Easy Meal Planning Calendar

How is your weekly meal planning going? At this time of year we tend to feel overwhelmed with all the holidays coming up trying to plan out all of our meals and thinking about all we have to do. I have a system to share with you that I've been using for over a year now and can highly recommend for it's easiness and flexibility.

Quinoa Salad Recipe

At Costco they sell a delicious Quinoa Salad for around $8; I decided to try my hand at making it myself and it couldn't be easier and cheaper too!

Fruit and Pudding Parfait Recipe

I knew going into the baby shower that not everyone would want to eat a cupcake, so I wanted to have a healthy dessert option for those who were thus inclined.  Enter my version of a fruit parfait!

4th of July Rice Treats

This is my Pinterest success from the 4th of July!

Fondue

As a special treat for our last night hosting yarn night with the girls at our rental home the girls brought the makings for FONDUE!

Crunchy Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad

Tonight's dinner was, you guessed it, Crunchy Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad!  This is a favorite of Ben's, courtesy of his good friends: Team Cunningham.  They've served it to him several times, and I finally got to try it too.  It is great to eat cold on these Hot Hot Days.  Now here's the catch about our dear friends, they have some awesome family recipes that they love to prepare and serve to friends, but they're just that FAMILY recipes (friends are not allowed to know the secrets)!  Therefore I went to work to recreate it all on my own, ok I wasn't alone I had my friend the WWW.  I used this recipe to guide me, but did some tweaking.  Here is what I came up with, I hope you enjoy!

18th Century Potato Balls

For the potluck this year I prepared Potato Balls.  I found the recipe here: Colonial Williamsburg Website.  There is even a fun video to show you how to make them!  Crazy me, decided to multiply the recipe times 5, so I bought a 10 lb bag of potatoes, Ben thought I was crazy!  And at 1am in the morning, I too decided that I was crazy, but we pushed ahead and made all of them!

Earlier in the day I had boiled all the potatoes and then peeled them.
That meant they were ready for mashing.  It is convenient to have a strong man around for this.  To make it easier we mashed them three at a time in a smaller bowl and then added them to the big pot.