Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Chicken Pesto Quinoa

Chicken Pesto Quinoa | Seasoned chicken, veggies, and quinoa get mixed in with some tasty pesto for this amazing recipe! #pesto #quinoa #maindish #chicken

Quinoa is everything. It is one of my go-to favorite foods now. We had it for dinner tonight (in a recipe I'm very excited to share), in fact. This recipe utilizes one of my other favorite foods, too: pesto! I doubled the pesto from the original recipe and took out the sundried tomatoes. I'm not the biggest fan of them. In addition to quinoa and pesto, this recipe also has zucchini...which I could eat all day long! So basically this recipe was a win all around for me, even though it may not look that impressive :)

Chicken Pesto Quinoa | Seasoned chicken, veggies, and quinoa get mixed in with some tasty pesto for this amazing recipe! #pesto #quinoa #maindish #chicken



Monday, March 30, 2015

Menu Plan Monday

Menu Plan Monday | My week of meals, grocery list, and how much I'm spending on these delicious treats! #menuplan #groceries

I've run to the grocery store twice today and I haven't finished putting up the groceries yet, so I'll have to get the receipt later. But here is this week's menu! Very excited about many of these recipes and I know Nick is gonna die when he sees what we are FINALLY making on Friday :) It will be posted eventually - not sure when though.

{Monday}
Asian Chicken Wraps
Chicken breasts, General Tso's sauce, teriyaki sauce, tortillas, carrots, chow mein noodles

{Tuesday}
Slow Cooker Cheesy Enchilada Quinoa
Ground turkey, quinoa, black beans, corn, Rotel, salsa, onion, sweet bell peppers, enchilada sauce*, cheddar cheese*, cilantro, lime, green onion, jalapeno

{Wednesday}
Jalapeno Popper Soup
red bell pepper, green bell pepper, onion, jalapeno (4), corn, cauliflower, cream cheese*, bacon, cheddar cheese*

{Thursday}
Hawaiian Pulled Pork, potatoes [side], and green beans [side]
3 lb. pork shoulder, liquid smoke*, 8 oz. crushed pineapple, buns, bbq sauce, pineapple rings, potatoes, green beans


{Friday}
Original recipe - to come!
Chicken breasts (thin), 2 lb ground beef, sliced sharp cheddar cheese, onion, green bell pepper, bacon, banana peppers

{Weekend}
Best Ever Carrot Cake
applesauce, 3 cups grated carrots, pecans, cream cheese*


Total Spent: TBA

------------------------------


don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Fantastical Friday: My Favorite Food Finds of the Week

Coming to you...late. Late again. Here are some favorite food finds that I have found...I picked another 10 to share and there will be more to come in the next few weeks. I have had so many recipes saved from my time in the hospital after having Mason and I will continue to share them until I catch up. I've actually found quite a few new food blogs to follow too, so there's lots of love to go around! :)

Fantastical Favorite Food Finds of the Week | Check out my top ten favorite recipes from my favorite food blogs! #favorite #collection #collage #recipe #topten

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt {No Machine Required}

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt (No Machine Required) | Safe-to-eat cookie dough mixed with vanilla yogurt to make this very yummy frozen treat! #froyo #cookiedough #recipe

During the summer of 2014 [prior to my birthday gift of an ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid], I started making frozen treat recipes. This is easily my favorite and even after getting my ice cream maker attachment and making a few recipes with it, this froyo remains my favorite.

You make the cookie dough - great start, right?! Can't go wrong with cookie dough! It is eggless, so it's totally safe to eat "raw". Then you mix it with the yogurt and freeze. It's incredible. I really want to try other froyo recipes too, so if any of you readers have a favorite, please send me a link!!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt (No Machine Required) | Safe-to-eat cookie dough mixed with vanilla yogurt to make this very yummy frozen treat! #froyo #cookiedough #recipe


Monday, March 23, 2015

Menu Plan Monday - March 23, 2015

Menu Plan Monday | My week of meals, grocery list, and how much I'm spending on these delicious treats! #menuplan #groceries

So I will have to dig out my receipt tomorrow to share how much I spent on today's groceries. This weekend I was trying to figure out how I'd juggled all three kids at the store again and realized I really oughta go back to shopping on Mondays. Mason woke up at 5am and didn't go back to sleep, so I stayed up with him until Matt & Cami woke up at 6:45am. So needless to say, we came home after dropping them off, I pumped, fed Mason a bottle, changed him, and we slept from like 9 to 11:30. We ate lunch and headed out to the store. This also meant that I didn't schedule MPM like I wanted to. Whoopsies. So here is MPM - we ended up doing our "Taco Tuesday" tonight instead of tomorrow.

