Chinese with the pre-teen

We had dinner out at the Chinese restaurant next to the Goodwill. We tried to order things that we thought there was a chance the picky pre-teen MIGHT eat. No go. She ate some rice and a bowl of ice cream. Oh well - at least I got to have yummy crispy fried tofu. Quite possibly my favorite Chinese food. We now have enough for leftovers for at least two meals, maybe more - sesame chicken and moo shu pork to go along with the tofu.

Menu planning for the next week:

Thurday: turkey pot pie (the last of the Thanksgiving turkey)
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: leftover Chinese
Sunday: Pot roast
Monday: bean soup?
Tuesday: quesadillas?

Cheese ravioli and garlic bread

Frozen cheese ravioli were on sale at Giant, so we had some with plain pasta sauce and garlic bread. Very nice, even the kids thought it was edible.

monitor problems

The monitor on the "main" computer is busted, and we're supposed to get a new one tomorrow. It's just more of a hassle to log in on one of the other computers.

Tonight was leftovers. Toddler-boy has a cold, started Thanksgiving, that he's generously given to both me and TMOTH. It was actually a very good dinner - reheated ham, steak, macaroni & cheese, cornbread dressing. TMOTH made potato pancakes out of the leftover mashed potatoes and they were excellent.

Thanksgiving dinner

MMMMmmmm, I do love Thanksgiving dinner. We had turkey, ham for the kids, mac & cheese (thumbs down from the kidlets because of the bread crumbs on top, but it was really good!), dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, broccoli, sweet potato casserole, and rolls. Champagne to drink, of course. Nobody has had room for dessert yet - although TMOTH and I had pie mid-afternoon.

I made the kids and TMOTH clean up, since I did most of the cooking, but I had one bit left to clean up - the pan drippings from the turkey needed to be refrigerated to go into the stock. BUT, I dropped the container and it went all over the floor. At least the hound was happy. It was like this turkey was bent on revenge - before being cooked it had leaked all over the inside of my fridge, so I wound up cleaning out both crisper drawers today as well.

Fish

A couple of nice ocean perch filets, stuffed potatoes, asparagus, and french bread. The pre-teen found some mozzarella sticks and wanted those.

Hopefully I can scare up some dessert later - we've got a box of clementines that aren't too bad, but we also have chocolate...

Chili

We had chili last night. I was able to get the crock pot up and running before I had to leave for the pre-teen's soccer game. It's chili weather here - cool and autumn-y. I also cleaned out the refrigerator enough yesterday to get the turkey in to thaw for Thanksgiving. Anyway, the meal plan for the next week is:

Sunday: Fish, salad, baked stuffed potatoes, carrot sticks

Monday: Bean soup with cornbread (I need the leftover cornbread for stuffing!)

Tuesday: Grilled chicken, french bread, O'brien potatoes, some sort of vegetable. (No more soccer practice!)

Wednesday: ? there may not be Wednesday night dinner, so we'll have soup and sandwiches if they don't. Otherwise, dinner out.

Thursday: Thanksgiving!!
Turkey
Ham slice (for kids, who don't really like turkey)
Homemade macaroni and cheese
Cornbread dressing
Bread cube dressing (if TMOTH decides he wants to make it)
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Sweet potato casserole (mostly since the mid-kid loves the marshmallows)
Rolls
Tiny green peas from the silver can (for the boy-kids)
Broccoli
Pies-a-plenty - chocolate and pecan at a minimum. Likely not pumpkin - nobody in our family really likes it all that much.


Friday: Pancakes and fruit

Saturday: Pork - chops or tenderloin, fried apples, biscuits, green beans

Hot dogs!

I often overlook the hot dog option, since I don't really like them all that much. However, everybody else does. So it was a happy dinner.

Fish tacos

Great concept, poor execution. We ate at a new restaurant tonight, the ?something? Grill. The first bite was great, until I started to taste the fish - not very good fish, it tasted like catfish. GREAT fries, though.

