12 posts tagged “menu”
Were you worried that I'd skipped Menu Monday this week? That bad habits had won out with my being MIA on this front for a while?
Never fear! Menu Monday is not defunct! Mostly I was holding off because I wanted to do something fun... to show off something the kids and I have created around our house!
Now, normally my Menu Monday just gives you a glimpse into our dinner entree. I leave off side dishes and other meals, mostly for the sake of time and sanity. These blog posts are long enough, don't you think?
Never fear though, we eat other things! I am a mother to two boys that were born hungry and I swear they have never been "full" in all their nearly 13 and 11 years. Oh, the life of momming to boys! Right? And yes I know... I see their ages. Believe you me, I live in fear. I heard that these years are referred to as "The Hungry Years" and when thinking "But every year has been described in that way" scares the daylights out of me.
Which is why I keep stocking up on food. I figure the vultures... uh, I mean boys... will take care of my stock piles of food in no time. Yikes.
I won't bore you with the 8000 calorie diet that I swear my kids are on. (I think that they are hobbits. They really do think they need two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, and all the snacks in between. Thank goodness for the fruit bowl! I hope my garden starts producing soon!)
Mostly we are simple with our meals. Breakfast is a mix up of oatmeal, cereal, and waffles. Lunch is an assortment of sandwhiches. Sometimes we mix things up and have muffins or soup. You know how it goes.
The boys were wanting to change things. We have a friendship with another family and they formed a little food schedule where they eat oatmeal or certain days and pancakes on certain days. So on and so forth. With a large family, you need to do things like that! My boys liked this idea but we took it a step further and decided to play on the words. What can we say? We're geeks!
So we totally stole Sundae Sunday from that family! We tried it out this week, and it was fun! Ice cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, whipped cream... all the things you forget when you have ice cream at home! My husband's reaction, "You are going to make me work at the gym!" HA!
Last week the boys and I tried "Malted Milkshake Monday" and giggled. That's a lot of ice cream, so I think that might not be a regular treat, but we'll try it at least once a month for both of those special days!
For our meals though, we came up with Tuna Tuesday (though we need to buy some Tuna to start) and Waffle Wednesday! We're trying to figure out if we want to have Souper Saturday, Souper Sunday, or keep our special days during the week. That one is coming! It's a fun way to break up the regular pace, gives you something to look forward to, and really helps with menu planning and grocery shopping!
Yesterday we debuted our first Waffle Wednesday!
That's right, I made a scrapbook page of it! I wanted so much to share photos, so I held off on posting this week!
No normal waffle could do for Waffle Wednesday. Oh no! I own that red and white checkered cookbook that half of America owns, and they have all sorts of waffle variations! We decided to try out the "chocolate waffle". The basic recipe was just enough for my starving boys, me, and two extra waffles. (For anyone wanting to know you just add in some cocoa and sugar and vanilla, while subtracting a little flour... so not too hard!) Nice!
Obviously, in the future, when we make our freezer waffles... we'll use those. But sometimes fresh is best! It was fun making a different kind of waffle!
My kitchen aides (more like "those who have taken over cooking") horned in on the action. My job was to read the instructions. Caramon and Joram worked together to add ingredients and stir. Then Joram manned the waffle maker and before we knew it... we'd experienced our very first Waffle Wednesday!
The kids reaction: We HAVE to do this every week!
I'll bet.
Fun, right?
As for dinners, I did make a plan this week and we've stuck to it! The boys got to help select a few meals, so that was fun!
Monday: Breakfast for dinner: Eggs, bacon, muffins
Tuesday: Fajitas
Wednesday: Quick meals before Scouts!
Thursday: I have a party so I need to feed them early. I'm thinking it's frozen pizza night!
Friday: Mexican Unstuffed Shells
Saturday: Minestrone Soup
Sunday:
My husband flaked on the roast last week so I suppose we'll have it
this week. I think he was trying to be kind to me since I was
unthrilled. I'm sorry, I'm really just not a huge cow eater.
--Lady O
It feels like it has really been forever since I had a proper Menu Monday! Oh how I've missed it. Mostly we were just pulling things from the freezer... my May got completely out of control with the THREE trips to Baltimore and all the sewing and reading... sheesh. Which is why I haven't been blogging, either.
Busy busy... makes me glad for all those freezer meals!
My husband finds himself in California this week, again. So what do we do? PARTY WITH GOOD FOOD!
So is it a week of chicken? NO! As thrilling as that would be, (seriously, no sarcasm there!) the kids asked for fish. Oh yes, fish is also on the "no-no" list. Well, that's not true... fish sticks are OK. Captain D's is OK. Some shrimp and lobster tail - also OK. Pretty much everything else hits the "no-no" list, I believe.
I splurged a little due to some great sales... and I have some lovely seafood for this week!
Monday - Crab Legs with Old Bay and Parmesan CousCous
Tuesday - Shrimp Scampi
Wednesday - Scouts - We're going to Noodles and Company which apparently the husband does not realy care for
Thursday - Chicken Pasta Bake
Friday - The Husband is home so I need to find something to make for him... I'm thinking fajitas.
Saturday - The kids have a party and so this one is up in the air for me because of running.
Sunday - Roast - per husband's request.
What's on your menu?
