Dinners 29 Apr to 5 May 2012
Are you ready to be made hungry?!
Then go somewhere else ;-) A lot of the food we had this week honestly looks a bit gross - not the photographer's fault, just how the food came out. It was mostly tasty, though, so hopefully you'll look past that.
So with this week began a new month, which meant another round of menu planning. I finally put into practice something I'd been thinking about: templates. I shall tell you about it, in case it may help you; I think every last person on my FL is getting ever-busier with various life changes. Menu planning can be such a chore; I'm hoping my new system will help me slot things into place instead of having to think so hard every time.
I made another spreadsheet in my Menu file, and made different chunks. I've got these categories:
Dishes to have...
* Monthly
* Every two months (even-numbered months group and odd-numbered months group)
* Quarterly ([Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct], [Feb, May, Aug, Nov], [Mar, Jun, Sept, Dec])
* Spring (Mar, Apr, May)
* Summer (Jun, Jul, Aug)
* Fall (Sept, Oct, Nov)
* Winter (Dec, Jan, Feb)
Within those, mostly I have named dishes, but under Monthly, there are only a few named dishes, and several other listings like "Cajun night", "Breakfast for dinner", "Freezer night", etc. Each dish or category has a quantity beside it, and a sum at the bottom, so I can keep an eye and make sure we don't have too many old favorites - I still want to leave room to try new things.
There's some overlap - for May I want to have Lo Mein because I've decided I want that in odd-numbered months, and that can count for one of my Chinese nights. But I can whip through the month's spreadsheet first and plug in my Chinese nights first, and then change one of them to Lo Mein when I get to that column later.
Anyways, so I tried that this month. When I ran out of named dishes and needed inspiration, I went back to the beginning of my menu file (July 2008) to see what things we haven't had in ages - so you'll be seeing some of those this month. You might even think they're new, since I may have never written up some of them - so hey, maybe you'll see something new to you that you might like to try after all ;-)
And now, without further ado...
Sunday29 AprRed beans and rice.
Always a favorite.
Monday30 AprHollywood chicken, rice, and salad; blood orange chiffon cake for dessert.
I'm not sure why this is called Hollywood chicken; the author of it where I found it didn't know either. At any rate, it's pretty tasty, especially when you're in the mood for orange. You have to like orange to like this dish. I've taken the chicken and set it by itself here, and the sauce and vegetables it cooked in are atop the rice.
There is salad, and there was cake, really, though we forgot to take pictures of either. You've seen plenty of photos of our salad, though, and there was another blood orange chiffon cake earlier this year. I was so excited to find blood oranges randomly appear again this year, I snapped up a load of them. Good thing, too, cause I needed 5 oranges for this cake and its frosting. I made the cake for my lunch bunch earlier in the day, so I frosted it this time, with a light glaze of just icing (confectioner's) sugar, blood orange juice, orange extract, vanilla extract, and water. It was very tasty!
Tuesday1 MaySteak and pepper supper over rice.
This is a bit bland, really, and I should work on it the next time we make it. Filling, and tasty enough, and always colorful.
Wednesday2 MayFish and chips.
Always a favorite.
Thursday3 MaySwiss steak over pasta, with peas.
This recipe comes with three versions: stove top, oven, and slow cook; we'd tried this once before, the stove top version, and weren't too impressed, something about the texture of the meat, as I recall. I decided to give it another try, but the slow cook version this time - and it came out swimmingly! The flavor was great, the meat was lovely and tender. We left early this morning, so we did the prep work the night before (chopping vegetables, measuring out spices, etc), and in the morning it went together very quick and easy while I fixed my breakfast, and voila, we had tasty dinner waiting on us when we got home. I do love that about slow cooking.
You can pair it with rice, pasta, mashed potatoes, or whatever you can think of to soak up those juices; I opted for pasta since I'm a bit tired of rice at the moment; we did a normal amount of pasta serving for the two of us (125g dried), and it was a good amount. I suppose you could even just dish it up without any starch, too, if you wanted to. There are vegetables in the dish, but it does benefit by having just a bit extra vegetables on the side.
Friday4 MayChicken quesadillas, Mexican rice, and refried beans.
