I've been slacking big time. No menus for the last two or three weeks. And I haven't even been planning but just forgetting to blog. I've just slacked on planning overall. I did mean to write down what I made so that I could see the menu after the fact but unless I write it down that night I forget. I've been making the vegetarian sloppy Joe recipe quite a bit lately which I need to post sometime soon. I like it a lot more than Tempeh Sloppy Joes which I tried a few months back. My recipe is from Laurel's kitchen and uses oats, walnuts, and eggs. It tricks most meat eaters.

Sunday: dinner at friends
Monday: dinner at friends
Tuesday: Black pepper Tempeh w/ crunchy ramen coleslaw
Wednesday: stir-fry (with lemongrass & chicken perhaps?)
Thursday: Quiche?
Friday: seafood night (probably salmon)
Saturday: BBQ pork shoulder w/ baked beans

Also on the menu this week for lunch: I bought some sliced meat & cheese for sandwiches. I also like burritos. I didn't buy bread -- I'm going to make it instead, as a way of saving some money. I have yet to make whole wheat bread that slices as well as the bread from Sage Bakehouse in Santa Fe though.

Menu March 25-31

Man, I'm starting to slack. I didn't even post a menu for this week. I didn't even plan out dinner, although whenever I went to the store I tried to buy food for that night and the next. Let's see if I can remember what we ate last week:

Sunday: Oh yes. Sopes with mushrooms and something or other...Sopes are a cornmeal dough that you shape into flat discs, cook on a griddle, then fry. You mound a topping on that. They are pretty good. I think I made a black bean/monterey jack/sauteed mushroom topping for them.

Monday: Tamales  - I made some for Matt & Alicia & their new addition, Izel, and made some for my own freezer as well. I made mango chicken as well as vegetarian squash, corn & black beans. I am now adding coconut oil to all my tamales as I love the tropical flavor it adds.

Tuesday: Burritos (black beans, salsa, cheese, with pork, bell peppers & onion)

Wednesday: Tarragon Chicken Salad (from The Silver Palate). Although I think I prefer my Curry chicken salad more -- which is basically sour cream, mayo, curry powder, toasted cashews, dried cranberries (or golden raisins) and celery. Also I had pie dough so I made a rather runny strawberry pie. It tasted really good though despite the runniness. And the crust came out really really well! Yum. I ate some for breakfast the next day.

Thursday: Hot and spicy tofu with lemongrass (we still had lemon grass so I thought I would experiment a bit)

Ate at Joe's Diner Friday night.

Saturday (tonight): Maybe some sea food since we missed "Fish Friday" last night. I also want to make some sesame rice balls to go with it. And something nice & green on the side.

Next week: I *am* going to make a menu plan for this next week. I'm also toying with the idea of doing an all-vegetarian week. I also have a goal of cutting down on how much meat I serve at dinner. Instead of it being the centerpiece, I'd rather it just be a small part of dinner. Also, we spent way too much money on food in March. It was kind of ridiculous. And I was really good about not wasting produce this month. Sigh. So this week I'm going to try budgeting a certain amount per day and just taking cash to the store. I'll let you know how that goes.

Menu Mar 18-24

This week I forgot to post my menu in advance. Below is what we had. I usually bought groceries for that day and the next night as well. I also was really good this week about using all my produce. Sometimes I buy cilantro and it mostly goes bad, but this week I managed to use almost everything. I think I still have half a chayote and half a cauliflower left. But managed to cruise through the rest of the perishable produce.

Sunday: Split pea soup with Kale Coconut salad. Dessert: Raspberry Lemon cookies

Monday: Black Pepper tempeh with brown rice and cucumber salad.

Tuesday: Sauteed pork chops with mushroom red-wine sauce and spaghetti squash with brown butter, sage, and walnuts.

Wednesday: Spicy lemongrass chicken stir-fry with Thai mushroom/chayote/avocado salad. The mushroom salad recipe usually uses cucumber and tomato, which I didn't have. Raw chayote is quite similar to cucumber. Avocado is quite different from tomato but worked well.

