Trying to mix it up!

As I was meal planning for the coming week, I wanted to make sure we had a variety of food styles and ingredients. We'll be eating Asian, Indian, Italian, Mexican, and American! Some recipes are old stand bys and a couple are new. I even managed to get a crock pot recipe in there, which I'm pretty excited about. I love preparing dinner early in the day while I still have energy so that the afternoon can be a time that I can focus on helping with homework and winding down for the day.

I've made this recipe quite a few times, so I decided to cut out the meat and sub more vegetables. I served it cold with green onions, cilantro, red bell peppers, cucumber, oranges, celery, and almonds. For the dressing, I used garlic powder and garlic salt instead of minced garlic.

It was so yummy. I'm really diggin' the sweetness of the oranges mixed in with the usual vegetables. This would be a great dish to bring to a summer potluck!

I knew this would be too hard for the kids to pick apart, so I just made them this for dinner. (Esther just had mac n "butter".) They did also eat pears and bananas, so it wasn't totally terrible.