Oh Sundays. We have a love-hate relationship. I love that Sundays are an extension of the weekend (which is sometimes non-existent due to work). I love that Sundays are days where we go to church and worship together. I love that Sundays are often “catch up” days. I hate that Sundays are the day before Monday. I hate that I often feel rushed and overwhelmed to do EVERYTHING on a Sunday (especially if it was a working weekend for us). And I hate that I seem to get really stressed or down on Sundays and I turn into a grump. No one (including myself) likes a grumpy Holly.

Next week, we’ll be headed back to school. Thankfully, classes start on Wednesday, so we have Monday and Tuesday to prep for classes to begin on Wednesday. This is Daniel’s last semester of college!!! Yippee! I’ll only be taking two classes again so I can continue working my regular schedule. That being said, today (Sunday) was a day of preparation, specifically- food preparation!

I’ve been keeping up with Budgeting/Meal Planning for a while now, and I make sure to use extra weekend time to make meals that will last in the fridge for those nights when we just need a quick dinner. Since I’m feeling particularly lazy on this Sunday, I’ll give you some GORGEOUS photos from the fabulous bloggers who gave me some great recipes for this week! I poked around online and found some fabulous recipes from Gina at Skinnytaste.com.

Skinnytaste.com Black Bean Soup

Daniel usually eats lunch on campus, and I’ll usually take leftovers if I’m working, or I’ll make an omelet with cheese and veggies (and some type of carb)  if I eat lunch at home. I made some Hash Brown Egg White Nests from Skinnytaste.com for a quick veggie and protein filled snack. I left out the ham from the original recipe, and I subbed in some Cheddar Cheese and Grated Parmesan for the Swiss cheese that the recipe called for.

Skinnytaste.com Hash Brown Egg White Nests

I also made some Chocolate Chip “Zee” Bars from Peas and Thank You to take for a sweeter snack! The “Zee” Bars taste great on their own, but I microwaved mine for about 20 seconds and spread a little bit of Natural Peanut Butter on top and it was a super delicious dessert!

Chocolate Chip Zee Bars

One more thing: Soup in a Jar. I usually pack Soup in a Jar for lunch twice a week on the days that I’m nannying. Served up alongside a gluten-free quesadilla or grilled cheese and a Chobani yogurt? Fabulous lunch! (sorry for the cell phone pictures, but you get the idea)

Put ingredients into a mason jar for ultimate portability: leftover rice, frozen veggies, bits of meat from last night’s dinner, herbs, a bit of broth or bullion, tomato paste, etc. Then, when it’s lunch time, just add some water, heat (in the jar with the LID OFF or pour into a mug/bowl), and eat! You don’t have to worry about liquids sloshing and spilling in your lunchbox or purse, and you can just give the jar a quick rinse when you’re finished!

Now that I feel prepped for the upcoming week, I feel less stressed and definitely less grumpy.

(cell phone pic from when we took my little brother Ice Skating outside in Downtown Lexington!)

I read a good number of blogs. I get a LOT of recipe ideas from those blogs, but rarely do I ever make what the other bloggers make. Why not? Usually, I don’t have enough of the ingredients on hand. Additionally, I usually opt to get “staples” instead of fancy ingredients on my weekly grocery trip. Being on a tight grocery budget isn’t necessarily fun, but this week, some of my favorite bloggers posted delicious and economical eats! If you don’t care about recipes, scroll down to the bottom of the post for some silly zucchini squash pictures!

First up- “Roasted Pesto Potatoes” from Chelsey at Clean Eating Chelsey

Chelsey posted this recipe for pesto from another lovely blogger named Jenna at Eat, Live Run- so I clicked on over to Jenna’s site to check it out.

Here’s how we made our pesto:

Basil Pesto

Ingredients

• Big bunch of basil- about 1 cup, packed
• 2 garlic cloves (mmmm stinky!)
• 2 TBSP white miso (check out Jenna’s post for why miso makes this GREAT!)
• 3 “parsley ice cubes” (which I think equals like 1 full tablespoon of chopped parsley)
• 2 TBSP nutritional yeast

Directions

Put everything into a food processor and let it whir! Scrape down the sides as needed, add water as needed until you get the desired thickness!

I then followed Chelsey’s directions for roasting the potatoes- here’s our final product!

Another one of my favorite bloggers is Mama Pea over at Peas and Thank You. Mama Pea is always whipping up super healthy meals for her husband and two ADORABLE girls. Just to show you a glimpse of the “Pea-family”- here is one of the girls, Lulu singing “BAH BAH PICKLE”. (it’s the second video- although the first video is wonderful as well!)

Mama Pea has a recipe series called “Recipe Makeover” where she remakes a recipe that a reader requests! This week’s recipe? A remake of Trader Joe’s Spicy Black Bean Dip.

Click on over to see all of the step-by-step instructions- here’s what our version looked like (I seriously need some better blogging plates/bowls…)

I’ve got a few other recipes up my sleeve for this week (Cooper Originals!), but we’ll see how they actually turn out.

We’ve had a bit of “zucchini overload” this summer. I love zucchini, but we just can’t manage to eat EVERY veggie that comes off of that plant! Enter- OPERATION FREEZE:

Then, I found ANOTHER gigantic zucchini in the garden, and tried to convince Silas to pose with it for a photo- I didn’t have much luck.

And THEN, after a hot and sweaty Run on Saturday night, I found this giant (and proceeded to take self-timed photos using the garbage can as my stand):

…. and we’ll be eating zucchini all week….