Menu Planning Monday

I'm still working on the Monthly Meal Planning Project, but have sort of gotten side-tracked by trying new recipes in my new slow cooker. Anyway, here's what's cooking this week:

Saturday: Roast chicken
Sunday: Fondue (Frederic and I ate this after the kids were in bed while watching a movie!)
Monday: Chicken in mushroom sauce with brown rice (a healthy version of the Cambell's soup recipe, made in the slow cooker). So far, this is smelling really good.
Tuesday: Burritos
Wednesday: Broccoli Beef (slow cooker)
Thursday: Roast vegetables and sausage (slow cooker)
Friday: Onion breaded chicken, and I might try this recipe for slow cooker chocolate mousse in honor of our visitors!

My new blog find

For meal organization: http://jennshomework.blogspot.com/

Haf, help me sort through all this information!!!

Monthly Meal Planning

That's right, I am ready for the Next Evolution. My ideal: one Aligro trip per month for meat, one online grocery trip per month for dry goods and household supplies, one mid-week market trip per month for fruits and veggies, and some additional fruit/veggie/bread runs by Frederic during the week.

Today's task was to come up with 30ish meals, and here's how I did:

Meat-based meals (17)
meatloaf *2
Chicken tacos *2
Sausage pizza *2
Roast chicken *2
Lemon chicken thighs *2
Onion chicken *2
Burgers *1
Salmon *3
Enchiladas *1

Vegetarian Meals (13)
fondue *1
Burritos *1
Pain perdu *1
Veg soup *2
Stir fry *1
omlettes *2
Pasta *2
quiche *1
Mushroom pizza *2

I clearly need to work on my vegetarian-meals-that-don't-contain-cheese list.

Stay tuned- August will be my first trial month, although we'll be having visitors for two weeks, so it might get complicated.

Fondue Chinoise

Last night, we inaugurated our new fondue chinoise kit- it holds hot broth, wine, or oil, and you cook pieces of meat or vegetable in it, then dip the meat into your choice of several sauces. Served here with chips, beet salad (Merci Denise!) and cucumber salad. It was delicious!
This week's menu, in no particular order:

homemade pizza with mushrooms
turkey cutlets with cranberry sauce compote
salmon
chili
pork chops with cherry sauce

Unfortunately, I have compoletely lost my appetite, especially for meat. Trying hard to keep putting on some weight for baby's sake! So what if the baby is composed mostly of chocolate milk? That never hurt anyone, right?

Menu Planning... Friday?

I know, I'm really ahead of schedule this week, but the stores will be closed Wednesday-Friday, so I've got to be well-organized!

Saturday: Fun Planet
Sunday: Chicken Satay from my new cookbook (Thanks, Marc and Haf!)
Monday: Tacos
Tuesday: Mexican omlettes
Wednesday: drum roll please... Foie gras on toast points (Dena), Butternut Squash and Roasted Garlic Soup, Cornish Game Hens, Mashed Potatoes, Bacon-Leek Stuffing, 2 Cranberry Sauces (Dena), and Brownies (Dena)
Thursday: Big Christmas lunch at Frederic's mom's, nachos or quesadillas for dinner if we're still hungry
Friday: Chicken soup using leftovers from Wednesday and pressure-cooker chicken stock from the game hen scraps

I'm bound and determined this week not to let any of my homemade salsa go to waste! Usually, I make a batch but we only get through half of it.

Just another Menu Monday

In no particular order...

- Chicken and cheese enchildadas (making 2 batches, 1 to freeze for Sweetie while I'm away...) with salad
- Spaghetti with homemade sauce (again, doubling the sauce to freeze some) and some kind of veggie
- Vegetable soup with crumbled bacon on top (double batch)
- Tostadas with more homemade salsa
- Hamburgers with oven fries
- Homemade pizza of some kind. I completely forgot to buy ingredients for this besides cheese, so we'll see what kind of pizza we feel like later in the week.

What's for dinner?

Sunday: Chana Daal and basmati rice (I was going to make up my own recipe for lentil curry, but Naazlin's mom provided us with REAL Indian food... who can say no to that?)
Monday: Vegetarian tacos with homemade salsa
Tuesday: Meatloaf and steamed carrots
Wednesday: Salmon and salad
Thursday: Omlettes and roasted new potatoes
Friday: Sweet and sour chicken with brown rice

Chicken stock in the pressure cooker, as requested

Here's what I did:

I took the whole remaining carcass, which still had quite a bit of meat on it, and put it in the pressure cooker. I then added water, approximately 4 cups, until the pressure cooker was 2/3 full. This didn't quite submerge the carcass, but close. I then added in the leftover roast carrots (maybe half a carrot worth) and quartered a yellow onion and added that too. I shut the cooker, brought it up to high pressure, and let it cook for 25 minutes.

