New year, new resolve

Poor neglected blog.

One of the new year resolutions is menu planning. Again :)
Hopefully it will sink in this year.

For this week:

Weekend prep work: Grocery shopping
Make meatballs and garlic breadsticks for Monday
Soak beans and cook

Saturday: Hoppin' John for lunch for me, at least - nobody else likes black-eyed peas.
Dinner: beef stew with the "good" rolls

Sunday: Pancakes, breakfast meat, fruit

Monday: Pasta, breadsticks, maybe salad

Tuesday: Pork - depends on what's on sale; vegetables; roasted potatoes

Wednesday: Chicken in some sort of simmer sauce, rice, broccoli

Thursday: Bean soup

Friday: Pizza night

Chicken Rotini Alfredo

Just like Stouffer's, only better :)

4 T butter
2 T flour
1/2 t crushed garlic
2 c half-and-half
1/2 c Romano cheese
1 c Parmesan cheese
1 lb rotini pasta
1.5 c mozzarella cheese

Next time, I'll make a little more sauce and back off on the mozzarella. Maybe a little less butter as well.

A bit calorific for every day, but for an occasional treat, yum yum yum.
And garlic bread, of course.

Steaks

T-bones, which TMOTH doesn't especially like for some reason. (He likes rib-eyes, which I don't especially like because of the huge chunks of fat.) We had mushrooms, biscuits, cucumber, canteloupe, and strawberries.

The Lovely Daughter's rehearsal schedule is making dinnertime more hell than usual. She doesn't get out until close to 6 (they got released at 5:30 today, so we got home at 6).

No clue what to have tomorrow night. Maybe fish.

Lasagna Pong

What happens when the pan is too big for the microwave.

Leftover por roast

Cut into chunks, added to Korma simmer sauce from Trader Joe's, served over rice.

Last night was chicken alfredo pasta. We had strawberries, but they weren't all that great.

Cheese & Crackers

With a nice cheap Italian red wine. Ahh.

Scrambled eggs

The mid-kid has decided he wants to learn to cook, so tonight he did the scrambled eggs. There were only a few shells :) Bacon and sausage and toast, oh my.

Last night he heated up the soup and boiled the pasta for dinner.

Maybe tomorrow night I can get him to form hamburger patties!

Pizza Hut

We lost power tonight from about 5 minutes after I got home, just before 6, until after 8. The leftover gumbo that was on the menu wasn't gonna happen, so we went with Pizza Hut. The kidlets were happy they told me to order thick crust, and I was happy everybody got fed with a minimum of fuss and bother.

We can always have the gumbo tomorrow :)

Chicken shish-kababs and rice

Boys, of course, would have nothing to do with the chicken. The Small Man tasted a pieced and pronounced it "good" but wouldn't eat any more of it. Karate Boy had corndogs; they both had rice and bread. Small Man will probably be hungry later, although he's been eating pretty steadily all day long.

Menu planning has fallen off. Not much choice this weekend!

TMOTH has chili makings for one day - it will likely be Sunday for the SuperBowl, although he may make the chili tomorrow and then we'll have snacky bits on Sunday. Anyway, that's the weekend covered, one way or the other.

Monday, we're likely to still be snowed in. I have plenty of choices for soup, though. There's also lots of pasta in the house, and if we're snowed in on Monday I can make breadsticks to go with them. If we're not snowed in, and I have to go to work, it'll be garlic bread instead.

Eggs one night as well.

Aack - long time no post

Tonight - we had butterfly shrimp. Not something I would buy again - the breading was a little too thick and weird.

Last night was cheese and crackers; we'd stayed at home all day for a snow day. I had a beastly headache that didn't help matters any.

Tuesday night was the Small Man's birthday, and he chose pizza for dinner. It was snowing by then, so we chose to have Pizza Hut deliver :)

Monday night we had a Stouffer's chicken alfredo pasta bake that was actually pretty good. I think I could make a home-made version better, but the whole pick it up at the grocery/throw it in the oven thing is nearly irresistible some nights.

Grilled chicken

I marinated the chicken with some teriyaki marinade and lime juice, then grilled. Broccoli with cheese sauce and challah bread to go with it. AND I remembered to take the burgers out of the freezer for tomorrow!

Hot dogs!

I don't think I've kept up with menu planning very well the past couple of days. Today was very busy, and I've been fighting a headache pretty much since I woke up. So it was a stop for hot dog buns on the way home from taking The Lovely Daughter to a birthday party. She needs picked up at 10:00, and it's about half an hour from home.

Last night, we ordered pizza from Julliano's. Yum.

Beef and bell peppers over rice

With a spring roll from the freezer, even. The bell peppers were on sale for $1.00 a pound at Magruders, and the sirloin was also on sale yesterday at the Giant. AND it was quite tasty. Buying sirloin can be iffy sometimes - a good sirloin is really good, but there's the occasional dud out there.

Kids had pasta tonight, so we probably won't have the soup planned for tomorrow night. Maybe pizza instead?

Leftover Pork Loin

With crescent rolls from a can. Kids had chicken fingers or fish. (I got home late. It was the best I could do.)

Eggs

With bacon, sausage, toast, and coffee. Yummy.

Last night we had pasta. I had a stressful afternoon with The Lovely Daughter, and pasta was about all I could manage.