Thursday: Quiche (kale, green onion, and mushrooms with dill havarti) and salad

Friday: Trout served up Thai-style with pearl couscous and Parmesan Kale chips. Those chips are awesome, it was hard to stop snacking on them.

Saturday: Roasted pork loin with chile-honey sauce. (This time I toasted about 2 oz of guajillo and ancho chiles, then soaked them in boiling water for a while. I pureed them in a blender jar with some water and the lime juice, then made the sauce. It reduces the bitterness of the chiles and was great.)

Last week's new recipes review

Last's weeks new recipes:

Farrotto (farro risotto):

The farrotto was not popular with John. I didn't mind it, and have had it for lunch a few times.

Thousand Layer Lasagna
The thousand layer lasagna was pretty popular, everyone ate quite a bit of that and it disappeared by lunchtime the next day. It was a lot of work to make all that lasagna -- mainly the having to roll out all of it to the very thinnest setting. But actually the hardest part was unsticking the noodles after I cooked them. I didn't read the instructions about dunking them in cold water afterwards which probably would have helped. I had oiled the boiling water though and they still stuck. Also I found I needed twice as much sauce as the recipe called for, and I also used all the mozzarella I had on hand which was probably 4 oz more or so.

The other new recipe was Sloppeh Joes -- sloppy joes with tempeh. I followed my tried-and-true Gourmet magaazine sloppy joes recipe but the tempeh was kind of boring. It has a good texture but didn't absorb the sauce flavors as well as meat, I guess. Our favorite vegetarian Sloppy Joes remains the Laurel's Kitchen Walnut-Oat burgers served up sloppy-joe style (they don't have the sloppy joe recipe in there, that was my idea). I'll have to post that one sometime.

Menu for week of Mar 11 to 17th

Last week went pretty well. I probably went to the grocery store more times than I should have but I stuck to the menu plan.

This weeks menu:
Sunday: Sloppy Joes (with meat, not tempeh, like last week) using this recipe: Sophisto Joes and salad.

Monday: Stir-fry night (with chicken, mushrooms, bell pepper, and whatever else is in the fridge.)

Tuesday: Something vegetarian that uses stuff I have on hand which includes kale, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and onions. And lots of grains & beans. I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Wednesday: ?? Leaving this one open for now as well. I was thinking about beef stew but i don't like eating beef more than once a week in general (it's in Sundays' dinner).

Thursday: Squash & cranberry stuffed chicken breasts. This is becoming a regular part of the menu.

Friday: Seafood night -- I'm thinking this week of having white fish (tilapia?) with green olives & lemons.

Saturday: St. Patrick's Day, which means we'll be at the Central Avenue Grill in Los Alamos listening and dancing to the Irish music band Roaring Jelly. No green beer, but maybe a black & tan.

Farrotto (Risotto with farro)

Well John took one bite of the farrotto last night and promptly put down his fork and said, "I don't like it." Which is something he almost never does. Usually if he doesn't like something he just doesn't eat a lot of it, but usually he eats whatever I give him.

I don't know if it was the fennel seed or the saffron he disliked. I thought it was OK -- it kind of tasted a bit like paella to me with the red pepper and saffron. But it wasn't really enough to be a main course on its own. Fortunately, I had prepared some sausage to go along with it. I think that some shrimp or scallops would go well with it. I decided to freeze most of it and save some for my lunch today.

I think what I would like to try is perhaps a version with fresh fennel bulb instead of fennel seed. Or try making paella with farro -- I think that could be good. If I make farrotto again I will use a more classic ingredient combo and just have it as a side dish.

Chicken cashew stir-fry

Dinner tonight was chicken stir-fry with toasted Kale Coconut salad and brown basmati rice.

Chicken Cashew stir-fry.

This recipe is based off of Heidi Swanson's Black Pepper Tempeh recipe in Super Natural Every Day. What is different? Well, I use chicken instead of tempeh, I add in some Thai curry paste, and I mix up the vegetables and toss in some cashews at the end.