--Lady O
Ravencon was this weekend with the usual fun and festivities. For two years I've been on the staff and among other things I've contributed a cake for the weekend.
Each year the cake ends up with an interesting story. The first year we had the icing that would not make and when I finally got the cake decorated I was so tired I decided the word 'raven" should have an 'o' in it. What a debacle! The second year I made two cakes so that the con chair could have a birthday cake, but then they were not brought out so we used them as dessert for the "dead dog" party.
This year I wanted to make something real special. Sure the birthday cake for Con Chair was special, but this year we had a bigger birthday. Poe's 200th birthday falls this year, and that means we should do something extra special for our Ghost of Honour.
I really wanted to come up with something and I was playing with various ways to use a raven. I thought about shaping the cake like a raven, but that is a little above my skills. My ability to draw is nonexistent, and that makes patterns hard to come by.
I talked to my friend who's decorating skills are far above mine. She brought up fondant, which I've never had the chance to work with. I thought it would be fun and I could learn about fondant. I ended up going to her house and we set to work on two cakes.
I don't make a lot of cakes from scratch. If I have my choice, I like Duncan Hines mixes because they are not only very delicious, but very moist. Unfortunately with very moist comes the tendency for cakes to crack.
In the end she said that fondant was not the way to go because it really shows every flaw. So no using fondant this time. Maybe next?
Well, she brought out a cake leveler which I'd also never used. I need to get one of those!! It's awesome! I've never used one, so that was real cool.
She also had the recipe for a dark chocolate frosting so made that up. We ended up in the kitchen making this cake that became more epic as the minutes went by.
So in the end I ended up with this cake:
Doesn't that look great? Very pretty. I'm grateful for the help and company. I need to get that dark chocolate icing recipe!
Hauling this mountainous cake into the hotel, I think I may have burned four times the average calories while walking due to the extra weight. In the words of our con chair, it felt like "an anvil". Oh yeah.
Once more the cake ended up at our "dead dog" party. This time by design. When the top came off the oohs and aahs went out. At the same time the jokes started flying about how large this cake was. Watching the man cutting the cake struggle to cut the cake we saw the personality come forth... it was menacing in its demand to be eaten.
This is the cake that ate Richmond - starting with the staff of Ravencon 2009. Oh no, we did not eat it. It ate us.
Oh yes, I survived the cake of 2009.
What shall I do to top that in 2010?
So this week's menu Monday is pretty dodgey. Frankly, so was last week. You know how it is when you are out of town.
Monday: We had pizza. I was still recovering.
Tuesday: Mexican UnStuffed Shells
Wednesday: Scout Court of Honour - We'll find something quick before arriving!
Thursday: Spaghetti
Friday-Monday we're going to be at Costume Con with my mother. I don't know what the hotel offers or the area. So there's no way for me to plan. I'm going to try to find what I can take that doesn't need refrigeration or microwaving.
Next week, however, is going to be CHICKEN WEEK! That's right, Megs is supposed to go to California on Sunday and not get back till late late late on Thursday.
Until next week... happy eating!
--Lady O
Menu Monday is late this week, again. I actually had something cool to write about, but the pictures are taking a lot of post-processing. I went to an event that was beyond awesome, but the light levels were exceedingly low.
Thus I decided to continue on with my menu plan and just blog about the activity later. Once I finish up with the photos.
The other thing mucking up my regularly scheduled menu planning is my husband's canceled trip to CA. As I mentioned before, I planned out a nice huge menu for weeks. This week was a second try for the week of chicken.
Is my attempt to eat chicken to be perpetually mucked about with? I mean seriously! Last month it was the plague. This month? Some slackers didn't realize that this was Easter weekend (uh it was for the weekdays so I am not seeing the big deal) and some people weren't prepared (must be nice not to have to work in this economy) so the meetings in CA - canceled! No! I screamed. I need my week of chicken! I already bought chicken!
Now some would say, "Keep the week of chicken. Make Megs suffer through!" Perhaps I should. However, I am nice. (Ok, truth? I just don't want to deal with a week of grumping or him eating fast food since that's his real answer.)
I spent some time readjusting Ye Olde Menu. Now I have Nouveau Menu! Menu the Redo!
Meanwhile I am hoping for another trip to California so I can have my week of chicken! Or fish! Fancy sauces! You know, all the yummy food out there I can't normally make.
I did keep two meals. Guess someone will have to cope. Good thing we always have peanut butter and jelly!
Monday: Pizza Uncrustables - Yes we reheated these treats! They were fantastic!!!
Tuesday:
BBQ Lil Smokies with Cheesey Broccoli and Rice - mmm so good! The kids
and I love these! BBQ and Lil Smokies are no-nos. Megs ate Chipotle
Wednesday: Dunno - hubby's choice (Who bets Taco Bell?)
Thursday: Mexican UnStuffed Shells - a new one... one of my freezer meals. I think Megs will love this!
Friday: Chicken Macaroni Bake - Shhh chicken is a no-no. But I don't care. Oz needs some freaking chicken!
Saturday:
Butterfly Shrimp - I'll probably bake our fries we made up and froze to
go with this. Sounds good, right? Fries and shrimp? LOL
Sunday:
Lasagna - it's a family favourite and we have this new recipe to try.
