I got invited to a really fun neighborhood party the other night - Bring your own board to share! We texted our board menus in advance to make sure there was a variety of boards. It was such a yummy night with friends.
I picked a dessert board - 3 kinds of cookies, chocolate dipped berries & pretzels.
We were all so proud of our boards and had the best time chatting & grazing on the boards.
I'd 10/10 recommend this for a fun girl's night.
Now that it has gotten HOT, charcuterie boards and easy dinners sound very good to me.
I can chop almost everything in advance and keep it in containers in the fridge. I chop in the afternoon and then prep dinner around 5:30. It's so easy to pull out the containers of chopped veggies, fruits, cheeses and more and then layer everything on the board.
Kevin was at a work dinner last week so I hit the easy button on dinner. I heated up some frozen breadsticks and grabbed a few meats, cheeses, salty snacks, fruits and veggies. It's less variety than my typical boards, but I thought it might make this kind of meal more approachable to a lot of you.
Just grab a 2-3 types of your family's favorite foods from each food group and put it all on a board. Your family will love it!
These dinners are the best because you're left with almost no dishes. Super easy clean up. And if you make sure to build your boards with mostly family favorite foods and one or two new things, you'll have a meal that your family really enjoys!
Let me know if you have any charcuterie board questions!
My family loves when they see a charcuterie board on the menu! I don't make them as often as I used to, but they feel like the perfect warm weather dinner.
You can prep everything ahead of time. Chop the cheeses, fruits, veggies and prep the meats the night before or earlier in the day. Leave everything in containers in the fridge so that your board will come together so quickly at dinner time. That means I can play outside with the kids and help with homework up until dinner time and have very little work to do to assemble my board. This kind of meal also means very few dishes to mess with.
We had this for dinner last week and it was a hit!
Wouldn't this be such a fun rainbow dinner for St. Patrick's Day this month?
Prettiest, yummiest dinner ever!
You've got to add charcuterie boards to your menu now that the weather is getting warmer! Start small with just 1-2 meats and cheeses and a few other fruits, veggies and salty snacks. Then add more to your board as you feel comfortable.
My family loves a charcuterie board dinner and I love not wasting food. This combo of leftovers with some new things is perfect. Let me show you how to make a dinner with leftovers that your family will love.
I had some leftover cheese cubes from a cheese tray that I did, a few leftover mozzarella sticks and a few ends of the bags of crackers. I made a fresh loaf of sourdough bread and chopped our favorite fruits and veggies. It was the perfect combo of leftovers and fresh foods for my family. We cleaned the board!
Keep this dinner option in mind this week of Thanksgiving. Use up leftovers and add some new things to make the meal feel fresh. I bet your family will love it!
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm taking the rest of the week off to enjoy Thanksgiving break with my family. I'll see you back here on Monday.
Happy Friday! I hope you had a great week. My week was long! We've been working on potty training with Leo which is exciting and exhausting. I didn't get done quite as much as I had hoped. I think I'm trying to cram too much into my last few days before Summer break. And I kept forgetting what day it was and everything seemed all jumbled. But we had a good one :)
Did you catch my blog posts this week?
Baked Chicken Tacos - I'm still dreaming of these!
Mother's Day Recap - it was a good one!
DIY Dairy Queen Blizzards - the perfect recipe for Summer.
Now onto my favorite moments of the week:
1 // Family Dinner Charcuterie Board + Pepperoni Bread sticks
When the weather warms up, my family loves to have charcuterie boards for dinner. I made this one this week and everyone enjoyed it. I try to chop the veggies and the cheeses up in advance so that I can put the board together quickly at dinner time.
Kevin picked up a new frozen bread stick for us to try and they were delicious. We were fighting over them! It's so nice to add one warm thing to your dinner boards to make them a little more filling. We will definitely buy these loaded pepperoni bread sticks again!
2 // Wrapping up school lunch duty
I love packing yummy lunches for the kids. I have 3 sets of school lunches left to pack this year. I asked the kids to tell me what they get most excited to see in their school lunches. Fletcher said a PPJ (aka PBJ) and Olive said noodles. They both like chocolate dipped pretzels and berries and Reese's cups. I know they both really enjoy their big hug from home in the middle of their school day.
3 // Jordan Bakery Box
It's been a busy week at Jordan Bakery Box! I had an order for camo cookies and pretzels, rainbow cookies, school spirit cookies and then I made some teacher cookie boxes. I also got to add my red, white and blue M&M cookies back to the menu for Summer!
We had a great Mother's Day and it seems like the festivities and special treatment lasted all week long!
5 // Sweet Penny
Penny loves Fletcher so much. She's his shadow she he's home and it's the sweetest.
6 // Backyard Fun
We played outside as much as possible all week. Sidewalk chalk art, gardening, catching critters, playing games, reading outside, making s'mores and more. The weather was so nice in the Midwest!
7 // Mountain Climbing Leo
Now that Leo is three, he's stronger and bigger and an even better climber. This week I found him climbing into the fridge for a snack, on top of the stove getting his own banana and on the counters looking for the jar of jelly beans. He wants zero help and he needs a bodyguard.
8 // FIELD DAY!
Both big kids had their field days this week. They were so so excited for them. Kevin went to cheer them on and their PE teacher came up with the neatest games. They played hard and they both came home exhausted. They also had the Kona Ice Truck show up at school and all the kids got snow cones one day this week!
9 // Nothing But Time
Have you heard Kate @naptimekitchen talk about having #nothingbuttime in regards to being home with her little kids? I love the idea of slowing down and enjoying the little things more because there are definitely pockets of our days where we have nothing but time. This week I let Leo out of his stroller on our walk so that he could check out the flowers a little closer. He was thrilled. And it was a good reminder for me to not always be so task oriented 24/7.
10 // Herb Garden
I've always wanted to have a small herb garden on my patio and this year we made it happen! I planted green onions that I'd been growing in my fridge from store bought onions, cilantro, catnip, dill and basil. I can't wait to trim some to use in recipes this Summer.
See you back here on Monday!
Linking up with Momfessionals
I made the yummiest rainbow charcuterie dinner board for my family this week and they all loved it. We hadn't had one in a while so this was a big treat.
We tried some new things, added in lots of our favorite foods and had the best rainbow dinner. I prepped almost everything in advance - chopped veggies, fruits and cheeses - so that the board came together really quickly at dinner time.
I like to add something warm to my boards if we eat them for dinner. These Auntie Anne's pretzels from the frozen food section are so quick and easy to make.
I built the board with the crackers and salty snacks and then layered in the fruits and veggies in rainbow order. Then the meats and cheeses fit perfectly in the middle.
Most of my board items came from Aldi or were things we already had on hand. I like to do a mix of new items and then finish up all the last bits of food from the fridge/pantry to keep my boards cost effective. We had this meal last night and we'll do it again for St Patrick's Day dinner. That helps use up the meats and cheeses and makes sure very little goes to waste.
We tried 3 new cheeses for our St. Patrick's Day board and we enjoyed all of them! They're all from Aldi and the Mature Irish Cheddar was amazing. The other two were perfectly yummy, festive cheeses for the boards. I love buying blocks of cheese at Aldi because they have a huge variety and they're almost all in the $2-4 range.
It was fun to cut a green pepper in half and fill it with Ranch dressing for dipping.
I love dinners like this on school nights because it makes lunch packing so easy for the following day. I filled their Yumboxes with leftovers and the chopped some fresh foods to finish out a rainbow lunch for them.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you feel inspired to make a rainbow meal to make for your family this week :)
