Weeknight Delight

I know I'm not the only one who wishes they could add about four hours every day. I swear someone is robbing my day, and I think her name is Facebook. I've been super busy and haven't got around to the batch cooking I should have (or the blogging I should have). The good news is that this has forced me to come up with some super easy weeknight recipes. Necessity is the mother of invention, yes? What are your weeknight favorites? Here's a few quick meals I threw together last week.

Sausage with Cabbage and Apples

This is so simple I can't even call it a recipe....I just browned up a tube of gluten free Italian chicken sausage, threw in half a head of sliced cabbage, and one small sliced apple, and seasoned with garlic salt and pepper. Nom. We had it with some sweet potato coins deep dried in coconut oil. (update: I've made this since with kale and breakfast links and it was just as good!)






Pomegranate Chicken Salad

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts diced
1 c pomegranate seeds
1 small apple diced
1 small white onion diced
3 stalks celery diced small
Garlic salt
1/4 c Mayonnaise (or make it from scratch if you want to be a show off- it's pretty easy)

Toss ingredients together. Refrigerate. Serve in cabbage wraps or over a bed of greens.





Grain Free Banana Zucchini Bread 
sorry...we ate this before we remembered to snap a pic. It was moist and delicious  the best I've made so far.

Ingredients
2 cups of blanched almond flour
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoons of dried ground ginger
1/4 cup coconut oil (melted)
1/4 cup of honey
2 large eggs
1 cup grated zucchini (with green peel; not packed; if wet, dry off with a paper or cloth towel)
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup raisins
(Optional add cocoa powder, walnuts, chocolate chips)

Preheat your oven to 350°F/190°C.
Grease your baking pan (I like the flavor of coconut oil but you could use butter or olive oil)
Combine the dry ingredients and mix well.
Add the remaining ingredients and blend.

Pour the batter into your baking pan, and bake for about 60 minutes (or 50 minutes at a convection setting), or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean.
Cool and slice. Man cub loved this in his lunch, we goggled it all up in two days, but it also can be frozen if you're up for some batch cooking.

Italian Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms
Shout out to Ms. Paleo for the inspiration for this meal. I googled a bunch of recipes and hers looked the best, but I didn't have all the ingredients so, I just threw this version together... both are simple enough for a weeknight, or make some combination using what you've got.


2 cups organic Spaghetti Sauce (I used Trader Joes, again you can get fancy and make your own pretty quickly, here's a recipe I like)
1 pound grass fed beef
2 tbs coconut oil
1 cup olives, chopped
5 large portabella mushroom caps
1 cup onion finely chopped
2 tsp basil
1 tsp oregano
1 cove garlic, minced
1/4 or so of olive oil

In a skillet, brown beef in olive oil. Add onion and saute until translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer on low for about 15 minutes.

Wash mushroom caps and cut off stems. Using a spoon, rub off/scoop out the feathery darker brown part for a clean cap. Coat with olive oil and place cap down in a baking dish. Fill each mushroom with the meat sauce.

Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes or until mushrooms are tender. If you tolerate dairy, you might want to add a bit of mozzarella or parmesan as a topping. You can see we enjoyed this with some fruit and coleslaw..but I haven't quite perfected that recipe enough to post.


Soup and Salad with Garlic Rosemary Crackers

I used this recipe as crackers and they are amazing. We don't eat dairy but I made this as pizza crust for a guest a while back, and that was pretty spectacular too, so use your imagination.

*The soup recipe was not really worth posting, it was some leftover broth with a bunch of almost expired veggies thrown in with some garlic, oregano, salt and pepper, but it worked.




Breakfast For Dinner! Zucchini Fritters with Veggie Scramble

Zucchini fritters:
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup shredded carrots 
1/4 cup coconut flour
Add garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a little cayenne to make them savory.

*In the past, I've used cinnamon and nutmeg with a little honey or stevia for a more traditional "pancake" topped with strawberries and coconut whip cream. I haven't tried banana yet but I will soon. 

I made a basic veggie scramble with this using about 5 eggs, half a small onion, and a bunch of collard greens from my garden and basic sat and pepper. We top everything with hot sauce around here, but that's optional. If you do dairy, I'm sure cheese would be a great addition! 


Enjoy!!! Monday is coming. 
Kellie