Ingredients:

3 TB coconut oil (you could substitute peanut oil)
7 large cloves of garlic smashed well and roughly chopped.
1 small onion chopped (shallots are also good -- use 4 or so)
1/2 TB red pepper flakes
1 TB peeled grated ginger
1 TB thai curry paste (I used Chu Chee but red or yellow would work well, you can also skip it)

1 lb chicken thighs (you can also use tempeh, beef, pork, tofu, etc.)
1/2 cup cashews
 4 cups mixed chopped vegetables (I used red cabbage, red bell pepper, and chayote tonight). You could use a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies.


Mix in a small bowl:
3 TB tamari or soy sauce
1/4 cup (1 oz) cane sugar
2 TB water
1 tsp fish sauce (optional)


Cilantro and/or thai basil for garnish


Heat coconut oil in large skillet over low heat. Slowly cook garlic, onions, red pepper flakes, ginger, and curry paste over low heat for 10-15 minutes.

Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the chicken, vegetables, and soy sauce/sugar/water mixture. Stir and cover and cook until chicken & vegetables are cooked through (about 10 minutes). Add cashews about a minute before you are ready to serve. Garnish with cilantro or Thai basil.

Menu plan Mar 3 - Mar 9

Saturday: leftovers (curry chicken salad)

I have some food items I need to use up soon. Such as a red bell pepper, asparagus, parsley, and mint. I could probably make some mint and parsley ice cubes though so I have them on hand in the future. Speaking of freezing, I really need to organize the freezer a bit more. I have a lot of stuff frozen now but it's kind of hard to find anything.

Sunday: Vegetarian thousand layer lasagna from 101 cookbooks (with homemade sheets of lasagna) and roasted asparagus (perhaps with mint and parsley?).

Monday: Stir-fry night -- probably with chicken thighs and red bell pepper and red cabbage this week. 

Tuesday: Farrotto with Saffron and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. Kale

Wednesday: Beef Stroganoff

Thursday: Sloppeh Joes (sloppy joes with Tempeh)
Friday: Salmon night

round up of last week

Last week in terms of menu planning went pretty smoothly. I took it easy as John was out of town on business so I was busier with Alice and knew I wouldn't feel like cooking every night. Wednesday I had company over so I went fancier that night: we had a roasted pork loin stuffed with prunes & apples and shallots and served it with a mustard cream sauce along with kale with cream & walnuts (I didn't have the pancetta for that recipe but I hear it's really really good that way). Yum.

Thursday I made a pasta with fresh herbs which was simple and quick. I had fresh basil, mint, and parsley to use up.

On Friday, I broiled salmon with a brown sugar curry paste rub.

And the other exciting recipe last week was an Asparagus tofu stir-fry from the 101 Cookbooks blog. It was good but I doubled the recipe and I think maybe it had a bit too much lime juice/zest in it. I think next time I would tone it down a bit on that front. But we ate it all no problem! Also I forgot to add in the fresh basil and mint at the end which might have fixed the lime issue.

Food menu Week of Feb 26-Mar 3

This week is going to be casual. I'm in the bedroom right now and don't have access to cookbooks. This isn't a very exciting menu. I'm trying to take this week "off" somewhat from cooking as I've been in cooking overdrive for the last few weeks getting ready for that party. Also the DH will be out of town most of the week so there should be more leftovers in theory.

Sunday: leftover tamales and black bean quinoa salad and cookies
Monday: Stir-fry night - maybe this.
Tuesday: broccoli pasta
Wednesday: something with meat.
Thursday: leftovers
Friday: Salmon and sesame soba noodles
Saturday: TBD

Food menu review

I made my usual mistake last week which was going to the store without my food menu or shopping list. Overall last week went pretty smoothly. I stuck to the plan. Monday night was plain old roasted chicken because I was too tired from making tamales all weekend to quarter the chicken and marinate it for the Thai-roasted chicken recipe, so we had plain old roasted chicken instead. Thursday night, which was undecided, ended up being sausages from Whole Foods as I was in Santa Fe that day getting my hair cut for the first time in 10 months. (woo hoo!).

