Menu Plan for 9/4 - 9/10

We've certainly had our share of bad weather lately and tonight is no different. We had a down pour just a few minutes ago, paired with the threat of a tornado right in our neighborhood. Thankfully the funnel cloud never touch the ground. The rain is supposed to hang around all week.

Here's our menu for the week - again in no particular order: 

steak salads (using this flank steak recipe) w/garlic bread
chicken parm rolls w/spaghetti
tuna wiggle
pork egg rolls w/ fried rice
johnny marzetti w/ salad
farmer's market chicken fettuccinni

Looking for some lunch box ideas? Here's a few!

hot & crispy chicken legs
pita pizza
lunch box fruit, meat & cheese kabobs
chili cheese dog tortilla sticks

I'm linking up to:

Menu Plan Monday

Rigatoni Florentine

It feels like forever since I've posted anything to my blog. The status at our house is "back-to-normal" crazy with school back in session, soccer games and of course, a bout with the flu for me.

If you've followed my blog during the previous school years, you know that I'm all about quick and easy dinners that gets our family to the dinner table to eat together, no matter what's going on in our schedules. My recipe for Rigatoni Florentine a simple, colorful pasta dish that packs a whollop of flavors.

Rigatoni Florentine
1 lb box of rigatoni, cooked al dente
8 oz fresh button mushrooms, sliced
8 oz frozen spinach, thawed
1 jar of roasted red peppers, drained and sliced into small strips
1 tbsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
1/2 lb hot sausage - I had to use link
hot sausage and remove it from the casings
1 container of Philadelphia Italian Cheese
Herb Cooking Creme
2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350*

Cook rigatoni as directed on the box, drain and set aside.

In a large frying pan, saute button mushrooms in olive oil for 3 minutes. Stir in spinach and roasted red pepper strips. Continue cooking for 5 more minutes. Stir in minced garlic and Italian seasonings. Pour the mixture into a bowl and cover to keep warm.

In the same frying pan, brown hot sausage in more olive oil. Drain off any grease, if necessary. Add the hot sausage back into the pan, along with the spinach mixture. Stir in the Italian Cheese & Herb Cooking Creme. Mix well.

If your frying pan is big enough to hold all of it, mix together the rigatoni and Florentine cheese sauce. If not, use a large bowl to mix all of it.

Layer half of the rigatoni mixture into a 9 x 13 baking dish. Sprinkle with 1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese. Spoon on the remaining rigatoni and top with the remaining cup of cheese.

Cover the dish with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking for 10 minutes.

Serve with garlic cheese bread.

Making Dinner & Dessert with my SwagBucks and How You Can, Too!

Have you joined Swagbucks yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

It's really takes no effort at all to earn "bucks" that you can use to purchase numerous items at the Swag Store, including the crock pot and  ice cream maker, pictured below, that we have been enjoying all summer.

How did I earn the Swagbucks for it? I simply downloaded the Swagbucks tool bar and now every time I need to use a search engine, I use the SwagBucks search engine right there on the bar! The new tool bar not only includes a search engine box but also exclusive messages and swag codes from The Swag Guy, the official swagbucks.com homepage, social networks, merchandise stores, message boards and more! 

Of course there are many more ways to win, including the Special Offers Section -a place on the Swagbucks site where users can complete offers from major brands and potentially earn themselves big time Swag Bucks. Offers can range from surveys, watching videos and playing games to subscribing to magazines and services, and whether you want to spend money completing an offer or not, there are always plenty of rewarding opportunities available.

Swagbucks is always looking for new ways for you to earn Reward Points, and this week they've got a promotion designed to help you get your free stuff faster!

For any qualifying Special Offer you complete from now through Sunday, August 21st, you’ll receive a 20% bonus on what you earn. That bonus will be applied no later than 4:00pm PDT on Monday, August 22nd.

Offers from the following providers qualify for the bonus: 
Ad Rewards, Gambit, Trialpay (Offers & Daily Deals), RadiumOne, Paymentwall, Super Rewards, Peanut Labs (Surveys & Offers), and Sponsorpay. 

