What's for Dinner: The Next Two Weeks of Dinners

Hey all!  Long time, no contact.

Life has been...doing...around here.  All I can say is puberty combined with severe autism just leads to life being really challenging.  Honestly, I've been really busy just scrambling from day to day trying to keep a petulant teen calm...well...calmer.  It is challenging, stressful and hard.  It is what it is, but it doesn't make it any easier.

I've adapted.  Instead of having a list of things I need to do every day, I instead am happy if I get one side task done per day.  For instance, yesterday was a kind of off day, but Alvah wasn't extremely unstable, so I was able to vacuum down the stairs and the lower floor in between mood issues.  The day before I was able to speed clean the bathrooms...things like that.

I am working hard on keeping on top of housework so I can focus on Alvah as he is unpredictable at the moment and is demanding on my time and energy.  I, for years, have folded my clothes downstairs on my bed as it gives me a nice big work surface to fold said laundry and it was on the same floor as the laundry room, so it made sense.  I adapted and put one of the leaves in the kitchen table and I just strip the tablecloth off of the table and fold the laundry upstairs.  I was falling further and further behind on laundry before doing that as I had to keep Alvah basically within easy distance.  I have started cooking early in the day and at times just reheating even our main dishes when my husband gets home from work as it was just too challenging to get it done without tons of stress at dinner time.  Tonight I am grilling, but I the chicken I'm grilling is thin cut to cut down on time needed to prepare...things like that have become necessary.  Next big tackle is removing my sewing machine from my sewing table downstairs so I can use it on my kitchen table as well to get mending and necessary sewing projects done here soon.  Sometimes life is just like this, ya know?

In between everything, I focused on my major task that I was working on the last few days, which was trying to fix my dishwasher.  It suddenly, out of the blue, started leaving a white film on all of the dishes and it was a kind of sticky, yucky film.  I had, luckily, been able to keep on top of the dishes before it started giving me fits, so in between dish loads, I put the dishwasher through a few cleaning cycles.  It didn't help.  I always keep on top of keeping the dishwasher filter clean, so I knew that wasn't the cause of the problems, so I finally did what a person had recommended online and figured out how to remove the sprayers from the dishwasher to clean them out.  I'd never been able to figure out how to remove the bottom sprayer in the dishwasher, but was finally able to walk through it with step by step instructions someone had typed out for a person on how to deep clean a dishwasher online (thank you kind stranger for leaving that for me to find).  After I cleaned the clogs out of the bottom sprayer, I then pulled the bottom of the dishwasher apart and cleaned everything I could find (which some of it was kind of gross, I ain't gonna lie), cleaned around the door and anything else I could think of.  I then put the dishwasher through another cleaning cycle and am happy to say that what I did worked!  The dishwasher is working as good as new now, which was a relief as I was really starting to get worried we were looking at a costly repair or something.  The dishwasher is nearly 7 years old now (which is incredible to me as in my mind it is still new *laugh*) and with how things are meant to just break at a certain age...I was concerned let's put it that way.

So, now that I've gone through a bunch of stuff, let's get to the menu plan for the next couple of weeks.  We've actually already gone through some of the groceries that were in the fridge as we picked up groceries on Sunday instead of later in the week like we would normally as my husband and I got grocery store sushi to do our anniversary dinner that day, so the shots of the fridge are missing some produce.  I have worked hard to prep any produce I can as soon as I can to keep my nights more stress free around mealtime, so I already cut up and put a cabbage into the freezer (to use for stir fry, soups and the like later on), we ate the chard I bought with dinner last night and I cut up the lettuce I bought and put it into freezer bags with some paper towels to turn into salad over the next few weeks.  And we ate through some of the fresh fruit as well.  So, I'm going to start the menu plan from Monday as that is when we actually started eating from the groceries I bought.  And then I'll list what other dinners are on the agenda over the next few weeks as well.  So, let's get to it!

Dinners We've Had So Far:

Monday:  Leftover smoked turkey (I had a smoked turkey in the freezer we got with a holiday deal a few years back in the freezer, so pulled it out to use it up) and sides.

Tuesday:  Ham and Cheese quiche, chard, fresh fruit.  I am on a quest to use up food storage that is close to its "use by" date or past it, and one of the things we needed to use up was a big #10 can of egg powder I had from a breakfast food storage kit I bought a long time ago.  I've so far used some of the eggs for breakfast bowls for my husband, used some by baking some pound cakes (we ate one and then I put the others in the freezer) and than I used them to make two quiches yesterday (I made the other one with smoked turkey, sharp cheddar cheese and some basil and put it in the freezer for a quick dinner later on).

Wednesday (today):  Hawaiian chicken,  coconut milk rice, tropical fruit (I just add the pineapple from the can I use to get the pineapple juice for the chicken recipe to a can of Dole's tropical fruit and we are good to go) and salad.

Thursday:  Sweet and Sour Pork over rice (planning on making this in the slow cooker to keep the house cool as it is supposed to be hot, for us, the next bit).

Friday:  Pizza, salad, breadsticks, salad with home made Italian dressing.  For dessert:  Cherry pie (Fourth of July and all).

Saturday:  French Dip sandwiches (I made ciabatta rolls yesterday for these to make them a bit more special), french fries, coleslaw (I'm just using pre-shredded veggies in a bagged salad kit and then making up a dressing for it).

And that's about where my ability to plan actual day meals is petering out, so on the agenda for next week's meals in no particular order would be...