{Monday}
Grilled Basil Garlic Chicken Breasts
Chicken breasts, basil, green beans [side]

Cranberry Coffeecake #SecretRecipeClub

http://secret-recipe-club.blogspot.com

It's time again for Secret Recipe Club reveal day for my group, Group D! What is Secret Recipe Club? It's a bunch of food bloggers separated into four groups that post once a month on a designated Monday. Each month, we are paired with another foodie from our group secretly (hence the name). We then pick a recipe (or two or more) from that blog and make it. On our reveal day, we reveal whose blog we had and what recipe(s) we chose all at the same time. It's like a Secret Santa every month, but with food and blogs! It's a great deal of fun :)

My assignment this month is Lauren from Sew You Think You Can Cook. Lauren is an air force wife, mom, and aerospace engineer. Quite impressive, right?! She does aspire to be a caterer - since she loves to cook. Lauren has a ton of great recipes on her blog (plus she also shares some of her other hobbies, like quilting and holiday decorating/hosting), so I took to searching immediately!

I found some very tasty looking treats, like Pineapple Macadamia Nut Bundt Cake, Strawberry Pomegranate Smoothie, Chile con Queso, Caprese Steak, and Spinach Salad with Spicy Pineapple Dressing. The last few weeks of my pregnancy gave way to an insatiable fruit craving. It's all I wanted. And it's sort of lasted past giving birth. I'm also craving the crap out of some steak. So my finds were fruit heavy and then there's the steak recipe :) I ended up going back and forth between two breakfast recipes featuring cranberries because I have been obsessed with them since Thanksgiving timeframe. So I was down to Cranberry Cinnamon Rolls and Cranberry Coffeecake.

Cranberry Coffeecake | A moist decadent coffeecake with a tart cranberry filling and sweet crumb topping #SecretRecipeClub #recipe #breakfast #cake

As you could tell by my blog post title - I went the coffeecake route! I wasn't sure I could find fresh cranberries for the cinnamon rolls - I hadn't seen any in my local Kroger in a while. The coffeecake used canned cranberries (the whole cranberry sauce kind, not the awful jellied kind) and that's much easier to find. I only changed out one ingredient - the orange for a lemon - because I didn't know if Matthew would eat it or not and he's allergic to oranges. I loved this coffeecake. It was perfect. I rarely get recipes to look close to the original recipe, but my cake looked exactly like Lauren's picture. I made this as a surprise for Sunday dinner at my in law's - Nick had already taken Matt & Cami over, so I was trying to manage holding Mason and making this coffeecake, so I used my phone camera instead of my Canon. Pictures aren't the best, but the coffeecake IS the best!!


Friday, March 20, 2015

Fantastical Friday: My Favorite Food Finds of the Week


I'm kind of going easy here on my Fantastical Friday posts lately - so I'm sharing my top ten favorite food finds of the week once again. I'm finally caught up on my blog reader feed from when I was in the hospital having Mason. I actually found a good variety of recipes this week, so that's awesome! Typically, I go for sweets and that's why I have a bajillion dessert recipes to make and I'm repeating main dishes :)

Fantastical's Favorite Food Finds of the Week | Ten of my favorite food finds from my favorite food bloggers #collection #roundup #collage #recipe

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Triple Chocolate Banana Bread

Triple Chocolate Banana Bread | It's not your typical banana bread! This one packs a triple chocolate threat #recipe #chocolate #banana #bread

I'm still working my way through my Fort Drum food pictures. There is just something with New York that I had the worst time with pictures and a lot of these were in the summer! My Tennessee pictures are loads better - lots of natural light. So unfortunately these pictures of this banana bread are just weird. The color is really off. I will get around to retaking them eventually.

Triple Chocolate Banana Bread | It's not your typical banana bread! This one packs a triple chocolate threat #recipe #chocolate #banana #bread

Funny enough, I made two different recipes of banana bread last Monday. I rarely buy bananas because myself and Matthew don't eat plain bananas and Nick and Cami never finish off a bunch and I end up having to make banana bread for all of us to eat. Cami picked out some bananas when we went grocery shopping and she got this huge bunch of bananas, like 8 total. And Nick/Cami ate one of them before they got to banana bread stage. I should have remade this recipe, but then again, the two recipes I tried are amazing! Can't wait to share them too :)

This banana bread was my first "extreme" banana bread - I am calling it extreme because when I was little...a different banana bread, meant one with walnuts in it. Nothing crazy. So for this bread to be chocolate...WOAH! Totally insane! Like most banana bread recipes - it's mighty delicious!

