Minestrone soup (crockpot recipe)

This has become one of my favorite recipes over the past month. I've already made it 3 times! It's yummy, full of vegetables, and everyone seems to like it.

Minestrone Soup (adapted from Taste of Home)

2 cans (14 1/2 oz each) low sodium chicken broth

1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes

2 cans (15 oz each) kidney beans, drained

1 can (15 oz) garbanzo beans, drained

8 oz water

2 or 3 small Italian squash or zucchini, sliced into 1/2 inch rounds

1 or 2 celery stalks, roughly chopped

2 tbsp dried minced chives

2 tbsp dried parsley flakes

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp coarse ground pepper

2 tsp dried oregano

1 1/2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp dried basil

2-3 cups cooked whole wheat pasta

1 package (16 oz) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

2 cups frozen peas, thawed

In a slow cooker, combine the first 14 ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. 

About 30 minutes before serving, stir in the pasta, thawed spinach and peas. Enjoy!

Bonus pictures of the cute baby boy (who's not quite a baby anymore, but will always be the baby).

Meatless Monday: Black Bean Burger FAIL

So tonight I decided to try to make my own tex mex black bean burgers for dinner instead of using frozen. I was going to wing it, then I thought that I should probably try to find a real recipe just to make sure they were edible. Since it was the first time and all. I found a recipe that looked promising (and on the Meatless Monday website, no less!), and since we had all of the ingredients and we have a family of big eaters, I made a double batch.

Well, one of the steps involves a food processor. I don't have a food processor, so I used the blender to grind up my onion and bell pepper. It -- of course -- turned into orange mush, so I strained some of the (nutrient-rich!) liquid off and mixed the rest of the pulpy orange mess in with the beans and seasonings.

To wrap the rest of this up, the burgers baked for almost 20 minutes (it was supposed to be 10) and still were not firm or actually, any different in texture than they were before I put them in the oven.

Plus, they looked like a patty version of a dirty diaper. Tonight was one of those very, very few nights when I told the kids, "You can eat this, or you can have a sandwich instead." :-)



Despite the appearance and texture, the "burgers" tasted great, so Hubby and I wrapped them in tortillas with a little bit of cheese. Yum. Good thing they're tasty, because we have lots of leftovers.

Meatless Monday: vegetarian chili with rice and broccoli

Today I was wishfully thinking of cold weather again, and prepared vegetarian chili for dinner. I even used dried beans (instead of canned) and simmered them on low for a couple of hours so the house would smell like fall . . . but alas, it was 80 degrees again today. Still better than 100+ though!

Hopefully we'll have some long-lasting fall weather soon.

Meatless Monday: minestrone soup and salad

Tonight for dinner we had minestrone soup made in the crockpot. It's SO good, and perfect for fall . . . the only problem is that we don't exactly have fall weather where we live. Today's high was close to 90 degrees! Yuck. But, although I would prefer to eat it on a chilly day, the soup is tasty nonetheless. :-)

Minestrone soup
(adapted from Taste of Home Slow Cooker Classics)

2 cans of low sodium chicken broth
1 28 oz can of petite diced tomatoes
1 can of kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can of garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp + 1 tsp Wildtree hearty spaghetti herb mix (or you could use a mix of Italian seasonings)
1 tsp salt
1 lb frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1 lb frozen peas and carrots, thawed (I used a mix of peas, carrots, corn, green beans, and lima beans because that's what I had on hand)
about 3 cups of cooked pasta

In a slow cooker, combine all ingredients except frozen vegetables and pasta. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Stir in thawed veggies and pasta; heat through.

Meatless Monday: veggie burgers and sweet potato fries

Today was a fun, if crazy (but then, aren't all days crazy?) day. I had plans of trying a new lentil soup recipe for dinner, but by the time we got home from a much-needed grocery shopping trip, I could tell that it just wasn't going to work out. So tonight we had Morningstar veggie "burgers", Alexis spicy sweet potato fries, and fresh tomatoes. Yay for convenience foods! :-)

Meatless Monday: Breakfast for Dinner (sort of)

It's just me and the kids at home this week (Hubby is at a nerd computer conference in California), so tonight's Meatless Monday meal was kind of random and thrown together.

I needed to cook some baby red potatoes, so I sliced those up earlier in the day when I had time, and tossed them in the oven with some broccoli, olive oil, and s&p after the kids and I got home from swimming.

Yum!


Then I had to figure out what else we were going to eat, and quickly. Scrambled eggs and toast to the rescue!

Here's Oliver's plate. My mom came over to help with bedtime, and when she saw his toast, she said, "Oh, toast pizza!" But actually, it's toast with butter, strawberry jam, and shredded asiago cheese. An . . . interesting combination. :-)


If you look closely, you can see that asiago cheese is sprinkled on everything on his plate. :-)


He pretty much liked his dinner -- with some mild complaining about the "hard" broccoli -- and ate almost all of it.


Buttercup only ate about half of her dinner, which was actually very strange for our usually voracious little girl!

Hopefully I'll remember ahead of time to plan a better meal for next week!

Meatless Monday: White Bean Pasta Salad

It's Meatless Monday again! Tonight's meal was a very simple pasta salad with rotini, baby broccoli, cauliflower florets, cannellini beans, and seasonings. I meant to include julienned baby carrots and grape tomatoes, but I ran out of time (carrots) and didn't make it to the grocery store (tomatoes), so we had a pretty monochromatic meal! The kids didn't mind though, and ate it up. Oliver had seconds (of the pasta only, though), and Buttercup had thirds of everything. :-)



What did your family have for Meatless Monday?

Meatless Monday: Peas and rice with spinach

In an attempt to keep our family a little bit healthier, we're going to try going meat-free on Mondays (check out http://www.meatlessmonday.com/). Not only will our arteries thank us, but so will our wallet! Plus, there's the added bonus of Meatless Mondays forcing me to start weekly meal planning again. :-)

I forgot about staying meat-free at lunchtime, and the kids each had a slice of turkey baloney with their lunch of pasta, yogurt, veggies, and fruit. Oops. But I remembered for dinnertime! We had zipper cream peas, white rice (I know, I know, but I hate brown rice!), and spinach sauteed with garlic and mushrooms. YUM.


Doesn't this look delicious? Oliver doesn't like cooked spinach, so he ate a handful of raw leaves instead. :-)


The kids cleaned their plates, with the exception of a few grains of rice. :-)


Are you planning on going meat-free on Mondays?