• Burgers on homemade bread, mac and cheese and salad.
• Pork steaks with baked potatoes and green beans
• Baked Potato soup with home made bread
• Chinese food night (chicken chow mein, sweet and sour pork or other dish)
• Spaghetti, garlic bread and salad.
• Club sandwiches with french fries (I have been CRAVING a club sandwich, so chef's privilege ;). 
• Pizza night (we have pizza usually once a week, so I'm just going to write it down)

And there you go folks.  Our meals for the next bit.  Since I only shop every couple of weeks, this is how I tend to plan out meals now.  I'll plan a few meals and add ingredients to the shopping list to help break up usual "go to" meals in between grocery trips (like the coleslaw kit), but otherwise I just plan around what ingredients we have and what we might want to eat and then I just concrete meals in as I go (sometimes I speed up what I'm going to make from a certain day as produce starts going bad faster than I thought it might, etc).  This has been working pretty well and has allowed me to keep a steady supply of just enough left overs to send to work with my husband for his lunches to help cut down on eating out costs (as eating out will eat your lunch (financially)...pun intended ;).

Enjoy!

Food Preparation Day Recap

Last weekend I had a pretty big food prep day so I thought I’d share what I made with you all to hopefully maybe give you some ideas or inspiration.

Let’s start with chocolate syrup.  Our supply ran out and we have found that Hershey syrup does not keep anymore.  We’ve had it mold twice and that was enough for us (used to keep indefinitely in the fridge…no longer).  We used up the other stuff we found on Amazon but the price on that stuff went through the roof, so I made my own this time around.

I used this recipe.  I ended up having to add more sugar and water than was called for to stop it from tasting grainy and getting the cocoa powder to incorporate completely.  But, it is tasty.  Richer and less sweet than Hershey syrup (not a bad thing to me), but good.  Hopefully it keeps well.

I then made a pot of Japanese style curry one night and froze the left overs in individual portions this day.  I love Japanese curry, the family doesn’t mind it but they don’t adore it like me.  So, I froze the left overs for easy and yummy lunches for me.  Note:  I just follow the directions on the curry roux box for portions of onions, carrots and such, but I do like to double up the curry roux to make a really nice, thick curry :).

I also made a big pot of cabbage roll soup and froze the left overs that day as well.  My husband loves Erbswurst pea soup when he isn’t feeling well…I love cabbage roll soup. I ran out of it in the freezer so I was thrilled to add it back for easy meals later :).

I made two types of no cook ice cream as ice cream is ridiculously expensive anymore.   I made chocolate and vanilla.  My daughter is delighted with the chocolate ice cream as it is her absolute favorite (a nice, rich, chocolate ice cream).

Side note:  I wanted to thank the kind soul who sent me this ice cream maker off of my wish list a few years ago (they didn’t include their name when they sent it).  It has a compressor in it so you can freeze the ice cream on the spot and not waste freezer space with a bowl that has to freeze beforehand.  Unfortunately (true to form) Amazon doesn't ship this to Alaska anymore, so I didn't do an associate link to the ice cream maker (just a regular link to share for anyone who might be interested).  I had wanted one and found one that actually shipped to Alaska but it was so expensive that I just figured it would sit on my wish list forever.  I got two uses out of my new bowl style ice cream maker before the bowl started leaking white stuff around the seal, so I was very grateful to get it! 

I then made up a batch of breakfast sausage and the next day made up a batch of pancakes (I make sourdough pancakes so they ferment overnight) to make pancake wraps to go with the husband’s breakfast options.  This time I only got three wraps because the sausage was local sausage I wanted to try and it came with less links than the store bought sausage (good stuff though), as each wrap takes two sausages to put together.  My husband raided a few links for breakfast that morning which helped to reduce the amount of wraps possible too lol. 

I cut up what was left of a loaf of bread and made French toast that morning as well and my husband ate some for breakfast with the sausage.  The other 3 pieces went in the freezer for breakfast for someone later on.

I had been putting off breakfast bowls because I’ve been very tired (Alvah not sleeping the last month) and didn’t want to cut up and cook potatoes, but when I was cleaning out my little veggie scrap bags out of the freezer to make some stock I found a bag of hash brown diced potatoes that I had made and had gotten buried.  So, I pulled out some ground sausage, a dozen eggs and some cheese and made the husband some more breakfast bowls.  Glad to get those back in the freezer because my husband loves them so much.

Then I pulled out the thing of bacon I had defrosted and made some Erbswurst.  My husband loves it when he has a cold (tons of protein in it), so I was glad to restock it as he was nearly out.

Next up I took some fresh Granny Smith apples that no one but me would eat, cut them up and used them to make a double batch of apple cinnamon crumble muffins as they were starting to go soft and needed to be used.  I made a double batch because that was exactly how much cut up apple I had.  I skipped the glaze for the sake of less mess.  These are yummy and come out super soft!  I kept out six to eat and put the rest in the freezer for easy breakfast fare some weekends.

Lastly I took some strawberries I had bought fresh at a good price but were not holding up well, at all, and macerated them in sugar so they would keep better for desserts or to eat on yogurt or something.  They are now in a quart jar in my fridge and I’m going to use the rest of them to make strawberry panna cotta with tomorrow.  Great way to hold fruit over (macerating with sugar) just a bit longer if you need a hack for that.

And there you go folks.  One full day of meal prep.  But, it stopped food from going bad and put a bunch more options in our fridge and freezer.  I call that a win!

What's for Dinner: Our Weekly Menu Plan

Here's something I haven't done in a while, but I thought I'd share what our menu plan is looking like for the week.  This "plan" is just that...a plan.  We'll be getting paid this week, which means we'll be picking up our groceries this week as well, so depending on availability of items I might have to change up what we are eating to adapt.

Can I just say, though, how much I love doing grocery pick up?  The biggest advantage I've found is that I can start adding things to my basket two weeks before I actually have to go grocery shopping, so I have plenty of time to figure out needs versus wants, if I should pick up a couple more of certain items or not (depending on how much the final bill will be and how much we need to put into savings that week) and most importantly I can make SURE we are living within our grocery budget, so rises in prices are calculated online for me so I don't have a shock bill when I go to the store and trying to do it all on the fly.  I don't have to worry about dragging Alvah through the store and having him get grumpy waiting in long lines.  I can just go, pick up groceries and go home.  Really if there is one thing that came out of Covid that I appreciate it is the entire concept of pick up and go groceries.

