Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce- loaded with vegetables

Now, ever since I have found wheat pasta at the supers here in town- we make noodles with marinara or bolognese at least once if not twice a week. We love it especially because of how many vegetables we have in the sauce but for how easy it is to reheat the next day or use in a new way. We love making french bread pizzas the next day!

Anyway. Another reason I love this recipe is because I hardly have to chop anything at all. With my hands in as bad of shape as they are I have come to LOVE and rely on my mini-chopper. First thing in is 1/2 to a whole clove of garlic- Once chopped I put a little a container with some butter to melt, the rest goes onto a little plate, next, the onion followed bell pepper.

I heat up a little oil in my skillet and and throw those all in with some salt, pepper and Pappy's. While those are getting soft and mixing together I blend up a head broccoli florets and then 3 carrots, I usually do not peel my carrots, just wash them up really well. and put those on the little plate.

After the onions, garlic and pepper are soft add the ground beef, you could ground turkey or chicken but I have not tried that yet. Once the meat is pretty cooked, add the broccoli and carrots and mix together. If I had celery or squash I would have added it here.

Then mini chop some tomatoes and throw those in with some tomato paste. At this point I usually add some cinnamon, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes and 1/2 a chopped jalapeno.

For the bread, we just mix the garlic into the butter and let it stand at room temp for a few minutes (here it melts within minutes) Cut the bread length wise, butter and grill until golden.

We usually serve it with a simple salad and save any leftover salad for salad or sandwiches the next day.

I love this meal. And the kids love it and there is almost no limit to what you can do with it. I love having extra sauce to make french bread or bagel pizzas or lazagna. And now with the whole wheat pasta I do not feel nearly so bad.

Grapefruit Grouper

Well, I had some grapefruits to use so I started poking around online looking for recipies that would work for a grapefruit sauce on grouper fillets. I found some recipes for bbq grouper with sweet and sour grapefruit sauce so I figured it must work flavor wise. So then I started looking at some grapefruit sauce recipes in various areas. I took some ideas from a bunch of them and made this lunch. It was grouper in a grapefruit and ginger sauce, brown rice and steamed broccoli.

For the rice and broccoli is never occurs to me to us my double pot steamer. This time I remembered. I put my water for my rice on the bottom and the broccoli on the top and added the rice half way through. Though next time I will not add the pot with broccoli until my rice is already in. I just like my broccoli a little crispy.


*** One good idea to get your kids to eat veggies it to steam the veggies for the whole time that the rice is boiling and cooking and then mash the veggies into the rice. Sometimes I will add a little butter and garlic at the end. But my kids do not pick out the veggies then***

For the sauce I threw some red onion, a little garlic butter I had left, grated ginger (a little goes a long way) and some grapefruit segments and the juice and some water. I let those flavors simmer together while I got the other stuff ready. It did not take long for the sauce to start smelling really good. If I had a chili I would have thrown it in too but I did not.

The sauce turned this nice muted orange color and was smelling fantastic. I added the grouper which I seasoned with salt and pepper and left them alone for several minutes on each side, flipping once.

We plated them up and used up all of the sauce. Ours had a little too much ginger in it but it was still good. It was a very healthy and tasty lunch. And if this is not the ultimate test... my 4 year old ate every bite of broccoli florets, brown rice and grouper with grapefruit sauce. That is quite a victory for me.

Lena thought the fish was a little funny tasting. I think it was the ginger. This is one of the first times I have ever really used ginger. They had it at the store and Ruben loves it so... Hey, you try you learn.

Mexican Grilled Grouper in a Tequila Marinade, with brown rice and veggies and sliced mango

So armed with left over brown rice and veggies that I made last night, I set out to make a grouper recipe that was adapted from this web site I had all the fixings for it so I thought that I would give it a shot.

I marinaded the grouper fillets in some tequila, orange liquor, lime juice, garlic and salt. I set the in the fridge for about a half hour or so. I took a picture - it is a pretty boring fridge. And our "pantry" is not that much more exciting.

I then made the salsa. This was just tomatoes, white onion, red onion a little garlic, salt, pepper, a little sugar, _ I would have put in jalapenos but I did not have any. So I added a little red pepper flakes in the kids salsa and then added red pepper flakes and a little habanero salsa to our pico de gallo

I lightly oiled my grill pan and set the fish on there to cook for about 5-6 min. each side. Meanwhile I put the marinade in a little pan and simmered while the rice and veggies that we had leftover reheated.

When served it was a fillet of the marinade liberally dressing the top (this would have been a great topping for fresh steamed veggies. We then piled the pico de gallo on the fish and served with the leftover rice and veggies and sliced mango.


It was a great lunch. It tasted very fresh and light.

I just found this great web site that looks like it has some great recipies for fish.