If you haven’t done Special Offers before, you can choose from a variety of different offers (free, purchase required, games, surveys, watching videos, etc.), each of which pay you a Swag Bucks reward. Get started today and earn big!

SRC: Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffin Minis

It's no fun to be left out. No, not at all. That's exactly what happened to Raina @ Connor's Cooking blog this month in the round up of recipes for the Secret Recipe Club.

Well, some members of SRC, including myself, are not going to allow her to be left out any longer! When I received an email from Amanda, our SRC leader, explaining what had happened and what she had in mind to fix the situation, I knew right away that I wanted in on the action! Anything to help out a fellow foodie blogger. :)  You see, I've known Amanda for almost 10 yrs. and I know her well enough to know that just having one person left out of the round up would upset her, just like having one of kids left out of something. She has such a big heart that she would just have to do something to make it right. I think that her email affected all of us. We decided to shower Raina with lots and lots of secret recipe testing from her blog! So much so, that Amanda decided to set up a separate round up to show all of the news recipes that we've tested!

I was hunting through the recipes on Raina's blog, trying to pick just one recipe. If you haven't visited her blog before, do so. She has many wonderful recipes posted there. I thought that I had made my mind up on baking her smore's brownies but then I came across a recipe for sugar donut muffins. They spoke to me! haha! I just had to bake these donut muffins instead. Don't despair, smore's brownies, you are on my list to make very soon!

If you like sugar donuts, you will love this recipe. I changed my recipe up a bit by adding a little cinnamon to the batter and then to the sugar. I also made my donut muffins "minis". Delicious! Just like popping a cinnamon sugar donut hole right into your mouth! I will definitely play around with this recipe because they're are so many possibilities. Think of powdered sugar covered donut muffin minis with jelly inside! How about thick creamy custard in the middle and chocolate icing on the tops of each mini! My mind is running with ideas.

See my cute little apple basket? Such a deal at our thrift store for .49! It's going to be filled with mints and going to school to sit on the office desk. But doesn't it look so darn precious filled with these little donut muffin minis?!! 

Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffin Minis
adapted from Connor's Cooking

3/4 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 c flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. oil
3/4 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Cinnamon Sugar Topping:
4-6 tbsp. butter, melted
1 c. sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon + to taste

Preheat oven to 325* - I used dark muffin tins.

Lightly grease mini muffin pans with non-stick cooking spray.

In a bowl, mix together the sugar and the egg until light and fluffy. Mix in vanilla & oil and then set aside. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Beat the egg mixture into the flour, alternating with the milk. Beat until smooth.

Fill mini muffin pans 3/4 full. Bake for approximately 13 minutes or until a toothpick stuck into the middle of a muffin, comes out clean.

Remove the muffins to a cooling rack. Once they've cooled off enough to handle, dip the entire mini muffin into the butter and then roll it into the cinnamon sugar. Continue until all of the minis have been coated with butter and cinnamon sugar.

Store in a sealed container.

Find out more about the Secret Recipe Club!

Please take a moment to comment on my Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffin Minis. I'll visit you back!

While you're at it, take few minutes (or lots of minutes!) to visit the other wonderful SRC bloggers below who came together with me to show that we won't allow any of our foodie friends to be left out!

Menu Plan for August 14-20

We're back into the routine of soccer practices, getting ready for school and pretty much running around like crazy. lol!

From now on, I've decided to list my menu plan without any days attached to the meals. More often than not, I end up switching some meals around during the week so this is just easier for me. I figure that as long as I'm making a 7 day meal plan and sticking to it, I'm doing ok.

spicy shrimp pasta, salad & italian bread - ate it  on Sunday

tex mex turkey pitas and spanish rice

red pepper and parmesan talapia, jasmine rice and carrots/spinach

crockpot beef & barley soup

sweet onion chicken teriyaki subs

baked ravioli and salad - ate it on Monday

pork souvlaki, pierogies and corn

Mother Nature's beauty after a recent storm. I took these pictures in our back yard: