Menu:
Bleu Cheese and Spinach Pizza with homemade pizza dough
Gnocchi with Pumpkin-Cream Sauce
Cheeseburger Casserole
Chicken Parmesan Meatball Subs

Grocery Shopping list for this menu.

We had the whole crew back in the Test Kitchen this week. I highly recommend inviting a few friends to join you for food prep. It’s a lot of fun and makes food prepping even more efficient!

Click here to see what Kelly has to say about that. Kelly has been part of the Test Kitchen since I started this blog. She is a super mom with three kids, ages 1.5 to 8 years old, so she is a busy woman.

To start off this week, we opened all of our cans and set them aside so they would be ready when we needed them. Next we chopped up all of our onions and garlic, which we need for the Cheeseburger Casserole and the Chicken Parmesan Meatball Subs. We also shredded our cheese for the Gnocchi with Pumpkin-Cream Sauce. Note: this recipe calls for Gruyère but we substituted Comte because we could buy it in bulk at Costco.

We are going to start with the Cheeseburger Casserole. Add your onions and garlic to a pan to brown and cook your noodles in a pot of water.

Once the onions and garlic are ready, add your ground turkey. When that is cooked through, mix in tomato paste, diced tomatoes and mustard.

Mix your meat mixture and your cooked noodles, pour into a 9×13 pan and top with 2 cups of cheese. Cover with foil, write cooking instructions on the foil (don’t forget to note adding pickles after its cooked! They really make the meal!) and refrigerate until you are ready to serve it. (Note: the directions say to bake it for 15 minutes but since we are storing it in the fridge, it may need an additional 5-10 minutes to heat all the way through.)
Next mix all of the ingredients for the Chicken Parmesan Meatballs. Roll into golf ball-sized balls and bake. Once those are cooked, cool and store in an airtight container or Ziploc freezer bag. (Note: These freeze really well so I usually make two batches and freeze half of them.)

While the meatballs are baking, cook your gnocchi, which only takes about 4-5 minutes. Drain it and put it in your baking dish.

 

 

 

Next, melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in flour; cook, stirring, 1 minute. Whisk in pumpkin and milk. Cook, whisking, until very thick, about 5 minutes. Whisk in cheese until smooth. Season with salt and pepper and pour over gnocchi. Cover pan with foil, write cooking instructions on the foil and refrigerate until you are ready to serve it. (Note: the directions say to bake it for 20-25 minutes but since we are storing it in the fridge, it may need an additional 5-10 minutes to heat all the way through.)

 

Finally, we are going to prep our dough for the pizza. The recipe calls for prepared dough but I prefer to make my own. So click here for pizza dough recipe and follow it step-by-step. The recipe makes enough for two pizzas, which was perfect. I used one for the Bleu Cheese and Spinach Pizza, which the hubs and I thoroughly enjoyed and used the other for the kids to make their own pizza.

This week’s prep seemed to go by pretty quickly. I hope your does too and that you enjoy the meals!