Also, please enjoy the kind of sparse fridge shot above.  It is pay week, so it gets kind of empty as we prepare to fill it up for the next couple of weeks of meals at the end of the week.  

In other news, I want to thank everyone for supporting the blog that orders through my associate links for Amazon.  It has really helped me to get things we need around the house.  Like our fridge is slowly breaking from age as the shelves and plastic give out from plastic fatigue and things just get too old and brittle.  One of the things that broke a long while ago was our deli drawer.  My husband looked at it and kept trying to figure out a way to fix it, but really he was figuring it was a losing battle.  I saved up my associate fees and was able to find these drawers (associate link) and ordered them.  They just clip onto the underside of the fridge shelves and they are kind of small, but they get things like boxes of butter or little bits of cheese or my daughter's deli ham off of the fridge shelves and I'll tell you what it makes things so much easier and less awkward.  I can even fit a few containers of left over veggies and things into them so they don't get buried into the back of the fridge.  Weird the way you don't miss things like a deli drawer until it's gone.

Anyway, onto the menu plan for this week.  

Weekly Menu List 

Grilled chicken, coleslaw, Mac and cheese

Cuban sandwiches, roasted carrots, canned pears

Hawaiian chicken, coconut rice, tropical fruit

Pizza night (Friday)

Burgers, coleslaw, oven fries

Greek chicken, greek salad, Tzatziki sauce, pita bread

Salmon, Japanese style, miso soup, rice, fruit (fruit cocktail)

Days for Dinners:

• Monday:  Grilled Chicken (marinated in Italian Dressing), coleslaw, Mac and Cheese.  

The coleslaw recipe was good, but I am going to add more vinegar to it next time as we like a more tangy coleslaw.  But, I was able to use up the cabbage that was left over from St. Patrick's Day that has been sitting in the fridge.  I think we are going to eat coleslaw more this summer as it really hit the spot.

• Tuesday:  Hawaiian Chicken, coconut cilantro rice and tropical fruit (this stuff, associate link)...the tropical fruit is one of our favorite side dishes to have and I do try to ration it as it isn't the cheapest thing to have in the pantry...good stuff though.

• Wednesday:  Cuban sandwiches on sourdough bread (use ground Cuban meat in the freezer), roasted carrots, canned pears (we have a bunch of pears to go through)

• Thursday:  Burgers on sourdough buns, oven fries, coleslaw (I have more cabbage, so I am going to make more coleslaw).

• Friday:  Homemade pizza night on sourdough pizza crust.

• Saturday:  Greek chicken, Greek salad, Tzatziki sauce (recipe on the Greek chicken/chicken gyros recipe), pita bread

For the salad I will be using yellow onion as that is what I have, black olives instead of Kalamata olives and crumbled feta instead of chunked as that is what I have on hand...to help keep costs down as the produce alone will cost enough.  I haven't had Greek salad in YEARS and it sounds really good, so I am going to try and afford the produce to make it...we'll see how expensive the groceries get by the end of the week as I might have to cut it out...we shall see).

• Sunday:  Japanese style salmon, rice, miso soup, fruit cocktail or fresh fruit (depending on availability).

I'm not sure if I have enough frozen salmon to have it, so I'll have to check the freezer, so I might have to change the plan, but we shall see.

So there you go folks.  Our tentative menu plan for this week.  I'm hoping I can use up things in the freezer that need to be used up (like the salmon) and just keep getting things more and more streamlined and organized around here.

Enjoy!

Menu Plan for the Next Two Weeks

I really want to start sharing some of the things I’m buying every two weeks and then show what I’m going to make with those items, so you guys can get an idea of how I’m shopping now, but lately I’ve been so busy that I just plain haven’t had the time to put the groceries out and take pictures of them. I’m hoping to do better, but this time around, please enjoy the shot of the egg rolls I was able to get on sale cheap with a coupon (I'm hoping to make them last several meals, but if they are good my husband might just take some to work for lunch one day in the next few weeks...we shall see) to transition into what I’m making for dinner the next two weeks. 

 I’ve been trying to work in about four “fun”meals into the menu plan every two weeks, so that there’s a meal that I can pull out and have fun making and my family can enjoy something different from the usual pool of meals I can find myself pulling from. So, here is the meals I’m going to be pulling from the next couple of weeks. 

1. These first two meals are using up left over beef roast that is in the fridge. 

Asian beef shishkabobs (I’m doing an experiment to see if marinating rare cooked beef works to infuse different flavors into the meat...we shall see as I have some slices of beef marinating in the fridge right now for tomorrow) with rice and salad. 

2. Beef fajitas (cook up leftover chicken thighs with the beef to make chicken and beef fajitas), Spanish rice, refried beans and cornbread. 

3. Pad thai (I use almonds to make the nutty topping instead of peanuts) with shrimp and chicken. Egg rolls as a side. 

4. Manicotti (use leftover meat sauce from making spaghetti in the fridge), salad, garlic toast. 

5. Individual chicken pot pies (make a few for freezer if there is anything left over) with sourdough pie crust. 

6. German flavored pork roast, cabbage and apples, bread and butter. Sloppy joes with homemade mac and cheese, corn on the cob. 

7. Cuban sandwiches (pull Cuban pork out of the freezer), potato chips or oven fries, canned fruit (of some type). 

8. Swedish meatballs, over noodles (or home made mashed potaotes), cranberry relish (from freezer) with horseradish on the side. Cheese biscuits, creamy cauliflower soup. Sauteed greens (from freezer) 

9. Chicken Caesar Salad. 

10. Malibu chicken? 

11. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, Julia Child’s creamed carrots. 

