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Monday, March 9, 2009

Random Monday - yummy cupcakes, menus and the Winner!

Today's post is probably a good representation of how scatterbrained I've been feeling lately. {{blushing}} If you're interested to hear who won the fabulous Medela Swing pump and bottle set giveaway, be sure to read all the way to the bottom of this slightly rambling post!

First, a big thanks to Megan from Whatever for sharing her frosting recipes a week or so ago - one of them was just a slight varitaion of the recipe I use for frosting cookies, and I never considered using it for cupcakes - yum!! Sweetpea was taking cupcakes to daycare today to celebrate her birthday, so I used the bottom recipe from this post and it was delish. As an added bonus, frosting with a ziploc was totally easy = one happy mama!
Besides cupcakes, here is what we're planning for dinners this week:
Monday: pork chops with blue cheese gravy and roasted potatoes
Tuesday: chicken empanadas
Wednesday: pulled pork with mashed potatoes and green beans
Thursday: pork and pasta with vegetables
Friday: sweet potato burritos
I used a pork loin from the freezer that I'd purchased when it was on sale for most of this week's meals. I sliced the package in half, and put half directly in the crockpot to make my fabulously easy and delicious slow cooker pulled pork. The other half was sliced into "chops" and fried in the skillet. Half of those were saved for Monday's dinner, the other half were sliced for the pasta dish we'll be having later this week.
I'm not supposed to have soft, unpasturized cheeses since I'm pregnant, but they are such a weakness of mine that I've been finding ways to add them to cooked dishes. The blue cheese gravy is so yummy and simple. I made a quick pan gravy after frying up the "chops" by adding some beef broth to get up the pan drippings, a few pats of butter, and about a teaspoon of flour. I added more broth (about a half cup) and let it simmer until it was bubbly and getting thick, then I dumped in about a half cup or so of blue cheese and stirred until it was mixed. Then I tasted it to make sure the proportions were right... {{swoon}} For more menu ideas, be sure to visit OrgJunkie's menu plan monday!
Finally, the Medela pump and bottle set winner - I have I mentioned lately that I wish I'd been eligible to enter this giveaway? ;) To make things easier for my addled brain, I deleted any non-entry comments and/or duplicate or previously "deleted by author" comments - that left me with 80 eligible entries. Then I pulled up random.org and learned our winner was entry #51 - Congratulations Lisa P from Is it Monday Already!

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks Steph for visiting my blog! You are welcome for the oatmeal crisp link. We have tried it with applesauce and strawberries. Strawberries is by far our favorite, thus far!

You menu looks and sounds delicious!

God Bless,
Brandi @ My cup runneth over....

Brooke said...

Congrats to Lisa! What a wonderful prize she won.

Barely Domestic Mama said...

Reading your week's menu has made me hungry. I could really go for some beef empanadas this week.

Congrats to Lisa P on winning The Medela pump!

AP Mommy said...

Yummy cupcakes - I think I need to make some! :)

Going through my older posts and revisiting some of my commenters I haven't chatted with in a while! Happy Tuesday!

Stephanie said...

Great way to simplify your meal planning for the week! And thanks for sharing how to make that gravy - sounds really good!

Amy said...

Oh, pork chops with blue cheese gravy?? That sounds DIVINE!!

Lisa P@www.isitmondayalready.com said...

Yay Me! thanks So much for the fabulous giveaway!