The soup recipe I will be making tomorrow requires 6 cups of broth, so I added an extra 2 cups of water to the tupperware I wanted to store the broth in, then poured the contents of the pressure cooker into the tupperware through a strainer. I picked through the strainer and got quite a bunch of good meat to add to the stock. I discarded bones, skin, vegetables, and anything that wasn't clearly meat.

I stored it in the fridge, and this morning I skimmed the fat off the top of the stock. Tomorrow I'll bring it to boil, and add in my chicken soup veggies (carrots and celery) along with parsley, and I'll add some rice too. Yum yum! Not sure if I'll cook the soup in the pressure cooker or on the stove top, depends on how much time I have!

Menu Plan Monday

Monday : Roast Chicken with veggies
Tuesday : Chili with corn bread
Wednesday : Chicken and rice soup, made with Monday's chicken carcass... this will be a first try at making homemade broth
Thursday : Shrimp stir fry with whatever veggies I find at the market
Friday : Spaghetti squash with homemade spaghetti sauce on top

The great thing about this week's food is that I will be cooking it in my new Lodge cast iron cookware.

*** Update *** Just got done picking through the chicken stock and carcass to get all the meat off. The stock smells great. I used the pressure cooker, so it only took 30 minutes!

Menu Monday

Sunday: Raclette at Dena's
Monday: Spaghetti with homemade sauce
Tuesday: Onion breaded chicken breasts
Wednesday: French onion soup and salad
Thursday: Pineapple chicken curry
Friday: Falafels

This Week's Menu and Midwife Musings

I know Haf, it's supposed to be menu planning Monday, but I plan my menus on Saturdays!!!

Saturday: Fun Planet Pizza
Sunday: Meatloaf and salad
Monday: Chili (from freezer stash) and cornbread
Tuesday: Chickpea and red bean tacos with homemade salsa
Wednesday: Pork mango picadillo with quinoa
Thursday: Potato-leek soup
Friday: Salmon with steamed veggies

I'm supposed to eat more lentils, says my midwife, and try out some buffalo meat. I need a little bit of an iron boost, but am trying to avoid supplementation. I flat out refused the horse meat suggestion, and had to decline liver as well. I've tried it several times, both rabbit and chicken, and just can't do it! Something about the texture.

The horse meat conversation went something like this:

"Horse meat is very healthy and low in choloesterol, as well as high in iron. You should try to include more of that."
"I don't eat horse meat."
"What? Why not?"
"Well, Americans don't really eat horse meat. And I'm afraid it's one of those things that, if you don't eat from an early age, you just can't fathom eating."
"But that's so strange! It tastes really good."
"I'm sure it does, and I'm sure that dog meat tastes really great as well, but I'm not going to eat it just because Vietnamese people do. Horses are firmly in the pet category for me."
Much laughter

My midwife is very much "straight off the farm", which I love. There was much bulging of eyes when I told her I'd voluntarily joined the US Air Force at 17 years old, and other strange facets of my life history. She did, however, highly encourage me to pursue midwifery, and told me that if I could manage to give injections and take blood, all of the rest of the job could be done with my eyes closed (or with no central vision, as the case may be). This was very encouraging, as I think even with compromised central vision, I coudl use many of the low-vision aids available to do a precise task like take blood or stitch someone up if need be.

Sunday at the lake, and this week's menu

We spent Sunday afternoon down at the lake, where Eliot learned how to throw stones into the water. He would have happily continued for hours and hours, but his mean parents did eventually drag him away.
What's cooking this week...

Saturday: Beef stew
Sunday: Snow pea and pepper salad with grilled lamb and Asian dressing
Monday: Onion breaded chicken with salad and asparagus
Tuesday: Chickpea and vegetable curry
Wednesday: Pork chops with cherry-port sauce with artichokes and peas
Thursday: Fish fillets with asparagus
Friday: Probably Fun Planet
We're doing our best to avoid refined carbs and get two veggies instead.

Saturday Menu

This idea is stolen from Hafsa. Since we grocery shop on Saturdays though, I'm going to post this week's menu today! This week is a bit heavy on the chicken, but anyway...

Saturday: Crepes with Frederic' mom and brother in Yverdon
Sunday: Chili with cornbread and salad
Monday: Chicken and asparagus stir fry with brown rice
Tuesday: Chicken and pineapple-banana curry with salad and quinoa
Wednesday: Vegetarian tacos with homemade salsa
Thursday: Roast chicken with carrots and artichokes
Friday: Salmon with peas

And, just to amuse you Americans in the crowd, I'm posting a photo showing how we cram one week of groceries for three people into a dorm sized fridge. The only thing missing from this photo is salmon, some milk, and possibly some artichokes which I'll buy Wednesday at the market. I think this is evidence enough that video games, particularly Tetris, do have some real life applications.And here's enough fruit to satisfy a colony of fruit bats...