12. Chicken carbonara, salad or green beans 

13. Hamburger Philly “Cheesesteak” sandwiches. Pavlova for dessert. 

14. Sourdough soft pretzels, bratwurst, sauerkraut.

And there you go folks.  My "tentative menu" for the next two weeks.  I am thinking of updating the list with a link to recipes I used a bit later and give you my opinion on how the recipes turned out, so hopefully I can get to that.

Enjoy! 

Happenings and What We've Been Eating (With Links to Recipes)

I look at pictures and videos of people growing seeds in preparation of growing season and am looking out the window to snow falling this morning (April 6th...seriously weather, stop it and give us Spring.  Please?!?).

By the way, love my Moomins calendar?  I got it for a birthday gift and I LOVE it!!!!  I'm a huge Moomin fan, so getting a calendar is super exciting for me *laugh*.  We watch the old 90s Moomin cartoons on YouTube (you can even hit the Moomin Official channel on YouTube to watch them, so don't feel guilty watching them there :) and really enjoy them.

It has been a month, again, since I last blogged.  A lot of that has been due to the fact that life has been crazy busy, but some of that is due to other things, like my husband got rear ended while stopped and waiting for someone to turn (so, legally parked basically).  Luckily, the teenager that hit him didn't even try to blame anyone but himself for the accident and even if he had my husband has a dash cam, so the insurance companies have been really nice about everything.  We'll have to wait for parts to replace the back bumper and a few parts like that, but considering how hard the guy hit my husband we were pretty lucky.  So far, my husband has been okay since the accident other than getting a stress headache the day it happened (go figure, right?).  Not sure if this is going to do anything to our insurance premiums considering it was still a claim, even if it wasn't our fault or anything, so we'll see how that goes.  So far, so good, as the saying goes.

I also had all of Alvah's evaluations for his three year check up to get through for school, which was a lot of e-mailing back and forth with his team to get goals and things figured out.  We've been trying to get caught up on homeschool stuff and I've been working on getting the curriculums figured out for the kids for next year as well and both kids are now swimming twice a week (Armina is an intern at the pool where she's working toward her water safety certification, so she's working five hours a week on top of school and her own swimming stuff to become a full time swimming instructor and the son is in Special Olympics as well as regular swimming lessons), so our schedule is really full most days. 

I'll get into more frugal accomplishments on Friday (well, more realistically, Monday as my husband is off on Fridays, so I tend to do stuff with him, but we'll see how it goes), but I did want to bring up something that I'm going to be doing here for a while and see how it works out.  My life is hectic, to say the least, and it can be hard to get blogging done and one of the things that adds more time than you'd think is posting up links to posts on Facebook.  To just save myself a bit of time, I'm going to not post up every single link as I post them to Facebook, but instead I'm going to aim for a weekly recap post with links that I'll post to Facebook on like Fridays or something.  This way if I want to schedule a blog post on something like, say, a recipe, and don't have time to hop to Facebook to link when it goes live, at least those who rely on Facebook for updates can get an update on what is happening on the blog on the recap post.  I know it's not ideal, but honestly guys and gals, I find time to be more and more of a commodity anymore.  With the costs of things and how prices keep going up, I have found myself making everything that I can at home, especially baked goods and bread products.  So, where I did a lot of that in the past, now I'm doing about 99.9% of it at home and eating out is something we've cut out as much as humanly possible as that is getting ridiculously expensive.  I just can't bring myself to shell out the prices they want for bread products at the store that are mostly air when I can make good sourdough products at home that are much easier to digest (I'll get more into the benefits of sourdough in another post, as I'm planning on starting to blog what sourdough recipes I'm making for fun :) and are way more nutritious than the stuff you can get at the the store (not to mention they taste a whole lot better).  

In the meantime, sans sourdough stuff (which will be in separate posts), I thought it would be fun to start sharing what we've been eating around here (been meaning to do this for a while) in a whole "What's for Dinner" type of series (I'll also share any exciting lunch or breakfast items I make, meal preps I do for my husband's work lunches and things like that).  This way I can also start to share how I'm using my food storage/bulk foods from day to day to give you ideas (I hope) on things you might be able to make.  

So, let's get to things we've eaten around here of late.

Well, one thing we've been eating a lot of is chicken as it is one of the few proteins that seems to go on sale relatively cheap of late.  So, let's start there...

Chicken Dishes

Chicken Lyonnaise :  This dish really radiates fancy, but it is really just a braised chicken dish and is is delicious!  I first ran into this when I was studying the Titanic with the kids and I made some dishes that were served on the Titanic.  Of all of the dishes we tried, this one has stuck around in my recipe binder.

I do a few things different, though.  First, chicken breasts are really expensive, so I use bone in chicken thighs.  Due to the cost of eggs, I dropped the egg dip before coating the chicken in flour.  I then floured and browned the chicken in a cast iron 12" skillet (I just made 5 chicken thighs since it was enough for us for dinner and for my husband to take for lunch the next day for work).  I also couldn't find my minced garlic in the fridge and didn't feel like trying to find my bag of garlic cloves in the freezer (how I'm storing fresh garlic now) to mince one, so I just subbed in about 1/2 tsp of garlic powder and I used 1 TBS of dried thyme instead of fresh.  I used chicken bouillon mixed with water for the stock in the recipe and added extra wine and water (I'll explain why in a second).  I browned the chicken like the recipe stated, but cooked the chicken thighs for about four minutes per side.  I then took the half cooked chicken out and put it aside for a few moments, while I caramelized the onions in the pan and added the liquid and stirred it into a sauce.  I added the chicken back to the pan, spooned some of the onions up and over the chicken and added some extra chicken broth to the pan with a few splashes of wine.  I then just stuck the cast iron skillet in the oven at 350 degrees while I was baking something else (I think it was rolls, but don't hold me to that) and just baked it for about 40 minutes.  I turned the chicken once during the baking when I took the rolls/whatever out of the oven and just let it braise in the cooking liquid until my husband got home from work.  

