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gategrrlI haven't written about food/recipes in a while. I know, I know.
This is simple knowledge, you can find it everywhere, but yes, it DOES help to write out a menu for the week. I tried it both way in the past couple of months. I have to say that NOT writing it out leads to evening frustration, bad planning (der), not-great or healthy meals (if you don't have the ingrediants available for a good meal) etc etc etc, all the reasons you'll find on frugal websites and cooking websites.
This week, I went back to the planning. I sort of stuck with it. There were a couple nights when I simply wasn't in the mood to do any cooking, what with all the driving on those particular days. On those days, I went to the store and picked up frozen pizzas, or made pasta with tomato sauce. That's an old standbye I remember my father relying on whenever we kids visited him on the weekends.
The biggest surprise hits this week were from the South Beach Diet Super Charged book (the large paperback with the silver foiled cover). Keep in mind I've made these recipes before, and although they were received enthusiastically from the adults in the family, the kids were less than happy about them. But THIS time, both kids were very happy. Kids. It's been about a year, so their tastes may have changed.
So: Two Bean Chili Con Carne on page 293
I picked this one because hey, it uses cans of beans, some spices which I already had, an onion, two cans of diced tomatoes, one 8oz can of tomato sauce, some tomato paste (oops, look like I wasn't supposed to use the entire tiny can; I was supposed to use only 1 tblspn!), and that's about it, I think. Oh yes. For added color and crunch, one chopped up green pepper. And I used Bison meat. Very lean. Next time I may go vegetarian with meat flavored soy product, but the protein is necessary for growing kids.
It's simple as hell to mix this one up, and while it was being prepared, both kids, but particularly picky Tall Boy, asked what that awesome smell emanting from the kitchen was. Not on those words, exactly. But it did smell good enough to amp up the anticipation for dinner. Tall Boy ate some-not as much as I thought he would, but I think he'd pigged out on snack food beforehand. Either way, the next day, he wolfed down about a cup and half of the chili.
Next: Homestyle Turkey Meatloaf with Mushrooms and White Beans, on page 212
The name of the dish is self-explanatory. The last time I made it, I froze some left-overs that I ended up tossing some months later. It had a decent response from the family as a whole, and a WTFoo response from Tall Boy, who at the time was Little Guy. THIS time, however, instead of forming the loaf into a...loaf...that would take an hour and 15 minutes to cook (see, the crew was getting hungry), I popped lumps of the stuff into a cupcake tray--you know, the kind that bakes 12 cup cakes at a time? As I sauteed the first stage of the loaf in a pan--that would be onion, garlic, some spices and mushrooms (to replace carb-loaded bread crumbs) again, Tall Boy asked what was cooking, because it smelled GOOD! The cupcake pan reduced the time from 1.25 hours to about 30 minutes.
And I think the "format" of the meat loaf made ALL the difference. The kids were both intrigued that I would make it that way, and as a bonus, because it wasn't overwhelming in size, Tall Boy ended up chowing down on two of the turkey-loaf cupcakes. The white beans didn't gross him out, thank heavens. He actually like them, and didn't pick them out. As a bonus, the Guy ended up fetching the remaining three out of the freezer and chowing down on them later in the evening. And since the Guy has this thing about being served a meal that has more than one item on the plate, I was saved by a bag of Trader Joe's garlic-parmesan seasoned french fries. They were really good. Unfortunately, I had run out of broccolli, our stand-by frozen vegetable. Ah well. No complaints there, anyway. There were beans in the turkeyloaf, so, that made up for it.
I'm definitely getting higher marks when I cook up dinners from "scratch" (ie, partly out of basic canned ingrediants and other fresher ones). Now all I have to do is figure out how to get Tall Boy to stop equating the crap he gets in school with the stuff that I make at home. I think he's starting to "get" that I make better food than the LAUSD food system does, but he's not always entirely convinced.
On Memorial Day, this Monday, we're going to start grilling, and I'll have the Guy grill mounds of veggies. And then I'll use the muffin/cup cake tin again, and make some grilled veggie pastries in them, and some "meat muffins" with pastry. I buy my pastry dough from the store; I am not a pastry chef. Then the food will last out the week, and the Guy and I will have lots of left-over to eat during the week.