Gonna have my nice freezer meal for Sunday! Sundays are hard because we
come home from church and eat at like 2:30 and then we aren't hungry
till late so we get lost in family time. Then we are dealing with what
to do because food takes too long and whatnot!
So there you have it! It might not be a week of chicken, but I suppose I will survive. However next time? Megs better take his trip or he might end up with a week of chicken to suffer through!
--Lady O
Ever had something so good, you fall in love with it immediately? Besides chocolate, that is!
Meet Lumpia. It's a yummy treat from the Philippians. I took pictures of a friend's baby one day and she paid me for my time with this delightful food. Talk about one really great lunch! No starving artist that day!
My friend, Kate, decided to embark on an adventure this year she entitled Around the World in 80 Plates. Her goal is to "visit" 80 countries in one year via her kitchen.
Her entries are enough to make your mouth water. To aid her, I asked my friend if I could share the lumpia recipe. With a nod of approval, I passed it along. (I already had it! Mmmm)
So today, I am sharing the entry my friend as a guest blogger post! My first time having a guest blogger, too!
If you are interested in more of Kate's adventures, visit her at Around the World in 80 Plates. You might get hungry, but you won't be sorry!
--Lady O
------------
Nitz graciously gave me the green light to post her recipe here on the blog for those of you who might want to take a crack at making them yourselves, so I will post it at the end of this entry for you to enjoy.
Lumpia are wrapped in a wrapper, just like egg rolls, but there are
such things as lumpia wrappers. Speaking with Lady O, she said there
are actual lumpia wrappers, not just egg roll wrappers. I knew there
was an international market near 5 Mile Fork in Fredericksburg, so I
decided to go in there. I had mistakenly thought it was more of an
African market, but in fact, it's Asian to my good fortune. I had a
great time wandering the aisles, looking at all the foodstuffs there
and in the freezer they had lumpia wrappers! As you can see from the
picture, they are quite thin and round.
So, wrappers in hand, I gathered up the other ingredients I needed and
decided to do the prep work for them the night before they were to be
eaten. This was in large part because I knew we'd have a houseful on
Saturday (Lady O, her husband and 2 boys were coming during the day to
help us work over the closet in the baby's room and Elizabeth and her
husband were coming for dinner) and you know the old saying about too
many cooks, but also because I have a craptastic kitchen and there's
not a whole lot of room to do anything, so I need to keep it clean and
organized as I go so that I have room to actually cook.
So the first task is to actually make the filling. I have a new cutting
board courtesy of the Pampered Chef, so prepping veggies and giving
them a place to call home is much easier now--the board is big enough
to hold everything. Everything had to be pretty finely minced, sliced,
or chopped, so the one modification I made to this plan was that I
grated the carrots. Despite my best efforts, I must confess, I
absolutely hate cutting up carrots. The idea of mincing them did not
appeal to me at all. Grating took all of 30 seconds and it was done.
The rest of the veggies I did quickly the recommended way.
That done, it was time to turn to the stove. First thing was first,
cooking the pork. This is done in a little bit of vegetable oil, after
which it is removed from the pan. Leaving a little bit of grease in the
frying pan, you then add the garlic and onions in the pan and let them
cook down a tad. This smells absolutely wonderful! After a couple of
minutes, you throw the pork back in and add in the rest of your
vegetables and let it all cook together in a big happy family of
flavor.
Once that is done, you add in soy sauce, salt, pepper, and garlic powder and let it all cook together. You are going to have to excuse this next series of photos, but I was darned sure going to put them in! You have no idea how hard it is to try and add ingredients and take pictures at the same time, and yet I did it, so I'm putting the pictures in at the same time! :-) Being a righty, I have to cook with my right hand, which means taking pictures with my left hand. Unfortunately, the camera button is on the right hand side of the camera, so I had to hold the camera upside down and then rotate the pictures afterward. What I wouldn't have given to be ambidextrous!
This done, I decided to call it a night for the lumpia and put them in a container in the fridge and turned my attention to other prep work for the other meal Saturday, which I will get to in another post.
Saturday dawned rainy and disgusting, so it was a good day to be stuck
in the house cooking. Lady O and her clan arrived just before noon and
she and I set to work rolling lumpias. I thought it would be rather
difficult to do, but actually it wasn't. The first ones we made were
quite large. Lady O said that they were much bigger than the ones
she'd seen Nitz bring to church. We decided to cut down on the amount
of filling that we put into each lumpia, but even so, I think we only
ended up with 15 or so of them, which is half what the recipe said we'd
get.
It was pretty easy and fun to roll them. The hardest part was getting
the wrappers unstuck from the paper! After that it was all gravy and in
no time flat, we had a plate full of them, ready to fry. Because the
filling is already cooked, you don't need to waste a lot of time on
frying them up. I left them in a little longer than perhaps was
necessary because the filling had been refrigerated and I wanted them
to be good and hot. As it turned out, they were quite hot! Most of us
took a bite and then set them down to cool or broke them open and then
let them cool a bit more.
I had asked Lady O if there was supposed to be a dipping sauce or
anything, and she had suggested that we could use duck sauce if we
wanted to, although she didn't usually have anything with hers if they
had them at church. I like duck sauce just fine, so I decided to pick
some up. I selected Mee Tu, because I liked the name and it made me
think of how the Megabyte Clan had jumped on board the international cooking
train! "Yum! Me too!"