I know browning the meat beforehand seems like a bit of work, but it really is worth the final product and there really isn't a lot of ingredients to the recipe.  If you don't have wine, I'm sure you could use more chicken stock and just make do, but if you have wine, I say use it (I even had to use a bit of sweet red wine in place of white as I was out of white cooking wine and it worked out fine).

Chicken Curry Udon   I actually cut chicken thighs off the bone to make this recipe and it was fabulous!  I used dried Udon that I keep in the pantry for Japanese cooking and used canned carrots instead of fresh.  I also used green onions that I had frozen in the freezer instead of fresh green onions. 

Right side track here, you'll notice in my cooking that I don't keep celery or carrots in the fridge right now.  ANY vegetable that I found myself throwing away at all due to it going bad in the fridge, I plain stopped buying to cut costs.  So, for carrots I'm doing a lot with canned and dehydrated carrots now (they work great) and with celery I have a small jar of freeze dried celery that I use in salad recipes (like say potato salad or chicken salad) and the rest of the time I'm using dehydrated celery.  I've actually been really happy with the new way of doing things.  I'm going to try and plant some carrots this summer in the planter garden I'm doing, but for the time being this is what I'm doing instead.  It has helped to cut grocery costs a bit and I'm happy with the results as nothing is going to waste.  I also threw in some frozen summer squash I had in the freezer, some cut up potatoes (because I LOVE potatoes in Japanese curry dishes), a small bag of frozen peas from the garden last year and a few other small veggie odds and ends. 

Final verdict on the dish?  My husband said, "It tastes like Japanese curry", while I loved it (but, I love Japanese curry too *laugh*) and ate every single bit of leftovers for lunch over the next few days.  It was a fun change of pace, anyway :).  Just a side note, too.  I got nervous about keeping the Japanese curry blocks in the pantry past their use by dates due to the oils in them, so I gambled and put the blocks (boxes and all) in the freezer for long term storage.  They froze beautifully and I didn't notice any change in taste or texture in the final product after using frozen blocks.  So, just wanted to pass that along.

Korean Fried Chicken:  Guys, this is one of the TASTIEST things I've made in a long while!  It was SO good!  I used boneless skinless chicken thighs instead of chicken wings that I cut into bite sized pieces and then I made the soy garlic sauce to dip it in.  It was SOOOOOO good!  The daughter and husband liked it too and it was definitely added to the recipe binder to make again!

Those were the recipes I still have bookmarked in my phone, so those were obviously the ones that made the biggest impression on me.  Other than that we've been eating a lot of basic chicken dishes.  Chicken pot pie (used the last of my frozen pie crusts in the freezer to make it, so now I'm experimenting with home made again), baked chicken with various sides and things like that.  I do have some other recipes book marked and am hoping to maybe do some freezer cooking at some point if I can get my fridge freezer cleaned and organized, but we'll see how it goes.

Breakfast Items:

Fruit Cobbler  This is my new favorite thing to make for breakfast on the weekends, as it is something that my husband can grab when he gets hungry in the early morning hours.  I found, while talking to my mom, that back in her day, fruit cobbler was actually more of a breakfast item than a dessert item, so I gave it a try and I LOVE it.  I tend to make this on Thursday so we have it all weekend long.  I put one can of fruit pie filling in the bottom of a 9x9 pan (small square baking dish) and then split the recipe for the cobbler in half.  

Our favorite flavor to date is blackberry.  You can get an AWESOME deal on blackberry pie filling from Amazon.  This 12 pack of pie filling is only 16.00 and some change most days (NOTE:  Associate link there.  If you order through it, Amazon shoots me a small commission for pushing the sale their way, but it doesn't cost anything extra.  If you order through my associate links, thank you for supporting my family and the blog!)  and is a really nice flavor for a breakfast cobbler (especially since, if like me you love blackberries but don't have any bushes and might not be able to grow them in your region anyway).  I love the flavor and the price of the pie filling, honestly and the simplicity of the recipe really just sells the entire thing.

2 Ingredient Biscuits.  My main reason for buying self rising flour was to make these for my biscuit loving daughter.  She didn't like them because they didn't taste as good as Bisquick (seriously!?!?), so I'm using my self rising flour in other recipes and trying different home made biscuit recipes on her instead.  I'm determined she's going to eat home made biscuits, preferably sourdough ones, before I'm through, but so far, the search continues!

Fluffy Whole Wheat Waffles:  I used home ground flour for this and it came out pretty good!  I put the majority of them into the freezer and we've been eating them along with other breakfast items.  I got the idea from Becky from "Acre Homestead" on YouTube and it was a good recipe, so I'm glad I checked it out.

Applesauce Loaf:  The recipe for the applesauce loaf is in the description of the video.  I even used her recipe for the glaze to go on top.  This was REALLY tasty and my husband and I really enjoyed it for breakfasts.

Baked Goods:

When it comes to baking things, I'm doing that a ton, it seems.  This week has been especially busy as I completely spaced the fact that Easter is THIS WEEKEND!?!  I thought it was more toward the end of the month, so I was lucky that yesterday I decided I was going to make a ton of cookies for quick desserts around the house.  

By the way, I cannot recommend dissolvable canning labels enough.  I use them for tons of stuff anymore.  You can just run the labels under water when you want to put something else in the container and it comes right off and dissolves.  One of the best inventions of our time, I swear!

So, getting back onto the subject at hand, what did I end up making?

Sugar Cookies:  These are my husband's favorite and I really should make them more often as the kids like them too, but I don't (oops on my account).  So, I made a batch of sugar cookies for him.  I have somehow completely misplaced my Easter cookie cutters (I have an egg shaped one, a rabbit shaped one and a basket shaped one, but darned if I can find them), so I made some circular ones (I tried to shape them into an egg shape with little success, but we made them pretty with sprinkles *laugh*) and we found a chicken shaped one and a butterfly shaped one, so we used those as Spring/Easter-ish themed *laugh*.  