Triple Chocolate Banana Bread | It's not your typical banana bread! This one packs a triple chocolate threat #recipe #chocolate #banana #bread


Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Homemade Garlic Herb Chicken con Broccoli

This Olive Garden copycat is light and perfect for a busy weeknight!
Homemade Garlic Herb Chicken con Broccoli | A fabulous Olive Garden copycat with seasoned grilled chicken on top of pasta and broccoli in a creamy Alfredo-like sauce #copycat #pasta #olivegarden #recipe

This is an Olive Garden copycat - although I have never had the real thing, it was a great recipe. The seasonings are simple but quite delicious. I adore pasta and love even more to have broccoli (or any veggie really) with it. Although it uses heavy cream, it is not a heavy-sitting dish. So if you are looking for a great fast meal - this one is it! Honestly, now that I'm not pregnant anymore, I need to add this to the weekly menu asap. Chicken was inedible for me during pregnancy and thankfully, that aversion went away postpartum!

Homemade Garlic Herb Chicken con Broccoli | A fabulous Olive Garden copycat with seasoned grilled chicken on top of pasta and broccoli in a creamy Alfredo-like sauce

Monday, March 16, 2015

Menu Plan Monday - March 16, 2015

Menu Plan Monday | My week of meals, grocery list, and how much I'm spending on these delicious treats! #menuplan #groceries

I have been really bad for not checking my pantry and fridge for items I have on hand lately, so yesterday I made sure to go through my list first. Anything with an asterisk is something I already had on hand and didn't purchase - as you'll notice, it's quite a bit of stuff that I had on hand already!

{Monday}
Quinoa Chicken Parmesan
quinoa*, chicken breasts, shredded mozzarella, shredded parmesan*, marinara*, fresh basil, spaghetti ("side")*, broccoli (side)*

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Fantastical Friday: My Favorite Food Finds of the Week

I totally had this almost ready to go yesterday - all the links and everything, just hadn't made the collage quite yet. Then I got busy and ended up forgetting about it. We celebrated Matthew's birthday today, so I just now was able to sit down and make the collage :) These are some of my favorite finds from the last week - I've been trying to catch up from when I was in the hospital with Mason!

Fantastical Friday | My Favorite Food Finds of the Week #collection #roundup #collage #food #recipes

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Loaded Chicken Italian Subs

Loaded Chicken Italian Subs | Subs featuring pepperoni, bacon, chicken, Provolone, and banana peppers #recipe #sandwich

I absolutely love subs - and these have not only chicken, but bacon and pepperoni too. Plus the chicken is basted with Caesar salad dressing, which is one of my faves. The original recipe made two and there were some extra steps in there. I made these one night when we had friends over, so the recipe is open-ended. Get how many ingredients you need to feed how many people you have over :)

Loaded Chicken Italian Subs | Subs featuring pepperoni, bacon, chicken, Provolone, and banana peppers #recipe #sandwich


Monday, March 09, 2015

Menu Plan Monday


Yesterday, I managed to grocery shop with all three kids in tote - and I came out in one piece! And I didn't forget anything :) Wednesday is my eldest's birthday - he turns 8 and he chose dinner - no link for that burger yet. But coincidentally the post goes live that day for that recipe. This weekend, we're having allllllll the family over and doing pizza for lunch, Skyline for dinner, and birthday boy picked Boston Cream Pie Cake - which I am coming up with on my own because I couldn't find a non-ganache topped recipe.

