Soup

Potato soup for me and TMOTH, tomato or cheese for the kids. Yum.

Menu planning

One of the resolutions for 2010. Again.

I have almost a week to "practice" before the rubber hits the road, so I'm going to give it a go. Only the main dishes to start with; no need to go crazy :)

Saturday: Pizza
Sunday: Potato soup
Monday: Roast chicken
Tuesday: Fish
Wednesday: Quesadillas (with leftover chicken)
Thursday: Appetizer buffet (goes well with the champagne!)

Christmas dinner

Roast leg of lamb, macaroni & cheese, roasted potatoes, roasted carrots, raw carrot sticks, sweet potato casserole, and home-made rolls. Stocking candy for dessert!

And Jeff - get yourself a g-mail account so I know for sure it's you when you comment!!

Lasagna

Thankfully, DH cooked dinner; lasagna and garlic bread. Dinner planning will be one of my 2010 goals...

Leftover turkey

Probably the last dinner appearance of the old bird :) Leftover dressing, macaroni & cheese, sweet potatoes, green beans, canned biscuits.

Kona got the rest of the cornbread dressing and Cletus got the rest of the green beans.

Last night was pizza, to get everybody fed before Boy Scouts.

Turkey noodle soup

Aaah, leftovers. One of the best parts of Thanksgiving.

Tonight we had a turkey noodle soup - homemade turkey stock from the turkey carcass, onions, celery, carrots, turkey, and egg noodles. The big kind, of course.

I spent most of the day making Christmas cookies. Nearly all of the recipes come from my first edition Betty Crocker, published in 1950. It has a LOT more recipes than the newer edition. My favorite Christmas cookie recipe is an alternative to the "key" recipe.

Merry Christmas Cookies - Light Dough
1/3 c shortening
1/3 c sugar
1 egg
2/3 c honey
2 3/4 c sifted flour (I don't sift and it works fine)
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
(the recipe calls for 1 tsp lemon extract, but I like the cookies better without it)

Cream shortening and sugar, add egg and honey and mix well. Sift together flour, soda, and salt and add slowly to wet ingredients. (I do sift at this point so I don't wind up with a big clump of soda in my cookies.)

Chill, roll out and cut into shapes. Bake until lightly browned. Cool and decorate if desired.

This is a very forgiving dough - the instructions call for rolling thick (1/4"), but I usually roll thinner. It holds together very well when rolling - I always roll between two sheets of wax paper - without too much added flour.

I love these cookies, but the rest of my family doesn't care for them much. So, I bake them at Christmas, enjoy and share them.

Cheese & Crackers

Really, who wants to seriously cook the day after Thanksgiving???

Thanksgiving dinner was great - turkey, macaroni & cheese, 2 kinds of dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, asparagus, and raw vegetables. Three pies - pecan, chocolate, and lemon. All taste wonderful, but the lemon meringue filling is not as firm as it could be.

Soup and Salad

Brought to you courtesy of Small Man. I'm not sure what prompted this - it was the Cars soup for the soup, but he told me "I LOVE lettuce!" in the produce aisle, which I had no idea about. And he ate a whole bowl of lettuce. TMOTH and I had fancy greens for our salad, and Phillips cream of crab soup. Yum :)

Dinner has been going steadily downhill lately, and I've tried to reverse it starting this week. Posting on here should at least keep me accountable.

For Thanksgiving, I have the turkey in the freezer and need to go clean out the fridge to make room for it to thaw. I have cornmeal to make cornbread for dressing and Wednesday night bean soup. I have an Oreo crust and humongo chocolate bars from Trader Joe's to make chocolate pie. I have potatoes and sweet potatoes and marshmallows and green beans. (No cream of mushroom soup, though. Real mushrooms and white sauce for MY green bean casserole.) I need to check on the supply of eggs and flour and sugar, and I know I need cream.

Pork

chops & ham. Some like one, some like the other. Fried potatoes, carrots & cucumber, and french bread. Strawberries with vanilla cupcakes for dessert.

Lasagna and chicken nuggets

When one family member is not yet 4, chicken nuggets can be a part of ANY meal.

TMOTH is away, so the lasagna asked for by the teen and endorsed by the mid-kid went over well.

Chicken

Have to give TMOTH the credit - he made this tonight:
BAKED CHICKEN WITH POTATOES LYONNAISE

French bread from the grocery and black grapes to go with. Chicken nuggets and macaroni & cheese for the rugrats.

Catfish and hushpuppies

A good southern meal! They periodically have "catfish nuggets" at the Giant, and I like these much better than the bigger pieces. Season, roll in cornmeal, fry. Yum.

A Romantic Dinner with the Small Man

Just me and the toddler at home tonight - we had leftover chicken, macaroni & cheese, cucumber, honeydew, and Armenian flatbread.

Chili

TMOTH cooked chili! YAY! No cooking for me!

AND, the farmer's market started up again! DOUBLE YAY!!! Still early, so not a whole bunch of stuff, but I now have weekly convenient access to free range eggs. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Omelets for dinner tomorrow!

Cook-out!

The weather isn't sunny, but dinner was. Hamburgers (from the last grinding) and hot dogs, with chips. I forgot the watermelon; we'll have some for dessert.

Poor neglected dinner blog...

We're just such boring eaters these days. We had frozen TJ's fish filets or frozen french bread pizza for dinner, with bake and serve rolls (also from TJ's).

At least last night we had watermelon with dinner (cheese and ham and crackers).

The Small Man wants to "play on the playground" (our playset) when he gets home, and we mostly do. Tonight there was a big tent in the yard, so he had to go in and out all evening.

Lasagna

Home-made lasagna tonight; another pan in the freezer, along with a pan of stuffed shells. Garlic bread and watermelon as well.

Pancakes and waffles

With strawberries from Florida.
Last night we ate out at Red Hot and Blue - the tween and I both had to get new glasses. She needs new glasses, I just need new frames - the coating on the metal temples of mine are coming off. Not good.

Potato soup

With onions and crispy bacon sprinkled on top. And Ritz crackers, of course. Kidlets had tomato soup, silly things that they are.

Hot dogs and popcorn chicken

and the mid-kid and TMOTH were still going to be late for Cub Scouts. They were bringing a hammer, so who knows what will come home.