Dinner at our house: Teriyaki steak skewers on the grill!

I renewed my trial subscription of ALL YOU recently, and I'm glad I did. Not only does the magazine pay for itself in the coupons you get from it, it has great life tips like budgeting, organization, and my favorite: food! Tim and I recently started grilling. This is what we made from the magazine. 

I added in onions and peppers!

The man at the grill!

All done, and all gone after the photo was snapped!

These were delicious! Here is the recipe from ALL YOU:

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup bottled teriyaki sauce

• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper

• 1 pound flank steak, cut across grain into 1/4-inch-thick strips

• 4 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced on diagonal

• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

Directions

1. 1. Combine teriyaki sauce, garlic and pepper in a large ziplock bag. Add steak, seal and turn several times to coat with marinade. Let stand 15 minutes at room temperature.

1. 2. Preheat grill to high. Thread meat onto thin metal skewers; oil grates. Grill steak, turning once, until cooked to desired doneness (1 to 2 minutes per side for medium-rare). Transfer skewers to a serving platter, sprinkle with scallions and sesame seeds and serve.

Dinner at Our House: Roasted Red Ranch Potatoes

Tonight we didn't really plan dinner out at all. I was at work and I called mom during lunch to ask her what she wanted to do. She suggested eating out, but I knew both Tuesday & Thursday I'd be eating fast food, and most likely on Wednesday too since that *may* be our arrival time for the kiddos! I knew we had chicken in the freezer, tortillas in the fridge, and we always have tons of cheese & lettuce. I also remembered I had bought some buffalo sauce so I suggested wraps (recipe here).

When I got in the car after work I immediately called mom (my routine when I get in the car after work: Call Tim. check in. Call mom. check in. It's like clockwork). I asked what kinds of sides we had that we could make and she mentioned I still had leftover red potatoes. I also remembered while driving we had a packet of ranch mix and I've been seeing that commercial where a kid makes ranch potatoes. I thought, hey why not try that.

It really was easy.

Use about 2lb of red potatoes quartered
1 packet of ranch dry mix
it SAYS use 1/4 cup of oil, but that's way too much. I used half that. (I also used canola oil if that matters)
Mix it all together (you can use a baggie or I just did it in the Pyrex dish with a cover). Bake at 450 for about half an hour (which works out well because it took roughly that long to get dinner going).

Doing it that way made 4 servings and 1 serving was about 5 WW points. I hate to think of what it would be if I used ALL of the oil suggested. However, they are SO YUM! Easy to make and yum!

I took a picture, but it wasn't very flattering hehe.

Snacking at our House: Pineapple Bliss

Hot out of the oven.

Iced.

Tonight I made a snack using some of my cheap items from the Publix post last night. Yellow cake mix + crushed pineapples were on sale so this is easy to try.

I got the recipe from SkinnyTaste. She does great stuff.

It is so easy to make. You'll need two 20oz cans of crushed pineapple, yellow cake mix, 8oz low fat cream cheese & 3/4 cup of marshmellow fluff.

For the cake simply mix the first can of pineapple (undrained) with the cake mix. Pour into lined cupcake tins, and bake according to box directions. Cool before icing.

To make the icing mix the pineapple chunks (drained) with the cream cheese and fluff. I put mine in the fridge while the cakes baked. It helped it thicken up a bit.

They turned out to taste very sweet and a little tart. The cake part tastes realllly yum. You can't even tell it has pineapple in it (hence why Tim actually ate one without icing). The icing is very sweet, so if you enjoy sweets- try these!

Dinner at Our House: Tortilla Pie aka Fiesta Lasagna

 I have to preface tonight's post with a shout out to my friend Megan. I just posted on my facebook that I was making a tortilla pie to which she said: "Megan: I thought you hate pie."

Ha! I do actually hate dessert pies, so she has a point. But, since I altered this recipe I feel I now have the right to rename it, so I'm dubbing it: Fiesta Lasagna.

Anywho, I saw the recipe in my Taste of Home book but thought it looked a little complicated with all the chop this etc. Mondays can be crazy days so I got the idea to substitute a jar of salsa for some of the ingredients. It worked out well. I'll link you the original, but I'll post what I actually did.

Looks a little messy but it is so so so yum I promise. This is actually dad's plate. He had Spanish Rice and a garden salad.

Ingredients

1/2 pound lean ground beef (93% lean)

1/4 cup chopped onion

1 jar (16 ounces) Salsa (your choice of heat, we used Mild)

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

dash of garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

3/4 cup part-skim ricotta cheese

1/4 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

4 low-fat flour tortillas (8 inches)

1/2 cup shredded reduced-fat Mexican cheese

Directions

Season your beef in a large nonstick skillet with the chili powder, ground cumin and throw in a dash of garlic powder.

Cook the beef and chopped onion over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in the salsa. Heat til you get a little bit of a boil then reduce heat. In a small bowl, combine the ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese.

Place one tortilla in a 9-in. round baking pan coated with cooking spray. Layer with half of the meat sauce, one tortilla, all of the ricotta mixture, another tortilla and the remaining meat sauce. Top with remaining tortilla; sprinkle with Mexican cheese.

Cover and bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until heated through and cheese is melted.

For those on WW (old points, sorry I'm to cheap to pay for meetings and learn new points) a 1/8 serving is 4 points and a 1/4 serving is 8. Tonight mom went for 1/8 and I went for a 1/4 because I was starved! Either way, for all the yummy gooey cheesy-ness it's a great way to spend the points.  

Quick Fix Lunch: Creamy Bow Tie Pasta

This isn't a regular Dinner at Our House post, but I just had to share with you all the lunch I just tried out on this lazy holiday Monday. I'm at the computer scanning my usual suspects (Skinnytaste, tasteofhome, and allrecipes) looking for things to make for the week. I'm actually not looking for anything new, but rather I am checking out my "saved" lists.

However, I stumbled across this little gem that is going down as one of my new favorite quickie lunches (I may even whip up another batch tonight to take for work tomorrow). If I do the math correct, the WW total for this would be 5 points. I'm not quite sure that what I just made would amount to that though. We keep all low fat, fat free, etc products in our home (Update: I did the tedious math on all of our products at home and it brought it down to 4 points). I'll have to take some time to figure it up. Try it for yourself, it took me little to no time to prepare and we had all the ingredients at our house.

Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked bow tie pasta
• 1-1/2 teaspoons butter
• 2-1/4 teaspoons olive oil
• 1-1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• Dash salt
• Dash dried basil
• Dash crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 2 tablespoons chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon water
• 2 tablespoons shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon sour cream

Directions

• Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, melt butter. Stir in the oil, flour, garlic and seasonings until blended. Gradually add the milk, broth and water. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until slightly thickened.
• Remove from the heat; stir in cheese and sour cream. Drain pasta; toss with sauce. Yield: 2 servings