Menu Monday with bonus recipe.

This weeks menu:
Monday: Tuna noodle casserole
Tuesday: Leftovers
Wednesday: Sweet potato soup
Thursday: Corned beef with cabbage (of course!)
Friday: Breakfast for dinner (easy peasy since Colby is away!)

For the weekend, we usually go pretty junk food-ish since the girls are really good about eating whatever quinoa/vegetable/fish/tofu concoction I prepare all week. Colby and I both grew up with a Friday night pizza routine, so it just feels right to continue it with our kids. Although, I am really not a pizza fan, so sometimes I try to come up with a comfort food that is yummy for the kids but somewhat healthy.

This week I came across a biscuit filled with a ground beef and bbq sauce recipe that fit the bill. It also proved that you can make a kid friendly food quasi-healthy.

This is my altered version:

1 pound ground 93/7 ground turkey (original recipe is beef, but this is where the healthy starts!)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 cups bbq sauce
Approx enough biscuit dough for 12 biscuits
1/2 cup shredded carrots
2 cups Cabot 50% Fat free shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease 12 muffin cups.In a large skillet or frying pan, cook turky with onion, carrot and garlic powder until evenly brown, (since it is turkey, you should not need to drain any grease off at this point.) Stir in the barbeque sauce and simmer for another 3 minutes.

Roll out each biscuit on a floured surface so that each biscuit is 6 inches across. Put the biscuit in the muffin tin and fold up sides to create a cup shape. Fill each biscuit fill almost to the top with the meat mixture; top with cheddar cheese.

Bake in preheated oven until biscuits are baked, cheese is melted and tops are golden brown, about 15 minutes.

A few notes on my recipe: The biscuit recipe I provided is a nice healthy one but, if you are in a hurry, you can use a canned biscuit.

Try to stick with an all natural bbq sauce. This will avoid the HFCS. The only common brand I saw that did not have HFCS was Bull's Eye, they seemed to have a pretty natural recipe with very few ingredients.

Although most brands of low fat cheese will not melt well, the Cabot does very well (see the upper left photo above.) And you will be support a local Vermont business to boot!

The original recipe did not have the shredded carrots, I added that for a little additional nutrition. But the 1/2 cup reduced to almost nothing, so I will increase that to at least 3/4 of a cup next try. (Of course the kids did not even notice the carrots.)

In the photo above, you will notice that the top biscuit has carrots and celery and peas... that was actually just filled with some pot pie stuffing I had hanging out in the freezer. Colby preferred those biscuits, although the biscuit dough did not seem to cook as well, perhaps the pot pie filling was too moist.

I also did not note it in the recipe, but I added 1/2 cup of a creamy soup I had in the fridge. I typically have at least one box of this type of soup in the fridge since it is my go-to lunch. I added about 1/2 cup to the mixture again, to add some nutrients. I will do this with a lot of my recipes and nobody ever notices.

And it was a hit! Yummy, semi-healthy and quick and easy for me.

*Check out Mangia Monday for more great recipe ideas!*