{Monday}
Vegetable & Quinoa Stuffed Zucchini
red bell pepper, roma tomato (2), zucchini (4), Italian sausage, spinach, quinoa, basil

{Tuesday}
Jalapeno Popper Chicken Enchiladas
chicken breasts, jalapeno, salsa verde, tortillas

{Wednesday}
EZ Donuts // Kids' Menu Burgers
sugar* // ground beef (2), curly fries, hamburger buns*, lettuce, roma tomato, ketchup, mayonnaise

{Thursday}
Quick Pork & Veggie Fried Rice
bacon, red onion, sweet bell peppers, snap peas, brussel sprouts, carrots, pork chops, cardamom, cilantro


{Friday}
Kinda Like Chick-fil-A Sandwiches
chicken breasts, pickles, waffle fries

{Weekend}
Best Buttermilk Pancakes // Skyline Chili // Boston Cream Pie Cake
buttermilk, sour cream // *splitting the grocery list with family here* // eggs, chocolate frosting

Total Spent: $94.41

------------------------------


don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram

Saturday, March 07, 2015

Fantastical Friday: Quick Weeknight Meals {Ready in under 30 minutes!}

So Fantastical Friday is a day late...again. It's about to become Fantastical Saturday...although I did start compiling this round up when I had planned to, so I guess it's the thought that counts :)

With a new baby, I'm definitely all about quick meals. I would love to do some very amazing, intricate meals, but it's much better to get in the kitchen, get dinner done, and eat! So whether you're a busy parent or an overworked single, these recipes are sure to be new fast favorites.

Over 120 Quick Weeknight Meals {Ready in under 30 minutes!} | Busy nights don't have to mean takeout anymore! Check out these recipes for meals that can be on your table lickity split! #recipes

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Lemon-Herb Chicken

Lemon-Herb Chicken | Flavorful marinated chicken that can be cooked whatever way you want #recipe #chicken

I love simple recipes that pack loads of flavor and this is one of those recipes. The chicken is marinated for an hour up to overnight and you can cook it as you wish. This night in particular, I baked my chicken. It was very moist and juicy! I would love to grill it at some point - there's something about a good grilled chicken breast that can't be beat.

Lemon-Herb Chicken | Flavorful marinated chicken that can be cooked whatever way you want #recipe #chicken



Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Mini S'mores Cookies

Mini S'mores Cookies | Not only are they super cute, they are also super delicious! Have one or five, I won't judge you! #cookies #smores #recipe

I have made a couple different kinds of s'mores cookies, but these ones are my favorite. 1) I'm convinced mini anything tastes better than its larger size: Oreos, Chips Ahoy cookies, Teddy Grahams...you name it, it's better when it's mini! 2) Mallow bits are my jam and these cookies use them.

I love that you add additional chocolate, graham crackers, and marshmallows on top (although I was lazy and didn't do the graham crackers and marshmallows), so you just amp up the s'moresness. I also just had to show off my cute little Oxo spatula. I believe I won this in the 2013 Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap grand prize that I received from Oxo. It's just so cute and I love it. They have a campaign called Cookies for Kid's Cancer that is incredible :) See what it's all about here.

Mini S'mores Cookies | Not only are they super cute, they are also super delicious! Have one or five, I won't judge you! #cookies #smores #recipe



Monday, March 02, 2015

Menu Plan Monday

Menu Plan Monday | My week of meals, grocery list, and how much I'm spending on these delicious treats! #menuplan #groceries

I will have to dig out the receipt for this one, as Nick and Cami went out to the store for me this week as I'm still recovering from having Mason. Apparently, my big 7 year old was a huge help to her daddy and knew where a lot of things were that he didn't.

{Monday}
Creamy Chicken Pasta // Homemade Breadsticks
carrot, celery, shallot, chicken tenderloins (all other ingredients I have on hand)

{Tuesday}
Southwest Pork Tenderloin
pork tenderloin, taco mix, mixed greens (side), cucumber (side), corn (side)

{Wednesday}
Strawberry Coconut Baked Oatmeal // Stir Fry Soup
strawberries, coconut flakes, coconut milk // Italian sausage (2), frozen stir fry veggies, Italian diced tomatoes, great northern beans

{Thursday}
Grilled Chicken with Jalapenos and Onion
chicken breasts, jalapeno (2), fresh parsley, rice (side), broccoli (side)


{Friday}
Pesto Pita Bread Pizzas
flat pita bread, shredded mozzarella cheese, shredded Italian five cheese, baby spinach, Italian sausage (1)

{Weekend}
Ham, Cheese, and Egg Breakfast Sandwiches // Southwest Tuna Salad Sandwiches
bread, deli quality sliced ham, American cheese // lime, tuna (2), green chillies, cilantro, bagels, sliced Colby Jack cheese, chips (side)


Total Spent: TBA

------------------------------


don't miss a thing. follow fantastical on:
facebook | pinterest | bloglovin | instagram