Feeling like you are in a cooking rut?  As Emily and I get together to work on writing projects, we often ask each other, “What are you making for dinner tonight?”   Sometimes we both feel like we need a little new inspiration for family friendly recipes, so we thought we’d share some ideas about what we’ve been cooking up with you today.   These are just a few ideas that we’ve recently made for our families and thought you would enjoy.

Chicken BLTs

My family really loves a good bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich.  This week, I decided to spice it up a bit and grill some chicken tenderloins, seasoned with Montreal Steak Seasoning and served on a Brioche bun.  YUM!!!

Salad with Grilled Chicken and Black Bean Salsa

On really hot days, sometimes we want something a little on the lighter side.   I took my leftover grilled chicken tenderloins from the Chicken BLTs and added to tossed salad and served with a black bean and corn salsa as the dressing.  Easy and delicious!

Stromboli

At the pool the other day, Emily mentioned she was running low on groceries, so she whipped up some dough and made some stromboli.   I decided to make it for dinner that night at it was a big hit.   I love this quick beer dough recipe and use it when I make pizza in my woodfire oven.

For the stromboli above.  I rolled the dough out, added pizza sauce, cheese, onions, pepperoni and mushrooms.   In the bottom picture i used grilled chicken, fresh mozzarella and basil.  I rolled then roll them like a jelly roll (the secret is to roll from the shorter side), brushed some egg white on top, sprinkled Parmesan cheese over the dough and baked in the over for about 25-30 minutes at 400 degrees.

Quiche

Making dinner the other night was quite the challenge since I hadn’t done a “real” grocery store trip in 3 weeks!  I happened to have a ton of eggs though, so I decided to make a quiche.  I had a box mix to make the crust and and filled it with cheddar cheese, onions, bacon and tomato.   In a separate bowl I beat together 4 eggs and 1 cup of half and half, seasoned with salt and pepper and poured on top.  I baked it in the oven at 350 for 40-45 minutes and my daughter made a little apple crisp to serve on the side.

We hope these simple dinner ideas help you enjoy the summer with your family and help you “deliberately do the cooking with love and prayer.” (Divine Mercy for Moms, Sharing the Lessons of St. Faustina pg. 43)