Grilled pork chops and stuffed potatoes

TMOTH cooked dinner- and quite a good dinner it was. The stuffed potatoes - with cheese, green onions, and bacon - were excellent. Kind of a porky dinner, come to think of it.

Not much meal planning this week - I have ground beef and ground turkey for chili; just have to get it ready for the crockpot so it can cook on Friday. Wednesday and Thursday are both dinner-out days.

Pasta and salad

We had cheese tortellini, and angel hair pasta for the kids, with a basic basil/tomato sauce. Garlic bread and tossed salad to go with. Easy and cheesy.

Bacon & eggs

with toast or english muffin. A nice lazy rainy Sunday, although the kids were mighty bored.

The current household crisis is that we can't find the power cord for the laptop. We spilled some beer on the keyboard and fried a couple of letters. We replaced the keyboard and now the power cord is missing. On a positive note, I've put away/thrown away a bunch of stuff trying to find it.

Quesadillas

Something the entire family will eat! Easy and reasonably healthy into the bargain. Grapes on the side - really good red grapes. Toddler-boy loved them - he has the benefit of being the 3rd child and getting to do some things that we never would've let the 1st one do.

Ham and potato casserole

Scalloped/au gratin potatoes are the one thing that I prefer out of the box rather than from scratch. With some cubes of leftover ham and a little bit of red onion, it's a nice dinner (for the grown-ups, at least - the kids all turned up their nose). Carrot sticks and cucumber slices on the side. I was really bummed that the cauliflower we got over the weekend had frozen in the refrigerator. I'll roast some this weekend, but I really prefer it raw.

The menu items are all pushed back a day since TMOTH cooked last night. Quesadillas will be good if the tween has a friend over tomorrow night.

Veterans Day today, so I was off work. I finished painting about 2/3 of one long wall in the living room, I have about half of a short wall and a few extra bits of wall space to go. Then I have to finish taking off the wallpaper in the stairway that I starting taking off 10 years ago. Such is the pace of home improvement at our house...

I did help TMOTH get the gutter back up - and he did! I was so impressed - I never thought he'd be able to balance it all the way up on the big ladder and that it would hold until he could attach it. What a huge relief it is to have that back up.

Grilled chicken thighs

TMOTH made dinner- grilled chicken thighs and tater tots/hash browns. The boys also had mandarin oranges as an appetizer. I have apple crisp slated for dessert, so we're not completely without fruits & vegetables.

Joe's Pizza and Pasta

The tween and I had a girls' dinner while the mid-kid and TMOTH were in the baseball room for the end-of-year party. Italian buffet; not special but serviceable. She wants to go to Bob Evans (why? I have no idea.) for her birthday dinner when we get a chance.

So, it was the tween's 11th birthday today. We got her pajamas, slippers (which she desperately wanted and loves), a necklace, a stuffed monkey, and book/kit to make beaded rings, and some Littlest Pet Shop toys. She picked out a cake at Giant tonight; it was pretty awful but it looked nice. She's getting so tall - about an inch short of 5 feet right now.

Chinese (sort of)

The menu plan called for chicken, which we (sort of) had.

Egg flower soup to start, then steamed dumplings from the freezer at the Asian supermarket. TMOTH had come up with a plan, so I was amenable. Apple crisp for dessert, yum.

Monkfish

A nice monkfish filet, baked with butter/oil, salt, and lemon pepper. Fried potato cubes. Broccoli. French bread (not very good French bread; a lot like Wonder bread in disguise). Apple crisp for dessert, mostly courtesy of TMOTH. He started slicing up all of the apples that toddler-boy had taken a bite or two out of and then discarded, and wound up with most of a big bowl of slices. All I had to do was the topping.

Manu planning

As a subscriber to the Flylady e-mails (http://www.flylady.net/), I've been put on notice that the new habit for November is menu planning. This is something I've tried before, but it hasn't worked. Something always seems to throw things off, and all of the "plans" go out the window.