Bout time I finally added that recipe to our system. I know I've written about quesadillas here before; I guess I just gave you the original link instead. Anyhoo, the sauce really makes those quesadillas, so definitely look into saucing your quesadillas if you try making any. We tried just cheese & meat before I found that recipe, and it's nowhere near as good.
Chris did an excellent job with this meal, even the somewhat tedious rice. I did something to my ankle this day, so he was on his own in the kitchen for dinner. It came out excellently. We had made the quesadilla sauce and the salsa a couple of days before, so that helped. Anyways, tasty as always.
Saturday5 MayBiscuits and sausage gravy.
These biscuits came out really great - and they shot right up in the oven. I have no idea where I got the original recipe from - it was printed out (without any source noted) in my folder when it was dinner time.
That printed one calls for plain milk, but I'd gotten buttermilk to make the biscuits, so I made that swap -- but in case you didn't know, if you ever make that swap, you also need to swap the baking powder (that goes with the ordinary milk) for baking soda to go with the buttermilk. Baking powder is just baking soda (an alkali, or base) combined with one or more acidic salts. Buttermilk is more acidic than milk, so the acid is already taken care of, so you don't want more acid from the baking powder, too; better to elimiate that by simply using straight baking soda. Not the same measure, though, or else your biscuits will take over your oven! Cook's Thesaurus suggests using 1/4tsp baking soda plus some other stuff to make 1tsp baking powder, so I used 1tsp soda instead of 1Tbsp powder (1/3 ratio) to start with. It came out well, so I'm keeping that.
These came out quite flaky, as well, thanks to Chris's method, which I duly recorded when I typed up the recipe. We've seen that method used in the flaky biscuit recipes, so it was a safe bet. Really, these were the best biscuits so far, I think. We might make them a bit bigger next time; we'll see.
I meant to take a picture of an undrowned biscuit to show you, but I forgot, and now they're all gone, so you'll just have to take my word!
The gravy is just a simple one; cook the sausage, set aside; add enough fat (I use butter) to make 1/4 cup; add 1/4 cup flour; mix until combined. Add milk until it reaches desired consistency. Season with salt, white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and dried herbs as desired. Once finished, toss back in sausage, heat through if necessary, and then spoon over the biscuits.
Now go get cooking! :-)
Then go somewhere else ;-) A lot of the food we had this week honestly looks a bit gross - not the photographer's fault, just how the food came out. It was mostly tasty, though, so hopefully you'll look past that.
So with this week began a new month, which meant another round of menu planning. I finally put into practice something I'd been thinking about: templates. I shall tell you about it, in case it may help you; I think every last person on my FL is getting ever-busier with various life changes. Menu planning can be such a chore; I'm hoping my new system will help me slot things into place instead of having to think so hard every time.
I made another spreadsheet in my Menu file, and made different chunks. I've got these categories:
Dishes to have...
* Monthly
* Every two months (even-numbered months group and odd-numbered months group)
* Quarterly ([Jan, Apr, Jul, Oct], [Feb, May, Aug, Nov], [Mar, Jun, Sept, Dec])
* Spring (Mar, Apr, May)
* Summer (Jun, Jul, Aug)
* Fall (Sept, Oct, Nov)
* Winter (Dec, Jan, Feb)
Within those, mostly I have named dishes, but under Monthly, there are only a few named dishes, and several other listings like "Cajun night", "Breakfast for dinner", "Freezer night", etc. Each dish or category has a quantity beside it, and a sum at the bottom, so I can keep an eye and make sure we don't have too many old favorites - I still want to leave room to try new things.
There's some overlap - for May I want to have Lo Mein because I've decided I want that in odd-numbered months, and that can count for one of my Chinese nights. But I can whip through the month's spreadsheet first and plug in my Chinese nights first, and then change one of them to Lo Mein when I get to that column later.
Anyways, so I tried that this month. When I ran out of named dishes and needed inspiration, I went back to the beginning of my menu file (July 2008) to see what things we haven't had in ages - so you'll be seeing some of those this month. You might even think they're new, since I may have never written up some of them - so hey, maybe you'll see something new to you that you might like to try after all ;-)
And now, without further ado...
Sunday29 AprRed beans and rice.
Always a favorite.
Monday30 AprHollywood chicken, rice, and salad; blood orange chiffon cake for dessert.