The party on Saturday was a success, and everyone dug the tamales and crack pie. There was even some food left over -- just the right amount. 

Today I planted some mache and spinach out in the front yard. The spinach I tried to start inside never sprouted -- I think it was too hot for it. The indoor sprouts are doing great. I have Blue kale, Swiss chard, Rapini broccoli (Broccolini), Sylvetta arugula, and bok choy all growing inside under some fluorescent lights. I also started some Red Russian kale and chives the other day as well but they haven't sprouted yet. I need to start getting the young plants outside somehow. Hardening off is often a pain, and especially right now becasue the hoophouse still isn't getting enough sun to put them in there. Also I have to work on the hoophouse to keep the dogs out or else I'll just get frustrated when Twist digs up my new seedlings.

Menu Feb 19-25

So I spent a ton of money on groceries last week. This week I hope the only thing I have to buy is produce, milk, and eggs.

Sunday: going out to friends for dinner.

Monday: either Thai-style roasted chicken if I am not too lazy and cut up the chicken and marinate it, or just plain old roast chicken.

Tuesday: Black pepper tempeh with cauliflower (there maybe some leftover chicken as well)

Wednesday: Stuffed chicken breasts - maybe I'll experiment with the stuffing some this week. Usually has butternut squash, walnuts and golden raisins.

Thursday: ??

Friday: Salmon

Saturday: Party! Tamales, Clementine Jicama salad, black beans & rice, salsa & chips, and crack pie & some other pies and cookies for dessert.

Last week's menu recap

I stuck fairly well to the menu plan last week. For stir-fry night I riffed on the Black Pepper Tempeh recipe. I used chicken instead of tempeh, and I added a few tablespoons of Chu Chee curry paste. Instead of cauliflower I put in red cabbage, carrot, and broccoli. It was quite pretty with the red cabbage and carrot. The broccoli didn't go as well visually speaking but it tasted good.

On pork shoulder day I ended up making carnitas, using the Diana Kennedy recipe that they posted over at Food52. I screwed it up a bit but it was still pretty good. (You are supposed to simmer in water uncovered and I had it covered up in the crockpot for hours). So we had carnitas tacos that night.

On Friday I deviated from the plan because I made a lot of tamales that day. So we had tamales for dinner. And last night we just made up some tacos out of leftover tamale filling and also had a few more tamales as I made them last night as well. 

The hit new recipe of the week was from Super Natural Every Day again. The Kale Salad is fantastic. You basically roast some kale & flaked coconut in the oven and mix with farro (or rice or any grain) and some of the dressing that you tossed the kale with before cooking it. I am not a big dried coconut person but this was excellent. Our dinner guests scraped the bowl clean.

Crack Pie

I bought a few cookbooks recently, all of which were featured in Food52's The Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks. Two of the cookbooks I bought focus on natural whole foods, and the other, Momofuku Milk Bar is kind of the opposite. It's a dessert cookbook and revels in butter, sugar, cream and weird ingredients like glucose, milk powder and corn powder.

The most famous offering at the Milk Bar is Crack Pie. It is so famous they even trademarked the name. In fact, the little trademark signs in the book start to get a little irritating, like a shirt tag that is itchy or something.

I decided I would make crack pie for the big party next weekend. By the way, Crack pie is basically old-fashioned chess pie with a few tweaks. I've been wanting to make it in the Joy of Cooking for a while now but never have.

It's been taking me freaking forever to make the pie. The first step is to make a giant oatmeal cookie that you then crumble up to make a oat cookie crumb crust. I did this over a week ago, but then used some of the crumbles to make a peach pie. Not tto bad. Then I made a double batch of the cookie. But when it came time to crumble it up in the food processor I was bad. I turned it on and walked a way and promptly was distracted by the baby. Next thing you know I have oat cookie butter. I baked up some of that into cookies which were kind of good. They were like a shortbread.

