you just discribed our menu this week! Roast chicken Sunday, thai green curry stir fry with chicken Tuesday with leftovers on Thursday, and carcass into the stock pot on Wednesday for a big vegetable soup (said soup has enough leftovers such that I froze three other meals for next few weeks).

Love it!

at chez Hillary.  This is a nearly weekly affair that is totally meatless.

I sautee up a bag of Morningstar Farms veggie Griller crumbles with some taco seasoning, make fresh guacamole (oh man the avocados were PERFECT tonight), warm up some fat free refried beans, soft  whole wheat tortillas, a little shredded cheese and (if it's not discovered to have molded over as it was tonight) salsa.

In the summertime, I will make my own pico de gallo with fresh tomatoes, and we will sometimes grill some chicken marinated in fajita seasonings of my own devising instead of the veggie crumbles.

The kids love assembling their own thing and Eli basically gets all the vegetables and beans he will eat for the week in this one meal.  The husband usually eats two or three fat tacos and the boys generally eat one or one and a half.

Tonight the boys all had this and I had an omelette with spinach, fat-free cheese and guacamole.

"Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without" by Mollie Katzen.

Mollie has taught me something delightful, which is that nearly any green veggie is delicious if it is blanched and then pan roasted in garlic, olive oil, and salt.

Mmmmm. Brussels sprouts and green beans are my favorite.

This is a simple dish that I've served on many occasions. It's easy and yummy. I don't cook from a recipe, so I'll do my best here:

Ginger Beef with green beans

• beef, cut into small thin bite-sized slices. For 3-4, I'll use one steak (I have grassfed steaks in the freezer).
• 2 tbsp olive oil or canola oil
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 -2 tbsp of candied ginger, chopped finely (you could substitute powdered ginger plus some honey or sugar, or minced real ginger)
• Frozen green beans - maybe 3/4 lb will fit in the pan
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1/2 c water - better to add too little, you can always add more
• 2 tsp cornstarch mixed in a little cold water
• salt
• opt: soy sauce and/or rice wine vinegar, splashed at the end to taste

I use a cast iron skillet, which I think is helping me to get really terrific results.

So, brown the beef in 1 tbsp of the olive oil with the garlic and ginger over medium-high heat; add a little salt if you like. Remove the beef to a plate.

Add the remaining oil
Add the frozen green beans. If all the ginger has left the pan, you might want to add some more. Lightly salt.  Cook over medium high heat until the beans are starting to feel cooked. I like mine a little extra tender/roasty. Toward the end of cooking, add the honey. Check the flavor and consider adding more salt, ginger, or honey.

Add the beef back to the pan and add the water. Add the cornstarch slurry, and cook another minute. Adjust flavors; splash with soy sauce and or seasoned rice wine vinegar to taste.

Serve with rice.

It took me a long time to figure out that the honey was the key to this dish, and then I felt a little bad about adding it. However, I've come to appreciate that it's more important to make sure everyone eats their veggies and enjoys them than it is to avoid fat, salt, and sugar. A pile of meat with no added sugar is not necessarily healthier! :-)

Tonight we're having burritos. Very simple, just brown the meat with some onion, garlic, and spices, add cheese, avocado, corn, and salsa. It's quite easy to do half meat and half beans, or all beans instead.

Marinated slices of extra firm tofu grills up nicely on the barbecue and makes an easy meat substitute with a somewhat meaty character.  Soy Vey Teriaki works well for this.  We're meat eaters, but we like tofu best when it's not trying to be something it isn't.

We're also cutting back on meat. And I'm finding dinners a bit difficult with a two year old and a four year old helping. So here's my favorite "stretch the meat, easy meal" plan.

Take some mince meat (hamburger, chicken, turkey, lamb, whatever...just so long as it's run through the mill to look like hamburger meat). I usually use about 500 grams...I think that's about a pound and a half. Brown some onion and garlic, throw in the meat and cook until nicely browned. Grate some zucchini and carrot and throw that in. Look in the veggie drawer and see what else you can add. Throw that in too (pretty much any veggie will do!). Cook it all up and put it into a few plastic freezer containers (portions dependent on the size of your family, but I usually get three or four). Freeze (keeping one for tonight's dinner).
the menus:
chilli (add beans, tomato and spices and simmer)
spaghetti bolognase (add tomatoes, tomato paste and spices, simmer)-you can use this sauce twice for lasagna, or various baked pasta dishes (add sauce and uncooked pasta to a baking dish, cover with cheese, add a bit of water, bake)
tacos (grab some tortillas, chop up some tomatoes, grate some cheese, dig out some spinach or lettuce, open a jar of salsa)
pies (add some sort of sauce...gravy or cream of something soup is easy...cover with pastry, bake)

And quite a few other recipes as well! Only limited by your imagination...and what you have in the cupboard.