I'm not sure why this is called Hollywood chicken; the author of it where I found it didn't know either. At any rate, it's pretty tasty, especially when you're in the mood for orange. You have to like orange to like this dish. I've taken the chicken and set it by itself here, and the sauce and vegetables it cooked in are atop the rice.
There is salad, and there was cake, really, though we forgot to take pictures of either. You've seen plenty of photos of our salad, though, and there was another blood orange chiffon cake earlier this year. I was so excited to find blood oranges randomly appear again this year, I snapped up a load of them. Good thing, too, cause I needed 5 oranges for this cake and its frosting. I made the cake for my lunch bunch earlier in the day, so I frosted it this time, with a light glaze of just icing (confectioner's) sugar, blood orange juice, orange extract, vanilla extract, and water. It was very tasty!
Tuesday1 MaySteak and pepper supper over rice.
This is a bit bland, really, and I should work on it the next time we make it. Filling, and tasty enough, and always colorful.
Wednesday2 MayFish and chips.
Always a favorite.
Thursday3 MaySwiss steak over pasta, with peas.
This recipe comes with three versions: stove top, oven, and slow cook; we'd tried this once before, the stove top version, and weren't too impressed, something about the texture of the meat, as I recall. I decided to give it another try, but the slow cook version this time - and it came out swimmingly! The flavor was great, the meat was lovely and tender. We left early this morning, so we did the prep work the night before (chopping vegetables, measuring out spices, etc), and in the morning it went together very quick and easy while I fixed my breakfast, and voila, we had tasty dinner waiting on us when we got home. I do love that about slow cooking.
You can pair it with rice, pasta, mashed potatoes, or whatever you can think of to soak up those juices; I opted for pasta since I'm a bit tired of rice at the moment; we did a normal amount of pasta serving for the two of us (125g dried), and it was a good amount. I suppose you could even just dish it up without any starch, too, if you wanted to. There are vegetables in the dish, but it does benefit by having just a bit extra vegetables on the side.
Friday4 MayChicken quesadillas, Mexican rice, and refried beans.
Bout time I finally added that recipe to our system. I know I've written about quesadillas here before; I guess I just gave you the original link instead. Anyhoo, the sauce really makes those quesadillas, so definitely look into saucing your quesadillas if you try making any. We tried just cheese & meat before I found that recipe, and it's nowhere near as good.
Chris did an excellent job with this meal, even the somewhat tedious rice. I did something to my ankle this day, so he was on his own in the kitchen for dinner. It came out excellently. We had made the quesadilla sauce and the salsa a couple of days before, so that helped. Anyways, tasty as always.
Saturday5 MayBiscuits and sausage gravy.
These biscuits came out really great - and they shot right up in the oven. I have no idea where I got the original recipe from - it was printed out (without any source noted) in my folder when it was dinner time.
That printed one calls for plain milk, but I'd gotten buttermilk to make the biscuits, so I made that swap -- but in case you didn't know, if you ever make that swap, you also need to swap the baking powder (that goes with the ordinary milk) for baking soda to go with the buttermilk. Baking powder is just baking soda (an alkali, or base) combined with one or more acidic salts. Buttermilk is more acidic than milk, so the acid is already taken care of, so you don't want more acid from the baking powder, too; better to elimiate that by simply using straight baking soda. Not the same measure, though, or else your biscuits will take over your oven! Cook's Thesaurus suggests using 1/4tsp baking soda plus some other stuff to make 1tsp baking powder, so I used 1tsp soda instead of 1Tbsp powder (1/3 ratio) to start with. It came out well, so I'm keeping that.
These came out quite flaky, as well, thanks to Chris's method, which I duly recorded when I typed up the recipe. We've seen that method used in the flaky biscuit recipes, so it was a safe bet. Really, these were the best biscuits so far, I think. We might make them a bit bigger next time; we'll see.
I meant to take a picture of an undrowned biscuit to show you, but I forgot, and now they're all gone, so you'll just have to take my word!
The gravy is just a simple one; cook the sausage, set aside; add enough fat (I use butter) to make 1/4 cup; add 1/4 cup flour; mix until combined. Add milk until it reaches desired consistency. Season with salt, white pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and dried herbs as desired. Once finished, toss back in sausage, heat through if necessary, and then spoon over the biscuits.
Now go get cooking! :-)