Cooking with Pinterest

I'm happy to admit to being a Pinterest addict, but one of the things I find it truly useful for is recipes. I meal plan, sort of, and I'm always looking for something new, quick and easy to try out. When I find it I pin it, and sometimes I just search Pinterest itself.

This week I picked two new recipes from Pinterest, Brown Rice Greek Salad and Cauliflower Macaroni and Cheese.

The Brown Rice Greek Salad is originally from The Lemon Bowl. I left out the corn, and I'd do that next time too. This one is a definite keeper though. Delicious. And will suffice as a vegetarian meal on a hot day! When it's hot I only want to eat salads, but it's a matter of keeping the whole crew happy too. Which is where the next dish comes in. Pasta.

The Cauliflower Macaroni and Cheese is from Not Quite Nigella. I added a grated carrot and zucchini, to up the veg factor as I couldn't be bothered with a separate salad. Looked fantastic and went down really well with the boys.

 It got a little rich for me towards the end, but it was a warm night, not the best for a hot creamy pasta dish. Probably a crisp green side salad would have stopped that! Silly me. The funny thing was Jamie Oliver was on the television that night cooking the same dish! I'm going to compare versions. I can't help myself, do you do that too?

Enjoy!

Just remember - no corn in the salad, and don't forget the bacon in the mac and cheese!

A week of food

One of the delicious new bakery treats I made this week!

I use a menu planner to keep the week from becoming just too absolutely hectic, and I'm sure many of you do too! However I do just throw the menu out at the end of each week, which is a shame really. It'd be useful to know which weeks worked well, which new recipes were a hit or a miss, and old menus could be useful when I'm having a total mental blank when faced with a new menu plan to fill in!

So here is this weeks plan. I only plan dinners, with the occasional new weekend breakfast or bit of baking thrown in.

Dinners

Monday: Meatballs and pasta
Monday nights I'm exhausted, so this will be an easy dinner, with pre-made meatballs. I'll probably use a pre-made pasta sauce or tinned tomatoes and add some finely diced or grated vegetables to it.

Tuesday: Risotto or barley with chicken, red capsicum, onion and peas
This meal was planned to use up some bits and bobs left over from the week before! Tuesday is our shopping day.

Wednesday: Kedgeree
Cooked by the Mr, recipe from 'Slow Cookers' by Jane Price

Thursday: Pizza, homemade dough
Cooked by the Mr (I know, I'm a lucky girl!), he used our new pizza stone for the first time, I highly recommend getting one! He used the pizza dough recipe that came with the stone. Was fab.

Friday: Baked tuna casserole
I found the recipe here, pinned it here. See I do use the recipes I pin in Pinterest!

Saturday: Black bean tacos

Sunday: Chilli con carne sweet potato cottage pie
This is an adaptation of this recipe. I'm just turning it into a pie by adding sweet potato mash on top.

Other stuff

Bacon and fresh herb muffins, from 'Baking Day' by the Woman's Weekly, see photo above!

For breakfast this week I'm going to try this porridge recipe on the Healthy Chef website. No oats! Not that I have anything against oats, I love them, but looked interesting.

I'm also hoping to make another Pear cake, to refine my recipe, and I'm working on an adaptation of a muesli bar style slice that I hope to share soon.


So that's my week in food! Do you do a weekly menu plan? If you've blogged it please share!