We also do the Sunday roast that lasts a week. One lamb roast can be meat pies, curry, lamb stew, lamb tagine, and a cold salad.

'Tis the season for pasta salad. It's a main dish, it's a side dish, it's as healthy or decadent as you want. You can throw in almost anything and claim it's "inventive" not "weird".

Choose your noodle, maybe some meat, a good variety of complementary vegetables, cheese if you like, sauce, and herbs. Some of the vegetables (like broccoli or carrots), I like to partially cook then chill before adding them in.

You can go Italian with pepperoni and Parmesan cheese, or do a turkey-bacon-ranch salad, or ham and peas in Alfredo sauce as a dressing. The nice thing is you don't have to have a ton of meat to make it flavorful and satisfying.

Another good one that lasts and lasts. I can make these meatloaves and turn them into various dishes later (chili, spaghetti, etc). I think this recipe (actually...I'm sure) is from Expat Chef. So my deep apologies to her for reprinting one of her recipes...but it's the best meatloaf that I've ever had!!

Meatloaf Florentine
3 lbs. Ground LEAN meat (I use one pound each of turkey breast, buffalo, and pork)
(the idea is to use very lean meats and use the olive oil and veggies for the moisture, healthier).
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 large clove garlic, minced
6 oz roasted tomatoes (or sun-dried packed in olive oil) with the olive oil
1.5 cups chopped fresh spinach (or arugula, chard or kale even)
1/2 cup chopped fresh herbs (mostly basil, plus some rosemary, thyme and sage or flat leaf parsley)
2 eggs
1 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated parmesean (not the stuff in the green can, okay?)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
4 tbs. Ketchup
and a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional, but desirable)

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil til soft and light golden. Mix all ingredients together and divide in half. Place in two loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes, make sure a meat thermometer inserted into the center reads 180 degrees.

Makes two loaves.

A regular staple in our house is Sausage pasta. I get a package of chicken sausage in whatever flavor (they have spinach/feta, chicken apple, chicken garlic, mushroom, etc) and slice up the sausage into rounds.

I boil the water for the pasta, and before the pasta goes in, I put in a couple of handfuls of frozen green beans for 2-3 minutes (or this time of year, fresh asparagus). Remove the green beans to a plate, then cook the pasta as normal.

Meanwhile, brown the sausage in a skillet over medium heat. Once browned, remove sausage and add a little olive oil. Cook the green beans and any other veggies you like (I add mushrooms, sometimes some frozen corn) while the pasta finishes.

Toss the pasta, sausage, and veggies together, with a little more olive oil if need be. Sprinkle rice wine vinegar (can you tell I love that stuff?). Top with parmesan cheese.

The veggies are a relatively new addition to this dish, which I made for years without it. It's much better with the veggies, and it adds only a few minutes of extra time.

tempeh is a great, very healthy and very filling grain item that is substantial like meat is. you could easily use it in tacos with seasoning or grill it for sandwiches. i love it.

roasted veg. This is a really good one to do on a weekend and have, like, three or four different ways during the week.

We're big BBQ people (well, we are in Australia...). I love to set the grill up earlier in the morning during the summer, before the heat of the day, and roast up a mess of veg - whatever's in season. Tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini/squash, eggplant, etc. etc. Squash/zucchini should  be sliced lengthwise into strips that are about 1/2 inch thick; eggplant can be up to 1 inch thick.

For peppers, you slice them in quarters lengthwise, remove all the seeds and pith, oil them lightly and cook on the grill until the skin is black and blistered all over. Put all the peppers in a plastic bag and tie it shut. As the peppers cool, they steam slightly and it pops the skin right up. Peel the skins off and you have wonderful roasted peppers. Store them in a container with a little bit (like, one tablespoon) of oil, and if you want, garlic too.

In any event, if you do a couple of each type of veg, you get a fantastic amount of veg. You can toss it quickly into fresh pasta for a pasta salad, make gourmet sandwiches with a little bit of cheese, do a Middle Eastern meze with some hummous, yogurt, taramasalata and pita, or warmed up over rice or couscous, put on top of lettuce for a green salad, etc. etc. For the meaties, you can add some chicken or even some thick, Canadian bacon (not the American strip stuff) It keeps for about a week in the fridge and it's fantastic.