I like to watch “What’s For Dinner?” videos on YouTube. You know, the ones where they show what they ate over the past week? I’m not ready to start a YouTube channel just yet (or maybe ever!) but I thought I could share photos of some of our meals here on the blog.
For this first “What’s For Dinner” post I’m going to share 8 meals we’ve had recently. They were not all just this past week, though. In the future I’ll do a single week but these just happen to be meals I have pictures of. If I have a recipe for something I’ll link to it. Otherwise I’ll just sort of describe what the meals consist of and a brief explanation of how I made the main dish. If there’s something you would like to know more about or want me to share as a recipe with actual measurements and detailed instructions, just let me know and I’ll try to do so soon.
So, here goes:
This first one was actually a few weeks ago but it was so yummy I decided to go ahead and share. I’m a huge fan of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner and once is never enough for me. This was a quick and easy version.
I cooked a turkey tenderloin in the oven, made homemade mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and Stove Top stuffing. I was going to make my usual homemade cranberry sauce, and even have a couple of bags of cranberries stashed away in the freezer. But it was one of those days when time was at a premium. I happened to have a can of cranberry sauce in the pantry so I used that instead. Even with a few short cuts it was a delicious meal.
I wish I could tell you how I made this casserole. It was the day after the turkey dinner and I used the leftovers to make a casserole. It looks like I made a white sauce, added chunks of leftover turkey tenderloin and a handful of frozen peas then topped it with leftover stuffing and french fried onions. Maybe some grated cheese, too? I served it with salad, leftover cranberry sauce and fresh orange slices.
This next one is a recipe I do plan to share soon so I won’t go into details here. Basically it’s toasted veggie sandwich topped with cheese. I served it with homemade potato wedges and a fresh fruit salad of pineapple, bananas and blueberries.
This one will look familiar. It’s the Easy Tortilla Casserole I shared recently. I served it with a salad, multigrain tortilla chips and salsa. I buy these tortilla chips at Aldi and we love them!
Here is another one I’ll be sharing the recipe for soon. It’s a batter-dipped chicken breast with a honey mustard dipping sauce. It was SO good! As you can see, I served it with fresh green beans and a baked potato.
I’m a big believer in having a repertoire of quick and easy meals for those nights when time is short or you just don’t feel like making a big production out of dinner.
This is my favorite go-to for an easy meal – Homemade Tomato Soup and a quesadilla. Of course, you can just microwave a quesadilla but heating it in a little butter in a skillet makes it nice and crispy, turning a super easy meal into a real treat. I served it with fresh spinach with balsamic vinaigrette. And no, my tomato soup isn’t actually that color. I am just a poor photographer.
Here is another that will look familiar – Cheesy Cauliflower Broccoli Bake. I served it with roasted asparagus and candied baby carrots.
And for our final meal in this series, here is what we had last night. I pan fried fresh salmon in a little olive oil, seasoned with garlic salt, lemon pepper and a little dill. I served it with homemade mashed potatoes, Caesar salad (one of those bagged salad kits from Aldi) and asparagus with yellow bell pepper which I sautéd until crisp tender in a little olive oil and seasoned with garlic salt, lemon pepper and Creole seasoning.
*In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that David doesn’t like salmon. Chris and I had the salmon but David had a chicken breast with homemade sweet and sour sauce left over from the previous night. I had planned this and cooked an extra one. I didn’t remember to take a picture of that meal but it was super simple. I just mixed up a quick sweet and sour sauce with pineapple juice, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, ginger and corn starch which I poured over the baked chicken breasts during the last 10 minutes of cooking. I served them with steamed brown rice and frozen stir fry veggies which I cooked in the microwave. We had been out of town until late afternoon so I had planned an easy dinner.
I hope you found this interesting. Let me know if you’d like to see more of this type of post. And if you have any questions about anything in these meals just let me know in the comments. As I mentioned, I’ll be doing recipe posts for the batter-dipped chicken and the veggie sandwich pretty soon.
Now, tell me what YOU have been eating for dinner!
A few “What’s For Dinner” YouTube channels I watch:
Mandy in the Making – Her husband does a taste test and review of everything she makes and it’s pretty cute. She also does one recipe a week from one of her subscribers. I’m thinking that might be fun. If you’d like to share a recipe for me to make and review, let me know in the comments.
What’s For Tea? – This one is fun because it’s a Scottish woman sharing their weekly dinners, which they refer to as “tea”.
Love, Missy – Missy is a single, working mom who cooks very simple meals and isn’t overly concerned about cooking from scratch. Her cooking style is different from mine but if you’re a busy woman looking for easy ways to get food on the table, she does have some good recipes.
Kristin Stepp – Kristin’s recipes usually look pretty tasty. Her meals tend to lean more toward comfort foods than healthy eating.
If you have any favorite “What’s for Dinner?” YouTube channels I’d love to hear about them.
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This was a fun post! Oh, and I look forward to hearing more about that veggie sandwich.
How do you make the candied carrots?
Don’t know if this would appeal to you, but there’s a channel I follow on YouTube called “Cheap Lazy Vegan” and she often does videos for what she ate in a day. She sticks to simple vegan meals, most of what she eats is heavily inspired by her Korean family, and there’s not a huge variation in it a lot of the time. But it’s still interesting in my opinion, so I thought I’d mention it. Besides, as her name suggests, she likes to make quick and easy meals (but makes at least most things completely from scratch) so that aspect of her channel might appeal to you too, especially with you wanting to eat more meat-free meals.
Thanks for the suggestion. I just searched for her and will check her out.
As for the candied carrots, I’ve meant to do those as a recipe. I’ll add it to my list. The short instructions are to lightly brown the carrots (baby carrots or sliced whole carrots) in a bit of butter or oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add brown sugar, stir to coat and then cover with water. Cook until tender, allowing water to evaporate. The better version is to add whiskey or bourbon before the water and cook that down a bit first.
Oh, and as for what’s for dinner at my place…
I don’t have pictures, but I made a soup involving cabbage, carrot, potato, onion, fresh thyme, and a creamy sauce using oat milk, nutritional yeast, and a pinch of salt. Then served it with a fresh bread my bakery does that has seeds in it.
I also made garlic mashed potatoes (home made mashed potatoes cooked with garlic) served with herby cabbage (it was fresh thyme and salt I used to make the cabbage “herby” – again, they were cooked with it).
I was going to have spinach and kale salad with baked potato earlier in the week, but then remembered the spinach was frozen. So I cooked the spinach and kale in some salt water for a few minutes (until the spinach was fully defrosted, which essentially resulted in it becoming mush) and served it as a sort of spinach and kale puree over a jacket potato instead. Yes, I knew I’d be doing that when I decided to boil it. It might not have been the original plan, but it was really nice.
Sounds really delicious. My cabbage soup was originally going to have carrots, too, but when I went to get some from the fridge I discovered I was out. I hadn’t thought of adding nutritional yeast. I bought some recently but haven’t done anything with it yet. Good idea.
Thanks about the carrots… Going to have to try that.
The nutritional yeast is good for adding a bit of “cheese” flavour without actually using cheese. I got the idea from some people on one of the vegan groups I’m on over on Facebook.