Menu Plan Monday - May 22, 2017

Our normal schedule is going to be a little thrown off because my pregnant sister-in-law is visiting from Texas and wants all the foods LOL. So we're going to have soup on Friday night instead of Wednesday and I am honestly not sure what we'll have Thursday and Saturday. We are having a repeat on Sunday of a recipe we had in the end of April because we loved it that much.

Monday - Cream Cheese Chocolate Peanut Butter Muffins // Pesto Quinoa Zucchini Boats
Tuesday - So Bad, So Good Tacos
Wednesday - Schnitzel and Kamikaze Fries
Thursday - FAMILY IN TOWN
Friday - FAMILY IN TOWN
Saturday - FAMILY IN TOWN
Sunday - One Pan Crispy Garlic Parmesan Chicken with Veggies

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Slow Cooker Cashew Chicken

This delish Chinese-American recipe is slow cooked in a garlic sauce and crunchy cashews!

This cashew chicken is very easy to make and is a wonderful Chinese-American dish. I chose to add my cashews at serving, so they maintained their crunch. You can throw them into the slow cooker at any point during cooking though. It's totally up to you. I have tried a few cashew chicken recipes and this is definitely my favorite. If I could change one thing, it would be to top it with fresh green onions for serving. The other recipes I've tried had onions and I think that is the only thing missing.

Throwback Thursday #35

Can y'all believe it's already past the midway mark in May?! It's almost time for summer break for my kids and I'm pretty excited for that. :)

First from the archives is this BEST EVER PEANUT BUTTER FUDGE recipe that really is the best pb fudge ever. The use of crunchy peanut butter makes me so happy.

And when I'm not sure what to make for Taco Tuesday, I turn to this 16-MINUTE BEEF AND BURRITOS recipe and the toppings are customizable to each person.

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Cherry Cobbler Bars #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

Welcome back to another round of Fantastical Food Fight. Today's theme is CHERRY COBBLER because today is National Cherry Cobbler Day! Unlike last month where the BLT had to be a sandwich, today's recipes don't have to be a traditional cobbler. In fact, the Food Fighters could do muffins, oatmeal, pizza, etc.; it just had to be reminiscent of cherry cobbler. I chose to make Cherry Cobbler Bars and it was actually our dessert for Mother's Day that also fell on my husband's birthday.

On Sunday, I was kind of running around my kitchen like a chicken with its head cut off. I made maple bars for Nick's birthday breakfast because I've been promising them for forever and kept not making them. Then I got dinner into the crockpot. Then I started on this dessert. In the midst of it all, I forgot that I had purchased cherry pie filling instead of making my own like the original recipe called for. So I started making the pie filling! LOL. I got down to the last part of it: add 2 cups pitted sour cherries. Whoops. I purposefully didn't make it because I really didn't want to bother with cherries. Can you buy them pre-pitted? Is that a thing? I'm not sure, but I will say that it was super easy to make the filling up until I got to the part where I didn't have cherries to put into it. I'm definitely going to have to use it to make different fruit fillings!

These bars were very easy to make (even with my filling mishap) and they were wonderful. The dough part is more biscuity than I expected, but not a dry, hard biscuit. I made my glaze with almond extract because I wanted it to stay white and my vanilla extract is brown. I personally think the almond glaze worked really well with the cherries and cobbler portions of the bars. Overall, this was the perfect sweet but not too sweet dessert for our Mother's Day meal!

Sizzling Steak Burrito Bowl

Will your burrito bowl be loaded with the works or plain Jane? You decide!

I can't believe I am posting this steak burrito bowl recipe so late in the day. We've had some lovely issues with our internet and I guess I didn't realize how long our signal has been so poor because my computer is connected straight up to the modem, but the tech was able to fix it in 15 minutes and we are good to go now! Hopefully, there will be no more random outages for an hour at a time. Spotty internet stinks!

So back to these burrito bowls...what is awesome about these bowls (and those like it) is that they are customizable. Not everyone in my family will eat the same things. I like pretty much everything whereas Nick will not eat guacamole, sour cream, dressings, etc. So I can make mine loaded with everything and he can make his without -- and everyone is happy. This particular recipe has carne asada seasoned beef, pinto beans instead of black beans, and Spanish rice. Plus a chipotle ranch dressing. So so so good!