This is simple knowledge, you can find it everywhere, but yes, it DOES help to write out a menu for the week. I tried it both way in the past couple of months. I have to say that NOT writing it out leads to evening frustration, bad planning (der), not-great or healthy meals (if you don't have the ingrediants available for a good meal) etc etc etc, all the reasons you'll find on frugal websites and cooking websites.
This week, I went back to the planning. I sort of stuck with it. There were a couple nights when I simply wasn't in the mood to do any cooking, what with all the driving on those particular days. On those days, I went to the store and picked up frozen pizzas, or made pasta with tomato sauce. That's an old standbye I remember my father relying on whenever we kids visited him on the weekends.
The biggest surprise hits this week were from the South Beach Diet Super Charged book (the large paperback with the silver foiled cover). Keep in mind I've made these recipes before, and although they were received enthusiastically from the adults in the family, the kids were less than happy about them. But THIS time, both kids were very happy. Kids. It's been about a year, so their tastes may have changed.
So: Two Bean Chili Con Carne on page 293
I picked this one because hey, it uses cans of beans, some spices which I already had, an onion, two cans of diced tomatoes, one 8oz can of tomato sauce, some tomato paste (oops, look like I wasn't supposed to use the entire tiny can; I was supposed to use only 1 tblspn!), and that's about it, I think. Oh yes. For added color and crunch, one chopped up green pepper. And I used Bison meat. Very lean. Next time I may go vegetarian with meat flavored soy product, but the protein is necessary for growing kids.
It's simple as hell to mix this one up, and while it was being prepared, both kids, but particularly picky Tall Boy, asked what that awesome smell emanting from the kitchen was. Not on those words, exactly. But it did smell good enough to amp up the anticipation for dinner. Tall Boy ate some-not as much as I thought he would, but I think he'd pigged out on snack food beforehand. Either way, the next day, he wolfed down about a cup and half of the chili.
Next: Homestyle Turkey Meatloaf with Mushrooms and White Beans, on page 212
The name of the dish is self-explanatory. The last time I made it, I froze some left-overs that I ended up tossing some months later. It had a decent response from the family as a whole, and a WTFoo response from Tall Boy, who at the time was Little Guy. THIS time, however, instead of forming the loaf into a...loaf...that would take an hour and 15 minutes to cook (see, the crew was getting hungry), I popped lumps of the stuff into a cupcake tray--you know, the kind that bakes 12 cup cakes at a time? As I sauteed the first stage of the loaf in a pan--that would be onion, garlic, some spices and mushrooms (to replace carb-loaded bread crumbs) again, Tall Boy asked what was cooking, because it smelled GOOD! The cupcake pan reduced the time from 1.25 hours to about 30 minutes.
And I think the "format" of the meat loaf made ALL the difference. The kids were both intrigued that I would make it that way, and as a bonus, because it wasn't overwhelming in size, Tall Boy ended up chowing down on two of the turkey-loaf cupcakes. The white beans didn't gross him out, thank heavens. He actually like them, and didn't pick them out. As a bonus, the Guy ended up fetching the remaining three out of the freezer and chowing down on them later in the evening. And since the Guy has this thing about being served a meal that has more than one item on the plate, I was saved by a bag of Trader Joe's garlic-parmesan seasoned french fries. They were really good. Unfortunately, I had run out of broccolli, our stand-by frozen vegetable. Ah well. No complaints there, anyway. There were beans in the turkeyloaf, so, that made up for it.
I'm definitely getting higher marks when I cook up dinners from "scratch" (ie, partly out of basic canned ingrediants and other fresher ones). Now all I have to do is figure out how to get Tall Boy to stop equating the crap he gets in school with the stuff that I make at home. I think he's starting to "get" that I make better food than the LAUSD food system does, but he's not always entirely convinced.
On Memorial Day, this Monday, we're going to start grilling, and I'll have the Guy grill mounds of veggies. And then I'll use the muffin/cup cake tin again, and make some grilled veggie pastries in them, and some "meat muffins" with pastry. I buy my pastry dough from the store; I am not a pastry chef. Then the food will last out the week, and the Guy and I will have lots of left-over to eat during the week.