It was time to put it to the test. The General test. He had said the
day before that he had eaten lumpia at work--his former supervisor in
DC was Filippino and had brought lumpia in, and he didn't like them. I
told him that if he didn't like these, I would make him something else
to eat. But he did say he would try them first, for which I was
grateful. And guess what? He liked them a lot! I don't think he would
go out of his way to eat them again, but he ate three of them and said,
"Pretty good" which is about the equivalent of "OK" or better in
General-speak. I really, really liked them. I love spring rolls, and
these were somewhat similar to spring rolls. The wrappers fried up
crispy and delicious. The Megabyte Clan were already devoted lumpia eaters,
but I think they enjoyed them too!
I only ate 2, but really that was a pretty decent lunch. I won't lie, I was HUNGRY by the time dinner rolled around, but they made a pretty decent little meal!
Many thanks to Nitz and Lady O for bringing this recipe to my attention! I hope I've done you proud, Nitz! I loved your recipe and thank you for sharing it. :-)
NITZ'S LUMPIA RECIPE
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 pound ground pork
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup minced carrots
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup thinly sliced green cabbage
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon soy sauce
30 lumpia wrappers
2 cups vegetable oil for frying
Directions:
1. Place a wok or large skillet over high heat, and pour in 1 tablespoon vegetable oil. Cook pork, stirring frequently, until no pink is showing. Remove pork from pan and set aside. Drain grease from pan, leaving a thin coating. Cook garlic and onion in the same pan for 2 minutes. Stir in the cooked pork, carrots, green onions, and cabbage. Season with pepper, salt, garlic powder, and soy sauce. Remove from heat, and set aside until cool enough to handle.
2. Place three heaping tablespoons of the filling diagonally near one corner of each wrapper, leaving a 1 1/2 inch space at both ends. Fold the side along the length of the filling over the filling, tuck in both ends, and roll neatly. Keep the roll tight as you assemble. Moisten the other side of the wrapper with water to seal the edge. Cover the rolls with plastic wrap to retain moisture.
3. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat, add oil to 1/2 inch depth, and heat for 5 minutes. Slide 3 or 4 lumpia into the oil. Fry the rolls for 1 to 2 minutes, until all sides are golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Serve immediately.
Makes about 30 pieces
Incidentally, this was TomTom's favorite 80 plates! He got to have some treats too!
You find Scandinavia in northern Europe. Countries like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The history is a rich one - men like Leif Ericson and whatnot.
In our homeschooling over the last year and a half, we've studied a lot about many countries in Europe. Eating foods from places we learn about is one of the fun things we enjoy with our homeschool. Normally though, we do it during the day and on a smaller scale than these dinners.
This whole dinner thing has been most fun. I guess the people at Vox are enjoying it as well, since twice now I've made it on their culture front page. Thank you for the notice, Vox!! Talk about humbling and exciting all rolled into one!
I hope that means people are finding this all entertaining. My stomach is sure enjoying it all! The boys agree with me!
Tonight we chose Scandinavia and we polished off the last of our bag of potatoes. Dinner was a beef hash meal, which crosses many European countries.
Hash tends to be what I refer to as a "garbage meal". If you have loads of left overs, this is a great meal. Grab some meat, some potatoes, some veggies, some herbs, and go to town. Whatever might be in your fridge!
In America we all know about Corned Beef and Hash in relation to St Patrick's Day. The History Channel claims that Irish American immigrants would sub in corned beef for bacon.
Well our Scandinavian meal seems to fall in lines with the hash made in Denmark. It's not as much like corned beef and hash from around here, but it's kind of close.
Coach DS must think we love Europe, according to our little game, Europe is quickly changing colours to denote our "visits".
First we gathered up all our supplies.
Now I just have to ask, have I mentioned lately how much I love the kitchen in my new house? Having the extra counter space to gather all my supplies is absolutely golden! Hopefully my good friends will not need to come barreling over at crack o' dawn to save me from my own craziness! I just love having enough space to gather supplies, chop up stuff, etc. I knew I hated my last kitchen, but the sheer JOY of this kitchen really makes me realize how much I hated the last one!
My recipe called for round steak, but I had some ground beef which was an OK substitution. Coach DS even said so. I didn't need to go to the store, I could use up something from my freezer, and mine was really a mixture of both ground turkey and beef which would make my husband happy and with the cut in cow meat I hoped for less digestive problems.
Joram graciously cut my onion while the potatoes boiled. The boys both peeled my potatoes and then Caramon chopped them up while I sauteed the onions. We then added in the onions and the potatoes, along with some various spices. I decided it needed a little pizazz so I threw in some garlic and oregano. What can I say, we like the flavours!
Doesn't it look great? MMMMM!
After that, I dished it up on four plates and it was time for the egg for topping. Apparently it is supposed to be like fried eggs or over easy or whatever you want to call it. YUCK! My menfolk care for that, but NOT me!
It's our meal, so I figured we could do up the eggs the way we liked. My guys like their eggs to be flipped, whatever that turns them into. (Sorry, I'm not an egg cooking connoisseur here! I'm never going to order eggs that way so, whatever.) Joram offered to do that for me since for whatever reason I can do a triple pirouette and leap around on stage but I can't do a simple flip of something in a skillet. Guess he remembers the difficulty from the Tortilla?