Today we'll get to go to Harris Teeter, which just opened near the stable the tween has pony club at. Tonight's dinner will depend on what we find there (other than planning to serve the broccoli we got at the orchard yesterday).

But, as a start, my menu plans for the week:

Sunday: Serendipity - hopefully fish.

Monday: Pizza out - the mid-kid has a baseball game, and the tween's band is having a fund-raiser at a local pizzeria that's on the way home from the baseball game.

Tuesday: Tween soccer practice, so dinner must be prepared early...chicken of some sort.

Wednesday: Tween's 11th birthday, and also Wednesday Night Dinner at the daycare, so we'll probably go out for whatever the tween would like.

Thursday: No activities - potato casserole with ham and a green veg and salad on the side.

Friday: Mid-kid has karate at 7, so an early easy dinner - probably quesadillas. I do have the day off, though, so maybe chili instead.

Saturday: Tween soccer game, nothing for the mid-kid - Chili in the crockpot!

Sunday: Roast chicken.

Sunday:

Lamb stew

It turned out to be a busy day. The mid-kid had a baseball game he had to be at by 9:00, and the tween had a soccer game that was supposed to start at 11. Toddler-boy slept through most of the soccer game, so had a reasonably good nap. Back home for lunch (ravioli for kids, leftovers for grown-ups) and then almost immediately back on the road to go apple picking. It's the last weekend for our favorite pick-your-own orchard; the Pink Lady apples were ready (and yummy). We wound up picking about 50 pounds of apples, now we just have to make room for them in the fridge.

Dinner was a great lamb stew, mostly from the leftover lamb shanks from earlier in the week. All I did was to add a carrot, a potato, 1/4 pound of mushrooms scavenged from the fridge, a boullion cube, and a cup of water. Delicious! We have enough chocolate pie left for everyone for dessert, hooray! Maybe apple crisp for tomorrow?

Pizza Friday

The Safeway pizza the kids like - carefully picking off the pepperoni on their half, while adding mushrooms, peppers, and onions to ours.

I have leftover chocolate pie for dessert - we had a retirement party this afternoon, and I have a lot of mints and about 3/4 of a pie left. This is a super easy and delicious pie; it's my tween's favorite:

Melt together 1/2 cup milk, 20 large marshmallows, and 8-9 oz chocolate (whatever you have - I used about 3/4 milk and 1/4 dark, a mixture of Hershey's and Ghirardelli's). Let cool to room temperature. DO NOT TRY TO SKIMP ON THIS STEP. THE MIXTURE SHOULD NOT BE WARM. Stir occasionally if you feel the need to do something while it's cooling.
When the chocolate mixture is cool, whip 1 cup whipping cream to stiff peaks. Fold into chocolate mixture and pile into a crust - chocolate crumb crusts are the best, although a graham cracker crust or a regular pie crust will also work. Refrigerate until firm. Enjoy.

Last night was grilled pork chops with carrots and Italian bread.

Fuddrucker's - mostly

I think this was the tipping point for Fuddrucker's for me. I never really liked it - they're so self-satisfied, and the burgers & fries aren't all that good. But, it was convenient to the soccer/baseball fields. The last time before this, they grossly undercooked my burger. This time, they only had one kid's meal ready when the rest of our food was, my onion rings were cold, and it took them so long to cook it that I had time to choke down 2 bites of burger before I had to leave to pick up the toddler. At least I have a not-very-good burger for lunch tomorrow.

I also stopped on the way home and bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate that TMOTH (along with the tween) finished painting the house today! YAAY! Now I have no excuse not to finish painting the living room.

We had great fun at halloween last night - went to a neighborhood where 2 friends of the tween live and went around with all 5 kids.


The toddler had a brief meltdown until I realized he just wanted candy - I put a Tootsie roll pop in each hand and he was perfectly happy.