Menu planning

Sometimes it's a bit difficult to transition to summer menus. I'm afraid the meals I've planned are too heavy, but they use what we have on hand. Recently I've been planning 2 weeks ahead, which I think should save me some shopping time, since then I can get obscure ingredients when I happen to be in the neighborhood of whatever store carries them.

For this week, my monthly menu plan overview suggested:
lentils
chinese
leftovers
tacos or quesadillas
polenta
fish
bean soup/chili.

It helps me to have the starting point of ideas and to remind me that I want to eat more legumes and fish.

I started my menu with a carryover I never got around to last week, African pineapple peanut kale stew, to use up the rest of the kale in our garden from last year. I'll have to do a post on that recipe if I end up making it.

In place of lentils, I decided I wanted an interesting summery salad that I could share with our vegetarian friends, so I chose a new recipe I haven't tried before, Quinoa Black Bean Salad with Smoky Lime Dressing.

For Chinese, I remembered that I had some fat udon noodles in the freezer that I picked up at the Japanese grocery store a couple of weeks ago. I found a recipe in Fine Cooking Magazine that I want to try: Udon with Tofu and Stir-fried Vegetables. We loved a recipe from the same article for Chinese Egg Noodles with Five-Spice Pork, and I've been wanting to try more of those recipes.

For Tacos, I chose Chicken Veracruzana tacos. It's been too long since I've made that and I have most of the ingredients on hand.

For Polenta, I chose our most frequently made version, where I top it with caramelized peppers and onions and some blue cheese.

For Fish, I decided to skip it this week because I already have too many things to make with the carryover of the African stew.

For Bean Soup/Chile, I chose to use some bean soup out of the freezer, either White Bean and Ham Soup or White Bean Pesto.

For next week, the suggestions and my choices were:
Potatoes: Kale and Mashed Potatoes with ham (in the freezer, leftover from Easter)
Thai: Salmon with Thai Curry Spinach (adds in the fish I skipped the week before). I may also make Thai Chickpeas and Sweet Potatoes to use up ingredients on hand.
Leftovers: just clear out the fridge
Burritos: whatever fillings we have on hand, usually bean and cheese. Might have some leftover chicken from the week before.
Use-it-up Pasta: skip (pasta being used in the Pork Ragu)
Meat: Pork Shoulder Ragu (I've been wanting to try this recipe from Dinner a Love Story)
Vegetable Soup: Quick Blender Tomato Soup with some crusty bread or melted cheese sandwiches.

I generally find that even planning for one night a week of leftovers, between eating out and with friends I often have one more dinner plan per week than I manage to make. I sometimes just push it to the next week, sometimes make it for a lunch, and sometimes skip it altogether.

Maybe this will give you some ideas for your menu this week!

Eating down the fridge

I'm going to list some of what we ate this week because sometimes I think it's helpful just to get ideas of what to eat.

I read about this idea of "eating down the fridge" somewhere last year, and though I'd never thought to call it that, it was something I'd tried to do occasionally. The idea is that you don't shop for a week or however long it takes to eat what's in your fridge. Now, I've already confessed that I'm obsessed with food. A part of that obsession is some food hoarding tendencies. So if I combine what I have in the fridge with what I have in the pantry and the freezer, we could theoretically do this for a long time. My current goal is to try to eat most of what we have in the freezers, at least to the point where I'm more aware of what's in them. I've tried keeping lists, but never seem to manage keeping them updated.

This coincides with another current goal of mine, which is to strictly stick to the current iteration of our budget. I'm really good at making budgets, and not so good at following them. Luckily we sometimes have little injections of extra cash in the form of painting (and now pottery) sales that cover the overspending.

Here's our menu from last week:
Sun: Golden Cheddar Cheese soup, Irish soda bread. I should post the recipe for that soup - it was really good (potatoes, carrots, onions, butternut, pureed with boullion, buttermilk and cheese). I prefer biscuits to the soda bread.

Mon: shrimp and scallop linguini, green salad with nectarines, almonds, cranberries, orange segments and goat cheese, pear tart from Whole Foods (Valentine's Day was an exception)

Tues: burritos. Refried beans and corn from the freezer. Whole wheat tortillas, cheese, cabbage, salsa were in the fridge. Tomatoes and avocado purchased for this purpose.

Wed: leftover seafood pasta

Thurs: shredded pork tacos (shredded pork barbacoa from the freezer)

Fri: Ate out with a Living Social Coupon at Tana Ethiopian. It was good, but for the money, I'd rather have Udipi or Green Mango. If you do go there, we all agreed the spicy lentils were the best dish we had. Then we went to see the animated shorts at Regent Square theater (I had a couple of free passes from PCA)

Sat: lunch: Use-it-up/make-it-up pasta (I had some leftover cooked linguini in the fridge that I mixed with sauteed onions, carrots, and celery and other assorted odds and ends in the refrigerator: black olives, calamata olives, a bit of goat cheese, chopped sun-dried tomatoes. Dinner: vegetarian chili from the freezer and homemade cornbread (used powdered buttermilk, since I didn't have fresh)

Sun: Southwest style hamburgers (ground beef and buns from the freezer, topped with chipotle mayo, canned green chiles, avocado, tomato, lettuce and cheddar), oven fries and sweet potato fries, and roasted turnips (I got them from the farmer and have been postponing using them, but they weren't bad this way).

On the possible list for next week:
*pozole (freezer)
*mediterranean lentil salad
*black beans and rice with a little appetizer of shrimp and avocado ceviche to use some of the *shrimp in the freezer from Valentine's day)
*fresh green pea soup with homemade bread
*shrimp pad thai
*leftovers
*chinese stir-fry if there are enough vegetables left in the crisper, with dumplings (freezer) from TJ's
*maybe cheesy hashbrowns with ham (freezer)
*breakfast for dinner
*frittata with the leftover potatoes from the oven fries

I'll just need to buy some cilantro, but I think I have everything else. I will need more bananas and milk for breakfasts. Creepy, huh? And I think I can do a 3rd week, too. TMI?

Cooking in the Kiln

I haven't been cooking much food lately because I've been spending a lot of time "cooking" pottery.

I pulled a couple of glaze firings out this weekend and have 3 or 4 whole shelves of beautiful work just waiting for Christmas shoppers (just give me a call if you want to come get first dibs).






I'm eager to get to work on a new batch, so if there's some particular item you're looking for, let me know and I'll try to include it. I want to have at least twice as much stuff heading into the Holiday season and try selling some on Etsy and at the Ellis Holiday Shoppe this year to come closer to breaking even with my costs.





So our dinner menu this week:
Sun: leftover food from tamale party
Mon: fresh tomato soup with melted cheese sandwiches
Tues: frozen pizza (storebought) with sauteed shredded butternut (cooks quicker that way)
Wed: bean and veggie pesto soup
Thurs: frozen burritos (I made them with leftover taco fixings a couple of weeks ago), lettuce & tomato
Fri: Pad Thai
Sat: frozen tamales (left from tamale party), green salad with guacamole dressing

As you can see, we had several meals from the freezer, and other three meals all took under 30 minutes.