While he was at it, he cooked up the two eggs I scrambled as well. Wasn't that nice? We put our eggs on top of the hash the way the Coach DS told us, and we were ready for dinner!
Doesn't that look great? Joram tried to cook my scrambled eggs almost omelet style so that it wouldn't be broken up so it would maybe look somewhat right. Wasn't that cute?
I inhaled mine. The boys agreed they enjoyed it! This meal was like breakfast (eggs) combined with dinner (meat and potatoes) which was kind of interesting. I suppose some would consider it a breakfast but I cannot see eating something this heavy first thing in the morning. But not only do I have cow meat digestive issues, I have morning eating issues - so maybe that's just me?
All liked it, except for Sir Megabyte. He said the eggs and potatoes and onions were OK, but he grumped over the mix of cow/turkey meats. I decided to ignore it as I usually do, since I have such a hard time digesting cow products.
I fear we might be quickly running out of European countries to try out foods from! At least as far as Coach DS is concerned. There's some great meals we've found from these various areas that we want to try, though, so we'll probably be revisiting them.
After all, you can't see everything in one day, can you? I bet there's loads more that France, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Italy have to offer us! Not to mention the rest of the world!
--Lady O
Tonight for dinner we made Tortilla, a very yummy dish from Spain.
The first time we tried Tortilla was while hosting that beloved daughter of my heart, Schada. Morocco is so close to Spain, so there's a lot of cross over there. She wanted to make something and this is what she chose to do.
I have to admit, I had no idea that "tortilla" could mean something that didn't include a little flour or corn disc.
Oh no, tortilla is rather breakfasty. Mostly it is eggs and potato and onion! We love our breakfast meals so going for a Tortilla is bound to hit it off with this crowd!
So tonight's dinner is dedicated to Schada and my main helper was Caramon. (Shocked it wasn't Joram? Oh don't worry, he had some kitchen action!)
We pulled out some of our supplies:
See Joram behind my supplies? He's excited! At his insistence we purchased that rather fancy looking extra virgin olive oil and he busted that puppy right open for me!
We had onions cut from another meal, so all we needed to really do was take care of the potato. Caramon set in while I did some dishes:
We needed to saute veggies, and Caramon watched a how to video.
The Tortilla is made kind of like an omelet. You mix your veggies into some scrambled up eggs and then throw it in a skillet. You let it cook and then flip the whole sucker over.
Here's ours before we flipped it:
Now here's the thing... I can't flip a pancake or an omelet. I don't know what it is, I just can't do it. Isn't that sad? Don't worry, I'll try to stay away from any burger flipping jobs, too! So I tried to flip it once, and that was absolutely unsuccessful. I then tried to go ahead and loosen it away from the skillet. That time I tried to flip it and in lifting my skillet my wrist cracked really bad and I nearly dropped the whole thing. Our skillet is real big and I have some wrist issues. Guess I need to see my chiro again soon!
What a mess. In the end, we finally ended up with some Tortilla to eat. Yum!
Joram was anxious to do something and the poor boy experienced his first failure today. I feel bad, but I was just so busy trying to deal with the dishes, dinner, and answering various food questions.
Before Joram embarked on his cooking week adventure, he saw someone on TV make a strawberry meringue cookie. We looked high and low for strawberry extract, which my mother finally found for us.
He was just so anxious I told him to try to make his cookies. I made meringue cookies all the time as a kid so I figured he could rock this and I could finish dinner. Unfortunately, I didn't notice he went for a plastic bowl or was having trouble with the egg separating.
Here's his gear complete with my camera lens doing something real wiggy with depth of field... that should really say everything:
You don't even want to know. We ended up with very liquidy nothing. Yech.
My mum even came over to help out. We also actually pulled out the hand mixer. I never use that thing, I hate those things! We whipped up a second batch, in a metal bowl, and it came out great.
Ahhh now THIS is what meringue should look like:
Joram insisted on making these pretty, so I pulled down the cake decorating box for tips and bags and whatnot. He made up some rather cute looking meringue cookies and while they weren't done until 10 at night, the boys each got to try one.
Don't they look so good? The strawberry extract gave such a delightful flavour! Now, I need to find something else to make with strawberry extract because woah yum!
Meringue has a mixed history. It could be French, Swiss, Italian... who knows! The general response from my family was, "Nom nom nom". We don't much care, for it is fantastically tasty!
For a little review, over the last few week's we've traveled through our kitchen to:
Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. Don't forget the good ol' USofA!
It's all in fun, right?
--Lady O
OK, so my menu last week fell apart before my very eyes. Sometimes life just happens.
I turned Thursday into baking day and my knee revolted from all the standing. Joram and Caramon whipped up pancakes instead of what was scheduled. Friday both boys ended up with a scout function. Good news is Caramon passed off his Swimming Merit Badge and Joram knows what to work on. Bad news is we had a very messed up eating schedule. Saturday we ended up a friend's house.
So you see, nothing went as planned. That's OK. It happens. I like having a menu plan, but I also know I need to be flexible. That is one of the many reasons that I like having a stockpile of various things. Maybe we just want something different, maybe life throws us a curveball, you just never know.
