Thursday, October 19, 2017

What's For Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, when it came to eating last week, I am proud to report that we did, indeed eat *laugh*.  Honestly, though, I can't remember everything I made and I sure didn't go off of a menu plan.  This week I'm determined to get back into the menu planning swing of things.

About the most exciting thing I can think to report that we ate last week was I tried a recipe for Slow Cooker Swedish Meatballs.  Our opinion of these.  Well, my husband seemed to like them and ate them willingly a couple of days for his work lunch.  I used egg noodles in the recipe as we had those to use and that seemed to work well for the pasta.  But the flavor...I don't know.  They had this kind of odd liverwurst flavor to them as leftovers and I made a double batch to make sure we did, indeed, have left overs as the recipe sounded good on paper.  They weren't BAD, but I can't say they blew my mind. 

The biggest thing I noticed was a HUGE amount of waste of liquid in the recipe.  I mean after you added the liquid and let the meatballs cook and then followed the rest of the directions you literally had meatball and noodle soup and a pretty soupy soup at that.  I had to take a slotted spoon and fish out the meatballs and the noodles to make dinner.  I ended up throwing away probably eight cups of liquid because once you added the milk the liquid wasn't going to freeze well.  I also found that by following the directions for the roux portion of the recipe where you mix the roux with the milk...well you don't get a bubbly sauce, you get library paste.  As soon as I added the milk to the roux I knew that was going to happen and sure enough, it set up into library paste in no time flat.  I ended up taking ladles of the liquid from the crock pot and adding them to the roux until I had probably six cups of liquid (since I doubled the recipe it took a bit of liquid) just to get the lumps out of the roux mixture enough to mix in with the main dish.

Overall, would I make it again?  Maybe.  But I'd change up the flavors a bit and definitely cut down on the liquid content.  But, that's me.  The results, post fishing out of the soup, are seen up top there.

When it has come to dessert making with the snickerdoodles and the rhubarb dream bars...well those STILL haven't happened due to winter preparations going into overdrive and just plain being busy with appointments and speech therapy and things.  I did make a Halloween themed cake tonight for dessert since I found a cake mix that needed to be used up and I found the one lowly can of Halloween frosting I'd bought on clearance last year when it was 75% off.  My daughter helped spread the sprinkles on top of the cake and had a blast this afternoon.  I'd say, so far, Halloween treats are going pretty well this month :).  At least we're having fun around here.

The only fly in the ointment when it comes to making additional soups and treats and things for me this week is that I need to find time to can the sauerkraut as it's done fermenting and thus needs to be canned up.  So, I'm HOPING to do that tomorrow so that I can put away my canner and things for now, but we'll see how it goes (I have so much jelly and jam in the pantry right now, I plain don't need to make the additional peach jelly right now, so I'm not sure if I'll do it or not).

So here's the "Food Goals" for this week, or menu plan if you prefer ;).

Wednesday:  Steak, rice pilaf (mix from pantry) and peaches

Thursday:  Chicken noodle soup with easy home made noodles

Friday:  Cheesy Chicken Casserole

Saturday:  Pancakes, bacon, eggs

Sunday:  Fried Chicken, biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy, canned coleslaw (from pantry)

Monday:  Tortellini Bacon and Pea Alfredo

Tuesday:  Red Beans and Rice

Breakfasts:  Oatmeal, granola, leftover pancakes, cinnamon rolls (to make Saturday), toast (make bread Saturday)

Desserts:  Halloween cake, Soft and Chewy Snickerdoodles (to make Saturday)

Other things to make:  Slow Cooker French Onion Soup (for freezer), Tortellini Sausage Soup (sans tortellini for the freezer),  Rainbow Chocolate Candy Cookies (for a treat for daughter's lunches), home made Crunch bars (put in freezer when done for Halloween treats), home made Wowbutter Cups (put in freezer for Halloween treats...I'm going to mess with the filling to make it more "peanut butter cup" like), No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies (sub Wowbutter for the peanut butter).  I've found that soy butter tastes the most like peanut butter (to me) until you actually bake it and then it just kind of tastes too soy-like for me, so I'm hoping by doing no bake applications it'll come out more peanut butter tasting...I can hope anyway.

And yeah...my calendar is officially full for the next week I think *laugh*.  I am hoping to get a bunch of this stuff made and put up for later, though, as that will make my life a lot easier when things like life intervene or I get sick.

So, how about you?  Making anything good this week?

6 comments:

  1. Hi Erika! I have never commented before, but love reading your blog. I know in previous posts you have talked about ordering different foods from Amazon Prime. I'm not sure if it is available in your area, but there is an app called Ibotta and you can get money back on your amazon purchases now. You can also get money back from different grocery stores as well. I think you can just download the app or even sign-up online. I don't think you need a referral code, but if you would like one I can give you one, just let me know!

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    1. I am signed up for Ibotta, Ebates and all of those, but just don't seem to find time to mess with them. Swagbucks takes any free time I can swing at the moment. Thanks for the recommend, though. I appreciate it :).

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  2. I have a great recipe for making swedish meatballs on the stove. No liquid issues and I love the flavor. Other than forming the meatballs, it's pretty quick and easy.

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    1. Do you have a link or a recipe you can share? I'd love to try it!

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  3. I've baked quite a few things this week, including gluten-free double chocolate loaf cake for the second time. I made some breadsticks and rolls, which are somewhat like hockey pucks, so I will use another recipe another time. It's hard to get the gluten-free rolls right.

    We had hamburgers, salad, coconut shrimp, baked potatoes, and Eritrean food with my friend. Today, that was lentils, meat chunks, injera bread, hard boiled eggs, and freshly made coffee (from coffee beans roasted in front of me, then ground, then made into coffee. I took the chocolate loaf cake and some cheese to share. (There was so much food, I just left the cheese there--we never ate it)

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    1. I highly recommend the site, "Allergy Free Alaska". Megan is not only a sweetheart but her gluten free breads are awesome. And I do not say that lightly :).

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