I need a new menu plan.
Wednesday: leftover pork roast
Thursday: Stir fry - beef with peppers and onions
Friday: Soup and sandwiches
Saturday: Burgers
Sunday: Chicken

Crockpot pork loin roast

This was a pork sirloin roast that I used a recipe for one of my online friends (Thanks, Micki!!) gave me. Green onions, garlic, soy sauce, cinnamon, and allspice in addition to the usual crockpot stuff. It also called for fresh cilantro, which I didn't have. I added a little dried chervil instead. It came out pretty well, I think - I was afraid it would be too salty, but the meat itself wasn't. We also had biscuits, roast potatoes, and broccoli. The boys had hot dogs/corn dogs.

Tacos, etc.

I made taco filling using (1) ground turkey, and (2) shredded leftover beef. The mid-kid also made burritos, and the Small Man had a lettuce (!) burrito. We did get him to try a taco, but he didn't want to eat it for some reason - likely because it falls apart when you bite into it. He finally wound up eating a "cheese and ham" sandwich.

Last night we wound up having cheese and crackers. I had to drive to Poolesville to pick up The Lovely Daughter and didn't get home until fairly late. I had Mexican food for lunch yesterday and didn't want tacos last night!

I bought a pork roast today to try a new crockpot recipe tomorrow.

Fish

Not "real" fish, but from the freezer case. TMOTH and I had Phillips Panko-coated crab cakes. Not bad for freezer crab cakes. The mid-kid had crispy fish filets. The Teen Diva and Small Man had chicken fingers. Baked potatoes and cantaloupe to go with all of the fishy and chickeny goodness.

Last night was freezer food too - lasagna, and garlic bread to go with it.

Menu plan:
Sunday: Pancakes
Monday: Soup & sandwiches
Tuesday: Chicken fast food
Wednesday: Pasta - hopefully lasagna
Thursday: Tacos Fish
Friday: Fish Tacos
Saturday: look into crockpot recipes (Pork loin)
Sunday: Chicken
Monday (MLK holiday, so time to cook): Homemade bread, for sure, some kind of meat?

Fast Food

Subway and McDonald's. Small Man had a "Winter Gala" at his preschool that started at 6(!), so most of us ate Subway before while Small Man had McDonald's afterward. He really likes the Alvin and the Chipmunks toys they have right now :)

Stew/soup

We had the leftover pot roast with added broth, with seashell pasta. Tomato soup for the boys.

Pot roast

Man, I love my crockpot for pot roast! With potatoes and carrots, cheated using mushroom and onion soup mix but added extra onions. Homemade rolls, too!

Pizza night

The Lovely Daughter had a late rehearsal, so I had to drive to Poolesville to pick her up. That meant I didn't get home until about 6, and didn't get to the grocery store as planned. I did take a pot roast out of the freezer to cook tomorrow.

Menu plan:
Sunday: Pancakes
Monday: Soup & sandwiches
Tuesday: Chicken
Wednesday: Pasta - hopefully lasagna
Thursday: Tacos
Friday: Fish
Saturday: look into crockpot recipes

Pasta

Rotelle pasta with sauce, garlic bread, salad. A favorite dinner.

Chicken shish-kebab

Fondly known as "lizard on a stick" at our house. Chicken thigh chunks, mushrooms, green pepper, onion; grilled and served with cous cous.

The menu plan needs tweaking as well, since we had omelettes last night. We can still have pasta tomorrow, but don't want to have soup the next night (since our soup almost always has pasta in it!). Soup can move to Saturday or Sunday. Friday, we can have...pork chops?

Omelettes

TMOTH and I had ours with bacon and mushrooms and cheese; just cheese for the kidlets. Bacon and/or sausage, toast or bagel.

The lizard on a stick will have to wait until tomorrow.

Last night was burgers and tots. The burgers were really good - I bought a pound each of 80/20 and 93/7 beef - for some reason, at Safeway this week, the mid-range beef was way more expensive. The mixture was really really good.

Pizza

I made pizza dough from a recipe I got from a Washington Post online forum about 10 years ago. I added italian seasoning to the dough. The sauce was just tomato sauce from a can with some italian seasoning and garlic added. I'd been using spaghetti sauce from a jar, but it's a little chunky for pizza sauce. One of the small cans was enough for 6 individual-sized pizzas. That way everyone can get what they want! I'd like to grow enough sauce tomatoes this year to can tomato sauce again.

Shepherd's Pie

Made with leftover lamb and chicken, onions, mushrooms, carrots, and celeriac. A little parmesan on top of the mashed potatoes. Just exactly the right thing for a very very cold day.

Menu planning

Saturday: Omelettes, bacon & sausage, toast Shepherd's Pie; pasta for kids
Sunday: Pork loin roast, fried apples, canned biscuits Pizza
Monday: need something fast and easy - both Boy Scouts and Quilt Guild meet that night. Burgers and tater tots!
Tuesday: Lizard on a stick, rice or couscous, some sort of vegetable.
Wednesday: Pasta of some sort, salad, garlic bread
Thursday: Omelettes, bacon & sausage, toast
Friday: Soup

Hoppin' John and bok choy

Hopefully the bok choy is "green" enough to work for wealth in the new year!

The rest of the family had hot dogs or corn dogs. Carrot "coins" were their way of ensuring wealth ;^) We also had kiwi as well.