The bright side of things is that my menu plan looks good for all of April and most of May. Not too bad, right? If you followed yesterday's blog, you'll know some of our meals to come!
We did get to do a little
more Culinary Adventures. Two I will share via guest blogger over the
next couple of weeks. My friend, Kate, has a blog called Around the World in 80 Plates
.
This year she plans to "travel" to 80 countries via their special
dishes. This weekend she got both the Philippians and Italy. I hope you
will enjoy those entries as much as you hopefully enjoy mine.
For now, I'll entertain you with our trip to France and then list out our meals for this week.
Kate's adventures are definitely interesting. Having many international friends growing up, I love the dishes of the nation. Unfortunately for me, that doesn't really work well into my husband's eating habits. With trying to teach the boys how to cook and sharing Kate's adventures, I've managed to guilt him into allowing us a little more leeway with our meals.
He's been dubious, but last night he requested more of that German soup. So that's good, right? Another meal he'll eat!
We still have potatoes that need eaten, so I tried out Coach DS for myself. There's a great search button and I told it, "I've got potatoes, what can I make?" One of the meals looked so scrumptious I knew I must make it.
Besides, it came from France. I love France! I started studying French in 6th grade. By the time I stopped partway through my 11th grade, I could read quite well. I'd wanted to go to France, but that has yet to happen. I used my not as great French skills to attempt to butcher the language and translate when Canadians would come into the KFC where I worked. I know it sounds strange, but we did have quite a few French Canadians stroll in each week. Go figure. Let me tell you, it's about as much like Parisian French as Mexico's language is to Spain's. But, if you know one, you can try to muddle through - or so my boss thought.
One of the great things I love about France is cheese. The softer cheeses don't give me near as much distress as harder cheeses. Many know that my body and cow products are not the most happy of friends.
My husband? Not so much. The fancy French cheeses could probably stay in France as far as he's concerned. He's a simple man with simple tastes. Cheddar, Mozzarella, those are the cheeses for him. He thinks he's fancy if he gets Muenster.
Time for some culture... of the dairy sort. I picked Tartiflette for dinner on Sunday night. Comprising this dish you have cheese, potatoes, onion, and some bacon. Yeah, that's about it.
My recipe called for Reblochon. I couldn't even get this into my head. For whatever reason I kept thinking "Toblerone"... guess my sweet tooth was acting up? At any rate, I searched high and low for this darn cheese. Thank goodness Coach DS gave me a shopping list since I couldn't ever keep that name in my head.
I finally turned to the handy dandy internet. Oh goodie - it's hard to find in America. Even in the greater DC area, I guess. Sheesh. Thank goodness, I read the cheese was a lot like brie. Ok, so not exactly the same, but if you think "brie" you can kind of get the idea. Coach DS recommended subbing in Camembert. My Giant happened to be sold out, but I found some at another one. (Actually Kate saw it first and I grabbed it!)
I set the kids to slicing potatoes, onions, and cheese. Now, came the age old question: To rind or not to rind. Consider me gauche, but I just think the rind on Camembert as too thick. I can handle it on brie, but not Camembert. I googled, quickly, but it seemed like people were really torn on this and I made an executive decision. Off with its rind!
Mock me if you will, I don't care. It's the way I like it. It's probably like bread crust here in the States. Some do it, some don't. I'm sure someone in France chops the rind off their Camembert as well.
Here's my cheese, sliced - and I think that mouse is trying to steal some!
Doesn't that cheese look wonderful?
There wasn't much to this meal. You just saute some onions, toss in a few slices of sliced bacon, add in a sliced potato that's been boiled... not too hard. You then put that into a baking dish, top with cheese and bake away.
When it's done, it looks like this:
I pulled this out of the oven and my stomach started rumbling. I dished it up and we dove in like we hadn't eaten all day. Within minutes our plates were empty. It wasn't enough for a meal in of itself, but don't worry about us.
The verdict from Sir Megabyte was: I like this. He LIKES it??? Oh yes he does, he said so! TWICE! Not only that, he decided making up some eggs would be a perfect touch to round out a future meal of Tartiflette!
That's right. You read it here. Not only did he enjoy a meal, he said he liked it, and he's planning for us to have it again! YAY!
Let's return to the States, at least for a time, and talk about some menu plans for this week! I am personally hoping for a more calm week. My potatoes really need to be finished up, so I'm going to attempt my meals finally!
Monday: Pizza Hut Book It - yay for reading and pizza!
Tuesday: Spanish Tortilla (Duh, Spain)
Wednesday: Scavenging Scouts Night
Thursday: Beef Hash (Scandinavia)
Friday: Beef and Pasta Gratin (Another French meal)
Saturday: Spaghetti (yay I can try the new sauce recipe!)
Sunday: Mexican "Un"Stuffed Shells (yay for trying my other new freezer meal!)
Happy Eating!
--Lady O
Sometimes eating the same meals can get frustrating. How many different ways can you package spaghetti? Hamburgers? Chicken?
I found a great new website last week, Once a Month Mom.
Each month they give you an entire menu complete with shopping list and
directions for your big cooking day. That's fantastic, especially for
people just starting out or wanting to find some new ideas.
I thought some of the recipes they offered looked pretty interesting. I sent the link to Sir Megabyte, and he gave his approval to some. I added the ingredients to my shopping list and figured we could see what happened.