Biscoff Butter Cookies:  I got a super good deal on Amazon for Biscoff Cookie butter a while back (like 8.00 for an 8 pack flat...no joke).  I've been sitting on it so we don't use it too fast, but it's getting past the best by date and while I'm sure it will stay good for quite a while still, I decided to make cookies...with cookie butter.  Weird?  Sure.  Tasty?  Eh, kind of.  The recipe had great ratings and stuff, so I doubled it and used an entire 14 oz container of cookie butter in it (so it wouldn't get lost in the back of the fridge).  I was kind of hoping it would come out tasting like an almost smore with the graham cracker like taste of Biscoff cookies and the chocolate, but after they baked and I tasted one...well they taste like chocolate chip cookies to me.  I love the texture though.  They come out chewy, which I love, but yeah...they taste like chocolate chip cookies.  We're eating them, though *laugh*).

Nestle Tollhouse Original Chocolate Chip Cookies:  My daughter's favorite cookies.  My dad would be proud as they were his favorite too *laugh*.   I made one recipe of them for her and she's definitely enjoying them.

When it comes to the rest of the Easter treats around here, I'm completely skipping store bought candy this year as the kids get plenty of treats around here and will be fine without them.  I am going to make an angel food cake (from a mix to save my eggs) and make strawberry short cake with it for dessert on Easter.  I already got a great price on a spiral sliced ham (of all fancy things) at the beginning of the year, so we'll have that for dinner and I'm hoping the store will have eggs tomorrow so we can color a bunch, but we'll see how it goes (if they don't have eggs, we'll just color a few of the ones we have here, just not as many).  Not smart forgetting a major holiday until it is right on top of you.  Oops.

Quick and Easy Hot Dog Buns:  I made these one night as the daughter wanted hot dogs and I didn't have a lot of time to make sourdough anything.  So, I made these.  The shaping and egg wash phase on these failed horribly.  They ended up looking like misshapen mini loaves of bread and putting on the egg wash before the final rise seemed like a bad idea to me and I should have waited until they had risen (spray your plastic wrap with non-stick spray before placing over the rolls to rise as they are a soft and sticky dough) as the plastic wrap stuck terribly to the egg when they were done rising.  But, the flavor was good and we were able to split them and put hot dogs in them without issue, so it turned out okay.  Next time I think I'll use the same recipe, but pull out my New England hot dog pan and try making them in that to shape them better.  We'll see how that goes.

French Toast Casserole:  This is one of those recipes that I regretted making and just wished I had made French Toast instead.  I split the recipe in half, but still it used a bunch of milk products and eggs, but I had a bunch of home made bread that had gone stale and needed to be used up, so I made it.  And well, it was okay, I guess, but the biggest problem I had was that it was BLAND tasting, which was sad with the nutmeg it had in it and stuff (I love nutmeg, so it was VERY sad to me).  We ate it all, but I have to say it was not a favorite of mine.  I included it in this section, because really it came out tasting like a bland bread pudding.

Next time I'll make croutons or French toast.

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake:  This was for my daughter's birthday as she loves chocolate cake and really wanted some for her birthday.  So, I figured you couldn't go wrong with Hershey's.  It was easy, it came out nice and chocolatey and the daughter was happy.  I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cake (too rich for my blood) and neither is my husband, but we tried our best to eat it all before it went stale on us and my daughter loved it.

Honorable Mentions/Miscellaneous:

Sausage Alfredo:  I got this idea from That 1870's Homestead on YouTube, in their "What's for Dinner" series last year sometime where Todd was trying something different for dinner.  Darned if I can find the exact video, which I spent way too much time working on finding.  The idea is simple.  Make alfredo but instead of chicken used ground Italian sausage, add some minced garlic while you are cooking it to get that flavor in there, add cream and some Italian seasoning, or other seasonings of choice, cook down until thickened a bit and then add some fresh Parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce up to the texture you want.  

Guys, the concept is simple, but it is SOOOOOOO good!  I actually make this every couple of months and it is now a meal I put into rotation.  It comes together super fast too.  In the time it takes you to make your fettucine pasta, the sauce is ready to go and you are ready to eat.  The leftovers even heat up pretty darned well overall and the nice thing about the sausage, versus chicken, is the sausage doesn't get dried out :).

No Knead Bread:  This is the best, and tastiest, quick sourdough bread to make (since it sits overnight before baking it, I call it a sourdough).  It calls for few ingredients and really your biggest investment is a cast iron Dutch oven to bake it in.  I find that a 3 qt one works great.  I got this one (affiliate link) for a lot less money (I only spent 21.00 on mine) and use it all the time to make a loaf of this bread (if I don't have time to make two loaves of sourdough during the day with the rise times involved).  The best deal I could find when I looked today for a Dutch oven was this one in red, but I've found them for less than 30.00 from time to time if you just search for a 3 qt cast iron Dutch oven and wait a bit (and I don't guarantee how long prices will last, as the one I linked to is 32.00 right now, but could change at a moment's notice).  I also use my big Lodge Dutch oven that my mother-in-law gave me years ago to bake bread in too, but I've found the 3 qt gives me a better rise (since it's smaller) and fits the loaf perfectly.   If you don't have the money to buy a Dutch oven (I get it, trust me) there are recipes that don't call for a Dutch oven to bake sourdough bread (I'll share one in another post), but if you have the money a Dutch oven really is a worthwhile investment.

I could go on, but I need to get off the computer and concentrate on house cleaning and getting a load of laundry done, so I'm going to end it here.  I hope you all are doing well and yes, this time I'm hoping to finally get back to regular blogging here!  Here's hoping :).

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

You know, I REALLY need to pull out my cookbooks and things and work on getting some different recipes into my weekly menu to shake things up a bit around here.  Not that eating tacos once a week is a bad thing, but it does start to get a bit old after a while.  Bright side, though, is that I am running into a few recipes on YouTube and things randomly that I'm bookmarking to make in with our normal weekly menu items so hopefully that'll lead me to being a bit more creative.  Lack of sleep definitely starts to make cooking seem like a way more daunting task than it should be, especially when you normally like cooking like I do.

