Menu Monday! Lots of new recipes

I'm excited to share our Menu Monday today because I cooked Monday-Thursday (Friday is left over day)!

Herb Crusted Chicken

I've made this chicken before but for some reason it was much better this time around. You can find the original recipe here. I had to change a few things because I didn't have the exact bread crumbs and spices it called for. Basically I used regular bread crumbs and instead of the "perfect pinch" seasoning, I used an Italian season. It still was great! J was pretty excited for this dinner and he thought it was delicious! I thought it was great too but kind of heavy for a summer meal (I hate half of the portion of chicken shown above).

Turkey Sausage

Tuesday was supposed to be shredded beef tacos but we didn't find the beef we wanted so we went with plan B. I always have a backup of Eckrich Turkey Sausage in the freezer. Usually when it's on sale, I purchase two. It's an easy backup and always tastes good. You can also do a lot with it. For my turkey sausage, I just cut it up however J likes to be fancy and eat his like a hot dog.

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The mashed potatoes were left over from the day before. Let me tell you, best mashed potatoes hands down! I grew up on boxed mashed potatoes and honestly, it took me a long time to start liking real mashed potatoes. Now there's nothing better than Pioneer Woman's Delicious Creamy Mashed Potatoes.

The recipe makes enough for 10 people. TEN! There are only two of us. So I used three (smaller) potatoes and then cut down the rest of the ingredients.

Pioneer Woman Mashed Potatoes for Two

(this gave us left overs--so really for 4 people)

*3 potatoes (we just used Idaho)

* 3 oz of cream cheese

*4 tablespoons of butter 

*1/8 cup of half and half {this is half of 1/4}

*Lawry's Seasoned Salt (to taste)

*Black pepper (to taste)

You can find the rest of the instructions here. Remember, you can always go back and add more but you can't take away.

Southwestern Chopped Salad

with Cilantro-Lime Dressing

This was basically my lunch all week and it was delicious! The chopped salad can basically be anything you want. I added corn, black beans, red peppers, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes.

The salad dressing is out of this world. It is so easy to make too! The food processor has definitely become my bff lately. Also, I doubled the recipe so I would have dressing for two weeks. Definitely glad I did this!

Ingredients:

*Cilantro (stems removed, chopped)

*1/2 c. plain greek yogurt

*2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (I used the whole lime)

*1-2 cloves of garlic

*1/4 c. olive oil

* 1 1/2 tsp. white vinagar

*salt (to taste)

Put everything in the food processor and go to town! I tasted it after blending it a bit and added a little more salt. Also, you can change the taste up a bit by adding other spices. Check out this website to see what they used.

Turkey Cowboy Burgers

I totally made up the cowboy burger name. I'm sure I saw something similar on pinterest but I thought if they had a fun name J would like them better.

Basically, you make a turkey burger (I use ground turkey, 1 egg white, bread crumbs, onion powder, garlic powder). Then I added bacon and melted cheddar cheese on top. To make it a "cowboy" burger you just add BBQ sauce. I just went with ketchup for mine, which was still delish, but I knew J would appreciate the BBQ. We also had french fries (just frozen ones--I know, slacker), and a small salad with the lime dressing (above). Great summer meal!

Grilled Cheese

Last Sunday, when I sit down to do my meal planning, I asked J want he wanted for dinner on Thursday. He said grilled cheese and tomato soup. 

Okay.

I don't care for tomato soup and to me it's so weird to eat it in the summer! So instead of soup, I had another delicious salad--I'm kind of obsessed. The grilled cheese was great! We used cheddar cheese and an herb bread I bought from Yutzy's Farm Market (if you're in the Columbus area I highly suggest this place). The bread was a little hard to toast but the flavors made the grilled cheese 10x better!

Hope you enjoyed this week's Menu Monday! Don't forget to link up with Rachel!