Thursday gave me the great opportunity I was looking for, so I gathered my cooking minions and supplies and set to work.
My meals called for a LOT of onions. Joram took to chopping those up while I started some pasta boiling and browning the meat. When he got done, we had just enough onions and they filled up one of the pieces to my stack cooker!
That's a lot of onions! However, we filled the larger piece to the stack cooker with a combination of ground turkey and ground beef:
Talk about a ton of food! My thought with the meat was to appease my husband while giving my gastro-intestinal track a break. He complains now about turkey meat, though he used to not mind it. My stomach pitches a fit if I eat too much cow and ground beef? That's the biggest offender. I split the meat needed in half - so this is half beef and half turkey. I really hope that this can work out because really it is getting difficult as my husband continues to further limit what he will eat and combining that with things that cause me issues.
I cleaned up the skillet and started to saute some onions. After that I needed to throw in some chicken. Four chicken breasts cooked with onions later and I had this:
It already looks good and I hadn't even finished the meal! Now, I know many of you know this: Chicken is on the Banned Food List. I don't care. I used ground beef last round of cooking, though it causes me issues. This round I am using some and I'm making a set of Mexican meals - and I am really not big on Mexican. After then being dragged on Friday to a steakhouse, I am doing this guilt free. I want chicken dangit! My hope is that maybe this meal will end up so yummy, he'll actually like it!
A girl can hope!
With finished pasta, a ton of meat, a plethora of onions, and a load of trays I was ready to move on to the next step.
First up was to finish the chicken meal. I added to the skillet some milk, cream of mushroom soup and cheddar cheese. Once I had a nice sauce with this chicken, it got dumped over pasta already put into trays. I topped with more cheese and some crushed French's Fried Onions. (The noisy minions loved crushing those things! They make for a fun substitution for bread crumbs and we have a bunch we got for free on coupon days.)
Three meals down. The site said it would be four, but I thought it looked too lean. I have growing boys, after all. I have no doubt they will eat it all. Otherwise someone will have a yummy lunch!
At this point I started the spaghetti sauce. What didn't go into this? I have my own recipe, but we thought this would be fun to try. I call this Garbage Sauce. That's about the only thing not going in! Mushrooms, a gazillion cans of tomatoes, and of course sauce and paste. Oh you can't forget a mountain of onions, an entire bottle of dried parsley, need I really go on? After everything went in, including four pounds of the meat mixture, I left it to bubble. Spaghetti sauce gets better if you leave it to do all sorts of things on the stove.
I started to put together the Mexican "Un"stuffed shells next. This was an interesting meal that the site said would make four trays. They did not tell me just how much of this I would end up with. I tried my largest mixing bowl at first, but the food mocked it. I ended up climbing into the top of my pantry and pulling down The Monster Bowl of All Time. have you seen it? It's called "That's a Bowl" and it is made by Tupperware. I could probably sit inside this thing. I have never used it in the something like six years since a person GAVE it to me. (She had two and couldn't believe I didn't have this thing.)
This FILLED the bowl. That is not "a lot" of food. That is a "freaking crazy holy cow how many armies can we feed on this" amount of food.
This had a bit of everything in it, too. I used up one of those Ortega Taco seasonings I got for nearly nothing at Bloom. I boiled two pounds of shells. Two pounds of meat and four cups of onions also joined the party. Then came the jar of salsa, two cups of cheddar, and my personal favourite: 51 ounces of tomato sauce. No wonder that bowl looked like it might take over my kitchen!
Five trays of Mexican "Un"stuffed shells got added to the three of chicken. I made a mental note to adjust my menu for the difference in amounts.
Next came the baked spaghetti. This said I could use whatever type of pasta I wanted. I chose big fat noodles. Why? Cause they are fun! What made this meal interesting was the sauce (store bought) gets mixed with 12 oz of cream cheese. Shhh, don't tell Sir Megabyte. That left the sauce an interesting colour, and I'm hoping he won't notice. It sure sounds wonderful! It also has onions and peppers and a dash of Parmesan cheese. And, if I remember to add it, some fried onions to the top on baking day. Their quote was right on this one - I ended up with two of those puppies.
I turned my attention to the sauce then. If you thought the unstuffed shells was a lot? My saucepan stood on the brink of overflowing! Yikes!
Talk about some good smells in the kitchen. I felt whisked off to some Italian slice of Heaven. Oh you know I tried out this sauce. Woah. Great stuff!
I ended up with four quarts (about the average sized bottle in the store) that I put into bags for the freezer. Some spaghetti goodness will come from that! Left over was a bit over another quart.
I actually called it quits. I wrapped up the sauce in my measuring cup and stuck it in the fridge. I needed to get some more trays as I'd run out, and some lasagna noodles to finish up.
Their recipe said four lasagnas. It got lean on my third, so I only made three. It's fine though because we always end up with a little more lasagna than we can eat, and I can throw in some homemade bread and a salad to round out the meal.
So in the end I wound up with:
5 Mexican "Un"stuffed shells
3 Lasagna
3 Chicken Macaroni Bake
2 Spaghetti Bake
4 Quarts of Spaghetti Sauce
1 pound of meat
Not too bad for an honest day's work, right? Seventeen meals makes me very happy. Eighteen if you count the bag of meat!