So, yeah, be prepared for me to hopefully be sharing new recipe links and things here and there in the coming weeks.  

So, let's get to this week, shall we?

Tuesday:  Simplified Saver Hawaiian Chicken Sliders  We are actually eating these as left overs tonight.  I made the recipe yesterday (it is in her video, so you will have to watch a bit to find it) and used pork chops instead of the chicken in the recipe.  I used a couple small cans of pineapple because I didn't have pineapple juice and just chunked up the pineapple in with the sauce and meat.  I shredded the pork before putting it back in the sauce (like she does with the chicken, but I had to remove the chops to shred them and then add them back in so I could remove the bones) and using it for sandwiches.  It came out great!  We really enjoyed them and I am definitely going to write the recipe down for future reference.

Wednesday:  Baked chicken, baked beans, corn, sourdough bread (homemade, already made so we'll have some with dinner)

Thursday:  Home made pizza and breadsticks (I use this recipe for pizza crust and breadsticks.  I double the pizza crust recipe and then just use 1/2 for breadsticks and 1/2 for a deep pan pizza).

Friday:  Hamburgers on home made buns, oven fries, salad 

Saturday:  Eating out (my husband and I are going out to celebrate our anniversary and we'll get the kids something beforehand to make life easy for my mother-in-law who is being nice enough to babysit :).

Sunday:  Shrimp and Vegetable tempura, rice, miso soup

Monday:  Beef Nachos.  Taco meat, refried beans, Mexican rice, sour cream, lettuce, salsa and avocado (from freezer) on tortilla chips (we get a huge 6 lb box of Taco Loco, a local Alaskan business that makes the BEST Tortillas and tortilla chips, tortilla chips at Three Bears for like 11.00 and it lasts us a good long time for things like this).

To bake:  Hamburger buns (still messing around with recipes for these), banana bread (as you can see by the bananas sitting in the fridge *laugh*, lemon pound cake (from mix) for dessert on Sunday. 

And there you go folks.  Our tentative menu plan for this week.  Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it with some degree of success.

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

I have to say, so far this week has been a lot of work.  Things just seem to keep piling up work-wise, so it has been running from one thing to another it seems this week.  Thank goodness the menu plan was actually THERE for me this week and I've been able to roll with things and still manage to keep putting food on the table so we didn't need to eat out.

I started the menu plan this week on Saturday, which honestly I might keep doing in the future.  With my husband's schedule being days now, he has weekends off, so I end up having to do more elaborate meals for breakfast (normally I have toast) on those days as my husband likes to have a full breakfast.  So, let's get to this week's menu plan.

Saturday:

        Breakfast:  Eggs, bacon, toast, honey dew melon chunks 

        Lunch:  Hot dogs

        Dinner:  Cheeseburgers, melon (leftovers from breakfast)

Sunday:  

        Breakfast:  Sausage crumbles;  yogurt parfaits with plain yogurt, honey (from food storage), granola (from food storage), and strawberries (combination of a few fresh strawberries that were on sale with a personalized price I had this week and some frozen ones that I macerated in sugar that we had left over); toast

        Lunch:  Leftovers

        Dinner:  Creamy Potato and Ham Hock Slow Cooker Soup:  (ham hocks were part of our pork pack and I was trying to find something different than just flavoring beans with them.  Good soup!). 

Monday:  Unstuffed Cabbage Rolls:  Originally I was going to make cabbage rolls, but was so busy yesterday I just didn't have time, so I used this recipe instead.  I used 1 lb of ground beef and 1 lb of ground pork, though.  Turned out pretty good and I I served it over rice :).

Tuesday:  Leftover night (pull leftover curry from freezer and defrost for another option as well)

Wednesday:  Corned beef  (I pray that the recipe I used turned out okay), cabbage and potatoes with sourdough bread on the side.

Thursday:  Ham with beer glaze (I'm adapting an old Polish recipe my grandma would make for her Polish husband from time to time.  She used ham hocks, but I'm going to go with ham as I have a ton of it that came with our pork pack :).

Friday:  Homemade Pizza and Breadsticks

Desserts:  Strawberry shortcake or angel food cake (leftovers), fruit (I went a bit nuts with the fruit this week as the sun has been out and my body is CRAVING Spring like mad, so yeah...we're eating fresh fruit this week *laugh*.

And there you go folks.  Some of the things we are eating this week.  How about you?  Eating anything good?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

Well, the menu plan is late this week, but hey better late than never for sure.  

You will notice an odd meal on the menu plan.  That is because one of my daughter's history units had a final where you had to make a Medieval meal from a varied list of options, so we are kind of punting said menu to make food with ingredients we have on hand (I refused to go and buy things like sandalwood to color a dish...we do not have that type of money).  

So, let's get to it!

Friday:  Potage (basically vegetable and barley stew with a bit of meat mixed into it), sourdough bread.  Pokerounce for dessert (basically toast with honey and spices on it.  Sounds good anyway :).

Saturday:  Bacon cheeseburgers on homemade bread, salad, baked beans.

Sunday:  Home made pizza and breadsticks

Monday:  Spiced pork roast, mashed potatoes, green beans

Tuesday:  Meatballs over pasta with spiced cranberry sauce (I'm just going to adapt some left over cranberry relish from Thanksgiving to make the sauce).

Wednesday:  Pancakes, bacon, eggs with berries (from the freezer)

Thursday:  Beef teriyaki, miso soup, salad with Asian dressing (look up recipe for Asian dressing), rice.

