Tabbouleh

Yummy! My sister Wendy gave me this recipe and it is from one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. It is a little different, but we absolutely loved it! It is so colorful, healthy and full of delicious fresh ingredients. I looked up Tabbouleh on Wikipedia and discovered that it is one of the most popular Middle Eastern salads. It is made with bulgur wheat, tons of parsley, mint, scallions, lemon juice, olive oil, etc. You can serve it as a salad, a side, or a main dish. We ate it as a main dish and served it in warm pitas and crumbled some feta cheese on top. So good! I highly recommend eating it that way. It was super filling too (because of the bulgur wheat, which I also read about here. It's more nutritious than white rice and couscous and is high in fiber, vitamins and minerals).

Oatmeal Muffins

I love these muffins! We love oats in our family and these are a great way to eat them. Every time I make these Jeremy just mmms and aahs and devours them. I try to find excuses to make them as often as I can. :) Tonight I paired them with this white chili and it was a great combination! They call for white flour but if you want to make them a little healthier you can use whole wheat, (although I prefer the flavor with white). These are super easy too, which is always a plus. Give them a try!

Leftover Roast - Beef Tacos

Growing up, we always had a roast every Sunday along with mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots & peas, salad, etc. Now that I'm grown up (somewhat) it's still one of my favorite meals, although I don't make it every Sunday. When I do make it, like I did on Mother's Day, I always have a lot of leftover roast, and this is one of my favorite ways to use it up. It is so super easy and if you need a quick meal some night and you have some leftover pot roast, give this a try! It is juicy and flavorful and delicious. You can use it for burritos, tacos, or whatever you like. It would probably work great with a pork roast too (as long as it's tender enough to get all shredded), but I've just always used beef.

Penne "alla Betsy"

(Pardon the bad picture. We were too busy devouring to bother taking a picture until we were loading it in tupperware for leftovers. Oops).

I don't know anyone named Betsy, but this recipe comes from the Pioneer Woman (whose sister's name is Betsy). We tried this a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it! I bought some frozen shrimp on a whim and was looking for recipes with shrimp and this won! Jeremy loved this and was very glad we had lots of leftovers. It's really easy to make and very delicious - shrimp and penne pasta in a tomato cream sauce with fresh basil and parsley. Mmm. (By the way, if you are like me and sadly live nowhere near an ocean, I recommend buying shrimp frozen because it's more fresh than the "fresh" shrimp, which is actually shrimp that was frozen and then thawed. Just a tip). Enjoy!

Granola

I'm finally back from my no-good-excuse hiatus and I'm ready to get bloggin' again! I have been cooking, I just haven't been documenting it, so here we go!