligator tears.  "I love Tim Horton's" he said through his tears.  Which honestly made me laugh even harder.  I admit it I'm not a very good mom.  But sometimes it's so hard not to laugh.

Anyway onto what we ate this week so far!

Jan 1 was peanut butter chicken.  I know been there done that.  But on a side note the Fetzer wine we had with it was really good.  Sweet and then dinner was sweet, worked well.

 Jan 2 was a recipe I had pinned.  But honestly it wasn't that great.  It was good, but one of my criteria for dinner is the amount of mess it makes and this one made 4 pans dirty.  Too many in my dislike of doing the dishes opinion.  



Jan 3 we ate one of my favorite easy, delicious, albeit expensive meals at 15$  Not quite as much as going out and it does usually give us a lunch after too, but now it just sounds like I'm validating my reasons for spending more then 8 dollars on a dinner, which I would say is about average.  Okay now that I've built it up... it's Vodka Scallop Pasta.   So the scallops, 7$ a bag and then the sauce is the PC black menus sauce 6$ (which is a lot for a can of sauce).  I usually add some mushrooms and parm cheese on top.  So a more expensive meal, but it's a crowd pleaser.  And both kids like scallop, which we also refer as marshmallows of the sea, which may be another reason we like them... =) 

 

 Jan 4: Tonight is pizza.  I'm hoping to do homemade, but it might be from a box.  If we make our own I'll add a picture. 

Jenn

Monthly Round Up

Feb 23rd: Fish and Chips. I LOVE superstore. They have great products and we eat a lot of them. We really enjoyed the Haddock and Hops they have there for our fish and chips. But as luck would have it when I wanted to buy it they didn't have any. But what they did have was the blue menu fish/haddock. So I thought I'd give it a try as I usually like the blue menu stuff. In fact if you open our freezer there is a lot of blue in it, blue meatballs, frozen dinners and chicken fingers. These fish fillets will now be added to the list. They were very tasty and as the blue menu implies, they were also healthier for us then the Haddock and Hops.


Feb 24: Oma's Birthday, so we had our favorite Oma dinner, Stomput Spinazzi. A classic meal.

Feb 25: I worked, so the boys had a Sobey's chicken and I had leftover peanut butter chicken
Feb 26:

Feb 27: Appetizer Smorsgasbord. A friend of mine mentioned they did this the other day and I thought it was a great idea. So we had nachos and vegetable spring rolls. The kids thought it was great to have a meal where no utensils were required.

Feb 28: Roast Beef Dinner. This is the meal we have had the most this month. It must be winter. I love how colorful this meal is. And I love pickled beets which is my favorite thing to have with roast beef.

So the eat at home challenge is done - thank goodness. I don't think I realized anything any different then our other eat at home challenges, but it was a good way to get me back on track with taking lunches. Not eating out for a whole month is a challenge. I failed the challenge back in the middle of the month on a Saturday when I went out to lunch with my best friend from highschool and then had a girls night out and drank and ate. Other then that one day though I was good.

Did anyone meet the challenge and not eat out for a whole month?

Jenn

Day One: The Parks

Tonight we had one of my favorite dinners, Scallop Casserole. My mom use to make it and it has been a favorite of mine forever and luckily the kids really like it too. Here's the recipie:

A bag of scallops
1 can of mushroom soup
1/2 c of milk
Pepper and Curry (add as much flavour as you like)
1 c. of cheddar cheese
1 can of french green beans
1 c. of soft bread crumbs

Cook the scallops (add to boiling water for 3 minutes). Drain the scallops. Cook the mushroom soup, milk, pepper, curry and 1/2 c. of cheddar cheese. Just heat enough to melt the cheese. In a casserole dish: put the scallops at the bottom, green beans on top of that, and soup mixture on top of that. Mix the bread crumbs and the rest of the cheese and add that to the top. Cook in an oven at 425 for 15 minutes and serve over egg noodles.

Day one for the eat at home challenge is going well for me. I bought a lot of groceries today. I also bought some Tim Hortons green tea to drink at home, although it's not quite the same with out a toasted coconut donut. Next I'll have to learn to make those. =)

Jenn

Weekend at the Parks

Hi Everyone,

Well I had a day last week where I ate out. Everything was paid for me, so I saved money that way, but I still failed on this month's challenge. ALthough I'm glad I haven't gone to McDonalds or Wendy's. On a good note I have a couple of pictures and cool ideas.


Tonight for dinner we had Spanish Rice, which I know is also a Campbell favorite. It's Spanish rice a roni and you add ground beef to it. Put a little cheese on top and eat it with nacho chips. It's fast and good. The hardest part is finding the spanish rice a roni.

Last night it was nice enough to barbeque

So we had hamburgers with my favorite flat buns from superstore. (and they are whole wheat). We also had some beets with it, homemade from the garden last summer and some cauliflower. The cool park about the cauliflower is that I had some pesto in the fridge from a meal a week ago and put a dollop of that on. It was delicious.

We also had fish and chips last week.

They are also an easy favorite and the kids eat them and it's a good way to get fish in the diet (even if it is batter coated) My favorite fish brand is haddock and hops from superstore.

How is everyone else doing?

Jenn

Day 10 at the Parks: Seafood Pasta

One of the way I often come up with new things to eat, is by making a meal that I have enjoyed at a restaurant. This one comes from Earls.

Seafood Pasta

Cook rotini/penne or some sort of pasta that has a lot of surface area
Heat shrimp (we use the precooked 3$ shrimp ring kind) and salmon in another pan


Add rose sauce. My favorite is from Superstore. It's delicious. Usally found with the bottles of spagetti sauce.
Eat.



We also eat a fair amount of pasta so I like to splurge on real paremsan. I can't eat the stuff from the plastic jar anymore.

Jenn

Day 6 at the Parks: Shrimp Alfredo

Tonight we had our friends over for dinner, so we were trying to find a mix of gourmet and still please the kids.

Shrimp Alfredo

1 tablespoon of oil in the pan
4 cloves of garlic (1/person)
One bag on shrimp
1 jar of alfredo sauce


Cook the pasta according to directions. I usually leave it on the al dente side, becuase we add it to the other pan and it will cook a bit longer there. Heat the oil in the pan, add garlic. Saute the shrimp till they are light pink. (This time it only took one mintue because the shrimp were the precooked kind, but if they are not cooked it can take longer). Add sauce and heat. Add pasta. One othe tip is when you are adding the pasta, don't throw the whole thing of pasta in, incase you don't have enough sauce. I add it in "clumps".


We also had dessert. It was very very very rich chocolate torte cake. Just what I love. We added strawberries and whip cream to try and cut the chocolatness, for the people who don't like chocolate.

Jenn

Salmon

Our favorite way to do Salmon is on the BBQ. Darryl adds a sprinkle of dill, rosemary and lemon juice. He BBQ's it for about 5 mintues on each side, but it depends on the thickness.



We usually eat cheese and broccoli rice with it and some sort of vegetable.

Till Tomorrow..... Jenn