Desserts:  Chocolate cake with buttercream frosting (otherwise known as birthday cake for the daughter *laugh*), Pokerounce, berry crumble (probably raspberry, depending what needs to be used in the freezer) 

And there you go folks.  Our tentative menu plan for this coming week.  How about you?  Making anything good?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

So, last week's menu went off the rails, I have to admit.  I got to Saturday and then life just ended up getting in the way.  Saturday, due to the sewer vent pipe leaking and things, we ended up running around all day running errands/getting parts and then our friends invited us over to use their pool Saturday night, so we definitely took them up on that and got the son some much needed physical activity.  By running him around all day and then swimming and things it really helped to get him back onto a more normal (for him) sleep schedule.  We ended up using what we had left of our gift cards we got gifted for Christmas to take the kids out to dinner Saturday night and then after that I just ended up punting on meals the rest of the week (Eggs Benedict on Sunday by husband request, Beef teriyaki with miso and edamame on Monday and left over pizza on Tuesday).  Not sure why as I did cook at home, but it just seemed like I couldn't get back on track after Saturday.  So, I put the Pad Thai stir fry on the back burner until next week and am just going for things I need to make to use up stuff in the freezer and such.

The menu plan got delayed this week (basically why I didn't post it yesterday) was due to the fact that I had a pretty good headache going last night and just wasn't up to reading/writing anything, so the family had sandwiches for dinner (exciting I know, but it worked :).  So, yeah, onto this week's menu plan!

Thursday:  Slow cooked chuck roast, mashed potatoes with gravy and homemade bread

Friday:  Swedish pancakes with berries and whipped topping (I cleaned and consolidated my freezers yesterday and found like three containers of whipped topping, so yeah...it is wasting freezer space and needs to be eaten), bacon

Saturday:  Chicken gyros, fruit salad

Sunday:  Open faced roast beef sandwiches, canned peaches

Monday:  Hamburgers/cheeseburgers on home made bread, oven fries

Tuesday:  Roast chicken (Cornish game hens from freezer), stuffing, mashed potatoes

Wednesday:  Swedish meatballs over pasta, green beans

Desserts:  Chocolate mousse (okay, so it's just chocolate Jell-O pudding with some heavy cream whipped in to lighten it and make it mousse-like, but it'll work), lemon pound cake (maybe if I can get time to make it), banana bread (this needs to get made as I need to use the defrosted bananas that are in the fridge).

And there you go folks.  Our menu plan for the week.  Now I need to sit down and work on monthly goals...which is always a bit more complicated.  How about you?  Got anything good planned to eat this week?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

 I know I missed Friday's post, but hey, this Friday I'll actually have some stuff to share as I'm super duper busy right now, so that'll be something right?

Speaking of busy, my schedule continues to be pretty hectic, so the menu plan is an invaluable resource at the moment.  Bright side is that last week I was able to stick to it decently well.  The Pad Thai stir fry didn't get made as we ended up using some gift cards we were given for Christmas and went out to eat instead as we were out doing stuff.  I also ended up making baked chicken versus fried last night because I was busy and didn't really have time to sit and babysit a pan or fryer (and I'm running low on oil and don't feel like having to pay for more at the moment just to fry some food).  The family was happy with the chicken and I made enough to use up leftovers for dinner tonight (yay for planning ahead) as I am in the middle of working on a bunch of stuff and just don't want to have to worry about complicated meals on top of it.

So, anyway, let's get to the menu plan!

Wednesday:  Chicken Caesar Salad (leftover chicken picked off the bone for the chicken part of the equation :).

Thursday:  Home made ravioli (Radish box recipe), home made rolls (use leftover mashed potatoes to make potato rolls), salad or fruit salad (depending if we have leftover salad from dinner tonight as I'm nearly out of lettuce).

Friday:  Cheeseburgers on home made rolls, oven fries, baked beans

Saturday:  Home made pizza and breadsticks (daughter's request)

Sunday:  Pancakes/Swedish pancakes/waffles (depending on time and energy levels), bacon and eggs with fruit on the side (to put on top of pancakes/waffles)

Monday:  Pad Thai stir fry (determined to get this made *laugh*).

Tuesday:  German spiced pork roast (or chops depending on time), German potato salad, canned pears.

Desserts:  No Bake Cheesecake (from mix in pantry), Gingersnaps (from cookie jar if people want them :).

And there you are folks.  Our tentative menu plan for the week.  How about you?  Got anything good planned this week?

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu

When it comes to the menu plan for the next week, well, it'll be interesting.  My husband has a bunch of stuff going on at work, so he's not sure what his schedule is going to be like (for instance he's going to be home late tonight, so I need something that he can reheat when he gets home), we are having a "false thaw" period in our weather so the kid's allergies are going nuts (the poor daughter is utterly miserable today) and I've got a couple of piles of paperwork to fill out, records to find and things like that to do on top of normal household and homeschool stuff AND if my husband's tax paperwork comes in I'll be doing taxes on top of it.  So, basically I'm putting this menu together knowing that I'm probably not going to be able to do all the meals I have planned and will have to punt a few days here and there so I can get everything done that I need to get done.  We'll see how it goes, though.

So, let's get to it!

Wednesday:  Spaghetti with meat sauce, home made bread, salad

Thursday:  Beef and Barley stew, home made bread

Friday:  Pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad

Saturday:  Pizza and breadsticks

Sunday:  Pad Thai Stir Fry (I don't have things like bean sprouts, we can't do peanuts and such, so I'm just going to make a stir fry with Pad Thai noodles, shrimp, eggs, tofu and some Pad Thai sauce and see how it goes.  I think it'll taste okay...it just won't be Pad Thai).

Monday:  Meatloaf, baked potatoes, green beans

Tuesday:  Fried chicken, baked beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, biscuits

And there you go folks.  My tentative menu plan for the week.  We'll see how it goes.  We are supposed to do the Radish box assignment this week (home made ravioli, thus the ricotta and shredded Parmesan  cheeses in the fridge), but I'm not sure if we are going to get to it with how much we have going on.  We shall see I guess.

How about you all?  Making anything good this week?