My Daily Plate

We practically never fry in this family. Every now and then, though, we pull out all the stops and have a fry night. Since today was Friday, seemed only natural we would have a FRYday night daily plate. For this meal we had steak fingers made from thinly sliced round steak pounded even thinner, jalitos (deep fried jalapeno pepper slices), hush puppies and french fries. I'm pretty sure I've had my fry fix for a good long time. It was delicious, though.

I took a bit of a shortcut for supper tonight. The spaghetti sauce came from a jar. There, I've confessed, and now on to the rest of the supper. Tonight's daily plate features whole wheat linguine topped with jarred spicy tomato sauce and 96/4 lean ground beef. This supper was super quick to make. I fried up the ground beef with onions, garlic and other seasonings a couple of days ago, when I made the Swedish meatballs. So, all that had to be done tonight was cook the linguine, warm up the meat and tomato sauce and combine them together. Oh, and I put on homemade 1/2 whole wheat French bread in the bread machine and let it rise this afternoon. I baked it while preparing the remainder of the meal so it came out of the oven piping hot just when the linguine was done. It was a quick and satisfying supper!

Wednesday nights are church nights so supper takes the form of some type of skillet meal. Tonight's daily plate is Orange Broccoli Chicken and Baked Sesame Potatoes. For the main dish, broccoli, carrots, onions and chicken are stir fried and then finished in a sauce of orange juice, chicken broth, soy sauce and molasses thickened with corn starch. The potatoes are cut in half, scored with a knife, brushed with sesame oil and sprinkled with salt, black pepper, garlic salt, and black sesame seeds.

Tonight Texas met Sweden with my first ever attempt at Swedish meatballs. My take on this classic dish used 96/4 lean ground beef rather than the usual mix of beef and pork. The result was lower fat, but still tender meatballs. I've posted the recipe on the recipe page. I made extra cream sauce because I was serving the meatballs over brown rice. With a side salad this was a fairly light and delicious meal. Butter and cream in the sauce were the only decadent elements to a healthy from scratch meal.

After a few busy weeks of summer off, My Daily Plate returns today on the first day of school. Our supper tonight included Honey Balsamic Chicken breasts, served with haricot vert, zucchini corn cakes and fresh baked whole wheat bread. The zucchini for the cakes was grown in my own garden, and I also included some basil from my herb garden in the honey balsamic reduction. The haricot vert were steamed and then sauteed with a little butter and dill weed. The meal was a success.