Dinner This Week

These were some of my favorite meals this week.

I love pesto! You can make it yourself but a quick helpful hint, buy it in a jar pre-made and you can use it to spice up sandwiches like we did here or toss it with pasta! YUM!

Who doesn't love lasagna? We had spaghetti earlier in the week and I used the leftover sauce to make this lasagna. Have to love the multi-cooking. As for the French green beans...well I never used to be a fan but they are perfect for little tiny hands to shove in little baby mouthes and they taste the same so why not?

Jason is such a beaner! He loves black beans. I used to buy them in the can but they are so much cheaper in the bag, so these ones I cooked myself. I did a quick soak with some water, the rinsed off beans, so baking soda, and salt. I brought the beans to a boil and then put the lid on the pan and let them sit for an hour. Then I dumped the water, added new water, prejared garlic (it saves me having to cut it up and it just sits in the fridge until I need it), sliced onions, and lots, and lots of salt. I let them boil on the stove for an hour and presto Jason is happy. For fun I threw some leftover Spanish rice on top. I also made some corn quesadilla with the Fresco cheese. Fresco cheese is salty and crumbly sort of like the cheese we used to get in Jordan. Corn tortillas are fun to use every once in awhile. They give the dinner a rougher more authentic feel.

Finally last night we had beef stew and French bread. There have been three babies born in our ward this week and since I'm on baby dinner duty I felt like stew was the way to go. Easy to cook a ton of it in a short amount of time so I can feed my family along with everyone else. As for the bread I can and have made my own French bread but to save my sanity this stuff is store bought. It was definitely a dollar well spent :) What I want to know is why doesn't my bread ever turn out as soft and squishy as the stuff you buy in the store?