Finally I made the cookie again, and made it into crumbs. I made the filling a few nights ago. It takes 8 egg yolks among other things. Crack pie also uses corn powder, which you make by buying freeze-dried corn (Just Corn) and blitzing it into a fine powder. I also have been using this corn powder in my vegetarian tamales as well for added flavor. I never bought Just Corn before but it is really good. I actually found myself snacking on the corn kernels and they are incredibly sweet.  You can get it on Amazon or Whole Foods. (The Just Tomatoes website charges an arm and a leg for shipping FYI -- why don't they offer USPS priority mail?).

Anyway--today was the day I baked the crack pie(s). Each recipe makes 2 pies, FYI. Everything is fussy about this recipe as far as I can tell. You bake the pies for 15 minutes at 350, then you open the oven and lower the temp to 325. You are supposed to keep the oven door open till the temperature is lowered. I just kept it open till I heard the oven click on again, which I took to mean it had cooled off. Also, you don't really want to keep an oven open when you have a baby walking around the house.

My crack pies took forever to cook. I think it has to do with the altitude, but also I started with refrigerated filling -- if I make it again I will let it warm up to room temperature first. I started getting worried that the liquid would evaporate off so at one point I covered them loosely with foil. My high altitude baking cookbook has this horror story about pecan pie boiling over in the oven at 10,000 feet because there is too much sugar and not enough liquid. But I am only at 7300 feet but still, I was getting a little worried. As a final step, you take the not fully cooked pies out of the oven, cool, then freeze for 3 hours. Finally I just took them out after having them in the oven for probably two to three times as long as the recipe stated.

I stole a slice out of one of the pies and it's pretty good. Super sweet. Would go great with some strong black coffee. If you have a sweet tooth you will probably like this one...Here is the recipe at Bon Appetit.

Black Pepper Tempeh

I'm not sure I have ever cooked tempeh before. Black Pepper Tempeh from Super Natural Every Day was really good and I will be making it again. Tempeh and finely chopped cauliflower is cooked in a sauce of ginger, shallots, lots of garlic, soy sauce, cane sugar, and red and black pepper.  If one wanted to make a version of this with chicken instead of tempeh I'm sure it would also be great.

I asked over at the Food52 Hotline for what to serve alongside this recipe. People over there suggested something crunchy, so I made the Ramen coleslaw recipe from Feeding the Whole Family. The purple cabbage I used in that added a nice splash of color to the otherwise all-brown meal (we had brown rice as well). Crisp-tender broccoli with sesame oil would also have gone well with the meal.

The recipe has been posted on a few other blogs, so I'll just link to one of them here in case you want to try it out: Black Pepper Tempeh. The cookbook author, Heidi Swanson, has a culinary blog over at 101 Cookbooks as well with a bunch of other recipes.

Dinner Menu, Feb 12 through 18th

This week I'm going to try a few new recipes from Super Natural Every Day.

Sunday: Black Pepper Tempeh (from Super Natural Every Day) with rice and Ramen-Cabbage Slaw

Monday: Stir-fry night (with chicken) with brown rice

Tuesday: Slow-cooked pork shoulder or stew (probably Georgian Pork Stew from Gourmet)

Wednesday: Wild-rice casserole (from Super Natural Every Day)

Thursday: Squash and cranberry stuffed chicken breasts (from Feeding the Whole Family) and Lemon and Garlic Quinoa Salad (also from FtWF)

Friday: Salmon and something else

Saturday: Thai-style roasted chicken (The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking) I may be making a ton of tamales that day. If I am not making a ton of tamales I'll have time to make dinner. If I make a ton then maybe we'll have tamales for dinner instead.

At baby group I was talking to another mom about menu planning and she said she plans out a month at a time. That sounds like a challenge, but maybe I'll try it later this year. After I get the hang of things a bit more. Last weeks menu planning was rough. Hopefully this week goes better. Lessons from last week include: don't forget the grocery list, and, don't lose the weekly menu plan.

Another inspiration to me was in the intro to a new cookbook I picked up this week, Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson.  I learned about this cookbook at Food52's Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks contest. A lot of good cookbooks were in the contest this year. I also ordered Nigel Slater's Tender and Momofuku Milk Bar.

