Menu Monday

Best-Ever Black Bean Soup with Cilantro-Lime Rice (Iowa Girl Eats) 

I'm recycling this photo from my original blog post on this soup. We're still loving this one. Healthy, quick, cheap.

 

Wild Rice Burgers (The Kitchn)

 We love these burger so much. Served with a side of sweet potato fries, they are the perfect Meatless Monday meal.

 Burrito Bowls (own recipe)

I'm not sure this really counts as a recipe. I topped the leftover black bean soup + cilantro-lime rice from Sunday with homemade pico de gallo (chopped grape tomatoes, diced red onion, chopped cilantro, minced garlic, salt & pepper, miced cilantro, and 1/2 lime) and grilled flank steak, which I marinated for about an hour in a combo of the remainders of two containers of chipotle in adobo from the freezer, two cloves of garlic, a squeeze of lime juice, salt, pepper, and some olive oil all blitzed in the food processor. I added some diced avocado and what was left in the fridge of Trader Joe's corn and chile salsa and a big dollop of sour cream. Burrito bowls are one of my favorite clean out the fridge/freezer/pantry meals and it's rare that I make it the same way twice. This was a particularly good meal because a lot of the stuff we had that needed to be used up lent itself well to burritos :)

 

 Moroccan Fish with Mango Couscous (100 Days of Real Food)

This is a fabulous weeknight meal. It came together SO quickly and was so light and healthy and flavorful. My mom gave me a jar of ras el hanout last year and I'm always looking for recipes where I can use it. Since it's a Moroccan spice blend, I just used 2 teaspoons of it here in place of the spice combo called for in the recipe. So yummy. I also detest pearl couscous (the texture is too slimy for me), so I used regular whole-wheat couscous instead.

 

Farfalle with Chicken, Porcini Mushroom, and Swiss Chard (Giada de Laurentiis)

 Holy crap, this was delicious. The mushrooms gave it a smoky flavor so that it almost tasted like there was bacon hiding in there somewhere. We fought over the leftovers, which is always the sign of a winner in our house.

 Dal Nirvana with Homemade Naan (both recipes from Budget Bytes)

I will never get tired of this meal. We are seriously lacking in the Indian food options up here, so I make it pretty regularly (with the trade-off that our house smells like curry for days after). This is probably my favorite of my handful of Indian go-tos. I normally just buy Trader Joe's frozen garlic naan, but we had this on Saturday so I made homemade. I promise you it's really quite simple; it just requires a bit of hands-on time. I think it's worth it though. The homemade is so much better...it tastes like naan you'd get at an actual restaurant.