April's Meals and Cooking together

Please comment to this post as to what you are bringing. I am bringing calzones.

Also, when you comment decide what side dishes/dessert you want to make:
Choose one out of these side dishes:
Glazed Baby Carrots - http://www.recipezaar.com/255213
Cheddar Cauliflower cheese - http://www.recipezaar.com/216237
Hashbrown casserole - http://www.recipezaar.com/57129
No Cheeze Whiz broccoli rice casserole - http://www.recipezaar.com/105080

And desserts:
Cookies - http://www.recipezaar.com/16110 (we could substitute chocolate chips for butterscotch)
Easy Chocolate Chip Pan Squares - http://www.recipezaar.com/133150
Brownie Finger Recipe - http://www.recipezaar.com/92296

Also, if you have your own ideas let me know.

I figure once we decide up on what side dish/dessert everyone wants to make (majority rules) we can assign people to bring the certain ingredients necessary to make the above. Let me know if this is not okay or if you have other ideas.

Thanks!

MAKE IT HEALTHY!

Just wanted to put a word out there about making our dishes as healthy as possible. Obviously, you can use vegetables in your dishes, but here are some other hints to make your dishes healthy:

Use whole wheat pasta
Use organic ingredients whenever possible
Use lean meat or use poulty
Use meat substitutes also
Tomato-based sauces are more heart healthy than creamy sauces
Use Olive oil or Canola oil instead of butter or other types of oil
Use 1% milk or skim in your recipes

These are just some tips to help us make our meals more healthy. If anyone else has any more suggestions, please post them!

March 2008 Meet Up

Let us know what you are bringing for the March 13 Meet-Up:

Okay, I am changing mine to Enchilada Casserole so we won't have too many pasta meals - Gretchen

Grass Fed Beef

With the scary news of cloned beef, I am now officially going out and getting a deep freeze and buying my beef in bulk from grass fed beef farms only!

Cooking Club Instructions

Ladies, welcome to the Once-a-Month Cooking Club! Gretchen and Krista are really excited about this idea! I think we all agree that the last thing we feel like doing at the end of each busy day is making dinner. So, we'd like to try a dinner swap of main entrees so that during this cold winter we have some home cooked meals on hand.

For those of you participating please post your entree selection (i.e. what you plan to make) for the next month. This way we won't end up with 20 lasagnas! Everyone please bring a four-serving entree per person to the swap. Each four-serving entree would be wrapped and ready to go straight to the freezer (foil, ziploc bags, etc). Consider a serving to be about a cup to a cup and a half. We're looking for main dishes only here! And do your best to make the dishes hearty and healthy.

To RSVP, just add a comment to this post. Also, please email us a copy of the recipe or bring several copies with you.

Be sure to use disposable dishes so that we don't have to worry about getting that casserole pan back to you once we've eaten your yummy meal.

Remember - Dishes that Freeze Well!