Anyway, Heidi Swanson went over her shopping routine -- she shops about one time a week at a local farmer's market (benefit to living in CA, you can get a lot of produce year round). I suppose I could go shop at the SF farmer's market year round. Maybe I'll try to go next Saturday.

She shops about once a month at a natural foods store to stock up on beans and grains, and other specialty stores as needed. That would be cool if I could do that this summer -- just shop at the farmer's market. Sounds challenging. You really have to cook with what is in season that way. In the summer I do try to buy most of my produce at the farmer's market. I wouldn't mind trying to do a meal or two a week this winter/spring using only local ingredients. I'll have to get to the market and see what they have for me. 

This week in menu planning has not gone well. For starters I have gone to the grocery store just about every day. The problems started when I forgot to bring my shopping list with me to the store on Sunday. Then I misplaced my menu and couldn't remember what we were going to eat some days. The following is this week's menu as of Friday:

Sunday: burritos (kind of everyone for themselves really)
Monday: stir-fry
Tuesday: Chicken Etouffee (first time making this from Joy of Cooking and it turned out well -- just make sure to really brown the roux)
Wednesday: Rotisserie Chicken (this was unplanned)
Thursday: Asparagus Pesto with pasta and peach pie
Friday: Stuffed butternut squash
Saturday: Salmon with lemon garlic quinoa.

Follow up/notes on previous menu from end of January (week 3).

OK, so the recipes from Cooking Light slow cooker cookbook were a bust. The pork loin recipe would have been good if I had used a fattier cut, such as pork shoulder, instead. The lean meat dried out after cooking all day. Also, the recipe seemed too sweet, so I added in a sauteed onion which helped add a savory note. Next time I buy a pork loin I will go with my instincts and not overcook it. Butterflying the loin and stuffing with dried fruit would be a better way to go.

The cabbage rolls were not that good. I made extra filling that I froze, and I think I will find a use for (like adding smoked turkey and butternut squash and then stuffing the squash), but the tomato sauce that went on top wasn't very tasty. The leftovers were eaten out of a sense of duty.

Lets see. John had a stomach virus Thursday and the groundnut stew wasn't sounding very appealing. I made a slow cooker chicken drumstick in tomatillo chile sauce instead. That was good. I used Rick Bayless' salsa verde recipe and browned up the ddrumsticks then put it all in the crockpot for a few hours.

Friday I changed it up a little as well. We had salmon but I made Dilled Brown Rice and Kidney bean salad instead. There was some other side as well but I can't remember what it was now.  Maybe baked sweet potato.

Menu planning

My new year's resolution is to plan weekly dinner menus. When I plan dinner in advance it makes my life easier and cooking more enjoyable. My goal in blogging about it is to take notes of what works and what doesn't and is also a more social way of keeping track of the menus.

I don't usually plan out the vegetables until I go grocery shopping, unless I know that something will be in season or if the vegetable is the main attraction. I also like to note what I can prep for the next day or make extra of something to freeze.

For example, if I'm making brown rice, if I make extra I can freeze it and pull it out on a night when I don't have 45 minutes to make it. A few of my goals with menu planning are to identify menus that work really well, and expand my repertoire of recipes.

Two of the recipes this week are brand new to me, the cabbage rolls and the pork loin. I checked out a book from the library on slow cooking (i.e. Crockpot) by Cooking Light.

Menu for the week of January 23-27th (This week's plan is only for 5 days because on Saturday we leave for a week of vacation)


Monday: Meatloaf with leftover Emerald City Salad and baked sweet potato.

Tuesday: Stuffed cabbage rolls (vegetarian) and salad. Make double recipe of the filling to freeze for another meal.

Wednesday: Slow cooker pork loin with dried fruit and squash. Freeze extra cooked butternut squash.


Thursday: Sweet potato groundnut stew (Recipe from Joy of Cooking)


Friday: Salmon (or trout) with Quick Lemon and Garlic Quinoa Salad. I usually broil the salmon with a rub. We eat salmon once a week and I usually don't sweat how I am going to prepare it.