Gooooooood morning! What’s so good about it? Um…. it’s here and we’re here to see it! (And that’s far better than the alternative!)

Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Counter Top, Episode 3)

I have no specific reason for being so chipper today, but I am, so I’m just going to roll with it. Join me?

Looking back on the past week’s menu, I think it was one of my more enjoyable weeks, food-wise. There’s always room for improvement, but I feel like it was well-balanced (both in time spent preparing the food as well as the variety of dishes). Here’s how it broke down:

Monday: Chicken & Chickpea Chopped Salad
This recipe from Ambitious Kitchen was a good start to the week. Quick and easy to prepare and it tasted so good! The winning flavor combo was the goat cheese + barbecue sauce. It pretty much made the salad. I can see us making this again.

Tuesday: Night out with friends!
First Tuesday’s mean a meet-up and we were once again at Northside Pies. I was in the mood for appetizers but messed up my order and was “that girl” who orders one gluten-free item and one gluten-full one. D’oh! I meant to order the Caprese Salad to go with my cheese bread on a gluten-free base, but there was some sort of short circuit between my brain and my mouth and I ordered the Feta Bruschetta instead. Oh, well! The good thing about the whole Low-FODMAP thing is that the effects are cumulative, and by reducing the amount of wheat (and therefore fructans) by having the one gluten-free item I could indulge in the accidental order and enjoy it as long as I didn’t eat the whole thing myself. (I shared some, ate some, and took the rest home for later.) I neglected to get a picture, though–oops!

Wednesday: Braised Tilapia with Artichoke Hearts + Steamed Kale
This recipe came from an old Menu Mailer subscription (but is available in this post on Saving Dinner). It’s a good, simple, but not boring fish dinner recipe and the only real change I made was to sub green onions for yellow and my arrowroot slurry for the wheat flour she suggests to thicken the pan drippings into a sauce. Forgo the lumps and use a slurry, it’ll make meal prep so much simpler.

Thursday: Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew + Brown Rice
Ah, freezer meals, they make our lives so much easier. This one needs something, but I’m not 100% sure what just yet. The recipe is from Stock Piling Moms, though mine looks a lot more tomatoey than hers does. I think a can of coconut milk might have been a good addition instead of the cup of broth added just before crocking. Or maybe just a bit more seasonings overall as once it was combined with the rice it lost some of it oomph. Not bad, just needs a little tweaking.

Friday: S’Waffled Toast + Sausage
Todd was a little late getting home so I had time to ponder what I was going to do with the French toast for dinner. Not that French toast on its own is anything but delicious, but I felt like playing a bit. Waffled French toast is nothing new around the ‘net, and a quick search turns up stuffed versions, too, so this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering invention on my part. But I do like my name for it (stuffed and waffled French toast is a bit of a mouthfull, you know? pun intended). My version of this recipe is at the bottom of this post.

Saturday: Sushi Bowls + Spring Rolls
I could eat sushi almost any or every night of the week and be blissfully happy. My wallet might not agree, nor do I always have time to make it at home. But sushi bowls are another thing entirely. Sometimes I’ll use it as a side dish but often it can stand on its own with no problem–it just depends on what you add to it! This version had the usual sweet potato, green onions, avocado, and nori plus little green peas, carrots, and sliced fried egg. And if you want to make your own Yummy sauce (aka Yum Yum Sauce, aka Japanese Steakhouse White Sauce, etc.) here’s a recipe from AllRecipes.

Sunday: (Crock) Pot Roast + Carrots + Mashed Potatoes
Sometimes you just want a good, old-fashioned Sunday dinner and this was one of those times. My best pot roast is always one done in the slow-cooker, and this one was simply seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. I propped it up on a bed of whole carrots (peeled but otherwise intact) and only added the barest amount of water to the crock pot so I wouldn’t come home to stew. There was still plently of pan juices to turn into gravy, and because the carrots were cooking in it more than the roast it was almost like a carrot jus and made for a slightly sweet gravy.

S’Waffled Toast

For the Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, mashed
2 Tbsp sugar

For the Toast:
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla (or more, to taste)
10 slices bread

Preheat your waffle iron to the crispy settling and spray it with non-stick spray. (Most irons advise against this but I always ignore that–this is a messy recipe and this will make it much easier to clean up later.)

Combine the filling ingredients and adjust the sweetness to taste. If you don’t have fresh or frozen berries, I’d bet that you could stir preserves into the cream cheese and omit the sugar and be just fine.

Mix together in a medium-sized bowl the eggs, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Spread the filling mixture generously on one side of a piece of bread and place a second slice on top. Depending on the size and configuration of your waffle iron and the shape of your bread, you may want to cut the sandwiches in half.

Dunk the sandwiched bread into the liquid, covering on all sides.

Place onto the waffle iron and close the lid securely. My waffle iron always needs two rounds of cooking to get anything done, these s’waffled toasts were no exception. Your mileage may vary depending on your waffle iron, use your best judgement.

Carefully remove the finished toasts from the waffle iron, serve with powdered sugar or syrup, as is the custom, and enjoy!

Have a tasty week!