Yummy After-School Recipes

School has started..

The morning rush has begun..The begrudging looks of  "Why am I up?", "Do i have to?"and the never ending, "Hurry up or you will be late!!!"

..Once they are off and you have a moment to do maybe ONE errand and wish you planned better what to do..

..so, here are some recipes that may help.  No promise on how healthy they are, but, hey, everyone will be fed, alive, happy, and want more. Just add a bike ride outside afterwards😀

SLOW COOKER IDEA:

The best thing about slow cookers is that you can prep everything even the night before, put it all in the inside pot of the slow cooker in the fridge, and start it in the a.m. before the chaos ensues for your day.

1. Pantry BBQ Pulled Pork

-Ingredients: Your choice flavor BBQ Sauce- 1 bottle,

Root beer or Coke- 1 can,

Garlic and herb seasoning- 4 tsps.

Black pepper-season as you prefer

Seasoned salt-as you prefer, but should cover majority of meat

Cayenne pepper-2 tsps.

Bone-in Pork Shoulder Chops Family Pack - about 3-5 lbs.-usually gives you plenty of  leftovers for the rest of the week and often on sale!

-Put ingredients in and leave slow cooker on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours.

-Let the aroma fill your house and when done, the meat can easily be shredded with a fork and just scoop out large bones (which you can always use for a broth too). Enjoy!

STOVE-TOP IDEA:

2. Scaredy-Cat Salmon

I like calling it this, because if you have family like my hubby who don't care for seafood, this is a good stepping stone.

-Ingredients: Salt,

Pepper,

1 can of mixed vegetables,

Mirin (Rice Wine vinegar),

1/4 cup garlic, 2 tbsps. ginger,

Agave or honey,

Soy Sauce,

lemon

fillet of Salmon

This is actually my version of a salmon recipe shared by cousin, Vaishali. Thanks, girl!

First, pat the salmon fillet dry with a paper towel. Then, squeeze a lemon over it and dust liberally with salt and pepper.

 Place fillet on aluminum-foil lined pan. (Spray foil with nonstick cooking spray first.) Place in oven  at  20 minutes for  350 degrees. Next, create a sauce with 1/4 cup soy sauce, garlic, ginger,  2 tbsp. Mirin,  and 3 tbsps. honey or Agave. Add more of each as you prefer for taste according to your amount of fish.  Halfway through its baking time, brush the sauce on top of the fillet liberally. Add some mixed vegetables to the pan at this time as ẃell. Enjoy!!

3. Stir-fry ANYTHING

Buy a frozen package or cut up fresh stir-fry vegetables (red, green, orange bell peppers, asparagus)

Strip steak sirloin

 Sticky Rice

Soy Sauce (Low-sodium)

Mirin

Garlic powder

Ginger

Salt andper to taste

Place strip steak in a bowl after slicing thinly with all the ingredients except the rice and vegetables, and set aside in fridge for 30 minutes.  Saute vegetables in olive oil and salt and pepper to taste in a wok and toss until just starting to wilt.  This takes usually about 3 minutes.  Start making sticky rice in a seperate pot.  

Add strip steak slices to wok and cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes.  Toss everything together in a bowl and enjoy!

4. Snacks/Desserts:

Finally, there are always needs to find ways to hold over kids' appetites till dinner.  My friend,  Liz, loves giving the fruit and cheese option for this.  She also has them looking forward to adding something with chocolate for Fridays after school.

These crepes are a wonderful way to add fruit to their diet and their sweet tooth will appreciate it too. Crepes can be found in the supermarket produce section.  I would just chop up any combination of fruit.  This particular one has blueberries and strawberries inside with cream cheese cream.  It is topped off with chocolate syrup, whipped cream and strawberries.  I personally would use nutella too, but it just happened to be done in my house:}

Pretty basic ideas but delicious! Until next time, ....

Feel free to add more ideas in the comments below.