Sunday Cooking For the Week

On Sundays I do my weekly cooking in between blogging, and various other things. I am preparing items that will make my lunch week easier.

Today I am starting out making apple/cranberry whole wheat muffins, baked veggie egg rolls, salmon patties, and tuna salad for the week. Muffins and fruit are a good breakfast as is muffins and soft boiled eggs. Egg rolls are an addition to some meals and my mid morning snack at work. We have breakfast at 6:30am and my lunch isn't until 1:00 so I am hungry by 10:30. Salmon patties can be lunch also. And good old tuna salad is great with celery sticks as a spoon or crackers.

Before I get cooking I always fill up the sink with hot soapy dish water. This way I wash as I go. Since I don't have a large kitchen or counter, for that matter, I use the same bowl for all my tasks.

Apple/Cranberry Whole Wheat Muffins

Since we are on Weight Watchers I changed my muffin recipe just a bit. Instead of  2 cups of white flour I use one cup white flour and one cup whole wheat flour. I also substitute the 1/2 C oil for unsweetened applesauce. I had two extra gala apples and make a simple sauce adding cinnamon.

(cook small peeled apples pieces in a tablespoon of water and a few shakes of cinnamon. Cook on medium heat until soft.)

Muffin Mixture plus re hydrated cranberry's

Ready for the oven

Baked Egg Rolls with Sweet-Sour-Spicy Sauce

This is my second attempt at Egg Rolls. I think I have it now.
I was looking for a mid morning snack at work that had very little calories and was low on Weight Watcher points.
I found this recipe online and adjusted it to my taste.

Cut up 4 green onions. If the stalks are to big cut it length wise. I tried grating ginger but it doesn't work very well so I cut it up in small pieces. I used 1 1/2 tablespoons of FRESH ginger.

                                        Saute both in 2 tablespoons olive oil for 3 minutes.

 

Grate two large chunks of carrot. The top skinny part doesn't grate well so I ate them for snack.

I added a 10 oz bag of shredded cabbage, carrots, 1 tablespoon Mango Habanero Hot Sauce, 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and 1 teaspoon brown sugar. Cook until cabblage is soften. LET COOL. Make sure all the liquid has been cooked out.

A moist towel over the plastic that is over the phyllo dough

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The next part has to be fairly quick. I used phyllo dough for my egg rolls. You need to keep the phyllo dough moist while you are rolling the egg rolls. I took 2 sheets off, put the plastic back over the dough and put a moist towel over the plastic, NEVER ON THE DOUGH. 
I then sprayed the top of both sheets with olive oil. Just a quick spray.

Next you fold in half so it looks like this and spray with olive oil again. Not much oil. Turn it around so you can roll it up like a burrito.

Place a large spoonful of your mixture on the lower part. I get a bit carried away, but I would rather fill up with veggies than phyllo dough.

                  Roll the dough around the mixture and tuck it under the mixture so it's secure.

Fold ends over and continue to roll making sure the sides stay in so the filling will not
come out.

Spray a pan with olive oil and then spray the top of each egg roll and sprinkle sesame seeds on top. A conventional sheet pan won't fit in my oven so I use a glass pie pan.

I had enough to make 8 egg rolls. I had a little bit of apple sauce left over from the muffins, but not enough to make a roll so I added some fig jelly spread and wrapped it up just like the egg roll. Hubby was happy.
Bake at 425 for 10-12 minutes or until they are brown on top. You might have to flip them over to get the bottom side brown.

       Okay the final product and only 3 Weight Watcher Points. To top it off they are delicious.
As far as hubby is concerned the dipping sauce the the ultimate. He puts it on various meats and even on the salmon patties.

Egg Roll Spicy-Sweet-Hot Sauce

Combine: 3/4 C sugar, 1/3 C ketchup, and 2/3 C water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
Add:         1 tablespoon soy sauce, 2 tablespoon Mango Habenaro Hot sauce (more if you want more heat) 1 1/2 tablespoon fresh ginger chopped in small pieces. Combine and cook 3 minutes.
Combine: 3 tablespoons corn starch and 1/2 C water. Disolve and add to mixture.
Cook until it thickens and 5 minutes more.
Set aside and cool.

You will be hooked on this stuff. It's easy to make and is good on almost everything.

Salmon Patties

There are two different kinds of salmon at Costco. This has no PINK DYE. Why would you put pink dye in a fish product. I don't know, but we chose the salmon without dye.

Combine: 3 cans of salmon, 4 green onions chopped, 2 stalks of celery sliced up (cut celery length wise a couple times so the pieces are smaller), 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon grill seasonings, 1 tablespoon Habeno Sauce, and about 1/2 C bread crumbs.  I use Trader Joe's Organic Bread Crumbs with out any additional seasonings.
At this point you can add more or less heat if you want. We have been adding more heat to our diets during fall alergies.

                         Yum...yep they are going to be good for lunches...adding that spicy sauce.

Actually I love to cook. I would rather spend a couple hours cooking the weeks meal than cook each night.
I make a menu each week before I go grocery shopping and make my list from that. I include what we will need for two lunches-to-go and what we will need for breakfast.

Because we  have limited time after work I have resorted to buying 3 dinners from Trader Joe's prepared meals in the frig or freezer section. I also buy something I can put in the crock pot one night that is good for two days. Now that equals 5 working days. I just add a veggie or salad with each meal, which is easy.For the weekends we have something easy we can put on the BBQ.

I hope you will make one of these recipes. If you need more info on frugal grocery shopping see my other page.