At the end of Thursday, this was my stack for the freezer:
Looks great, right?
I'm happy to report the lasagnas have been added, my freezers are getting full, my menu looks great for some time, and I even encouraged a friend to also do some freezer cooking! All fantastic news!
I'll probably end up making some waffles and stuff soon for my freezer. We're nearly out again and it's so much fun to eat our cute waffles instead of eggos. (Though I'm a sucker for my eggos!) I should try to make some other breakfast type things, too.
--Lady O
I was going to post this on Monday. Really, I was! But then I looked at this giant bag of potatoes and figured I needed to make this week's menu plan "The Mondo Potato Edition".
But what can I do to a potato to make it different for a slew of different meals? That got me to thinking the large bag of potatoes could inspire us to try new things - much like Joram's adventure last week!
Nope, no mashed potatoes... that would be far too easy! So off I embarked on another tour through the world's cuisine.
That was when I stumbled upon a brand new site that just wowed me.
You guys know I love my freezer cooking! One big baking day, a ton of meals in my freezer, and life is so much easier for our busy schedules!
I found Onceamonthmom.com - the new site where they give you a menu and a grocery plan for the month! Even better, they set it up for buddy cooking.
Freezer cooking is the bust when you have a buddy or two to help. This gives you the benefit of making more meals, and while a bunch are the same - you get more variety. In Ohio I was part of a freezer cooking swap that was an absolute phenom!
I'm not a great cook (but I'm getting better each year!), so they probably considered my meals the ghetto low rent meals. I can attest that not a one of these ladies ever made a bad meal. In fact, there's a couple that I am now craving. Oh Christy, where's your pot pie now? *SIGH*
Yeah, I'm hungry. And I miss my group. I'd love to freezer meal swap again if anyone is interested.
I picked out my potato meals for the next week and I also spent the day planning for my next big cooking day. I'm going to try some new meals and I'm also going to try some old faves with new recipes.
Of course since I don't have a buddy I then got lost in trying to figure out how to best arrange all these meals so they wouldn't be so right on top of each other.
So there I was on Monday with about 40 meals and how to spread them out all while putting together a shopping list.
That was when I decided Menu Monday was going to really show on Tuesday. After I hit the grocery store for the items needed for my freezer cooking.
That was fine, I had to post about Italy anyway. Right?
Tuesday came and the next thing I knew I was going to a movie when I would have done my shopping. We hit the store after the movie.
My feat was frozen and I had a slew of things to put away so I took a look at my pantry. Insert screaming crazy hysteria HERE.
I love my boys but organization is NOT their forte. I needed to remove everything from the pantry with the cans and reorganize.
While I was at it, I took an inventory. My pantry stock is so great that I really need to start tracking it somehow.
About 2/3rds of the way through the reorganization and inventory the migraine struck. I hate migraines.
And now it is Wednesday. Good grief!
My head is still pounding. Yuck. However I pushed through and did some great work today. Caramon, in his attempt to help, stuck all my meat in the freezer. I got up this morning and had a pile of frozen hard meat.
Guess baking day is tomorrow.
That's OK. It'll give me a blog for tomorrow, right?
So here's my menu plan for this week:
Monday - As you know Pizza Margherita
Tuesday - Baked Potatoes with chili, cheese, and sour cream. YUM!
Tonight - I have early scouts and late scouts so we're hitting Chick Fil A or McD's or something.
Thursday - Spanish Tortilla (Yay a trip to Spain!)
Friday - Beef Hash (Let's check out the Scandanavian countries!)
Saturday
- Friday is Sir Megabyte's birthday but he gets in awful late. I'm
assuming we'll go out to a restaurant of his choice tonight. But this
could get flip flopped. BTW This usually means Japanese steakhouse.
Sunday - Hot Dogs with homemade french fries of course!
How's that sounding for some goodness? Oh yeah! Let's hear it for the yummy yummy!
Now you gotta check out my usefullness thanks to the Google Gods. All that stuff I have done over the past two days?
Menu Plan - I finally gave up doing this on paper. It was far too many meals. I went to my Calendar and formed a new one for Menu planning and laid it all out to there. Because of how many meals and some trips I have my menus planned out through May 19th. That's awesome!
Inventory of Stockpile - It's still rough, but I put together a spreadsheet at google docs. If there's really an interest I can publish it for people to look at. I'd love to hear ideas for what you'd like to see in something like this. I included at the top the list of recommended essentials for a year's supply and then under that I have made sections for our personal needs. Each is broken into groups and there's a place for our goal as well as what we have Now I just need to figure out how to print it neatly for posting on the pantry door.
Freezer Meal Planning - These moms have it going on at that new site. My freezer meals are scattered mostly in emails as well as a magazine and a few cookbooks. I like the thought of having it all together. Plus they even included how many meals each recipe makes. Love it cause I can never remember. I started putting together my own using the recipes of theirs I plan to use as well as a few of my faves. I even found one I'd made like 2 year ago that everyone loved but I completely forgot about! I need to continue to add in our regulars. This is of course over at google docs.
I didn't get to freezer cook today but at least I did a lot of organizing and planning!
Of course all this talk about food has me so hungry today. I can't wait for dinner!
--Lady O
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