Day Seventy-one--Pasta with Leeks and White Beans

I'm going to try to get this posted before I lose all sense of putting words together. I'm sure next week I'm going to go through these posts and find all kind of grammatical errors and trains of thought that make no sense. I might fix them. I might not.

When I made the menu up last week I completely forgot that the kids would be in camp and that I would be volunteering at said camp. Tonight was a pasta meal. I usually make my own pasta. I kind of wimped out tonight. When we were done with camp we ran to the store and I picked up a box of spaghetti. The pasta was supposed to be fettuccine but I couldn't find organic fettuccine. It all worked out in the end.

Tonight's dinner:

Pasta with Leeks and White beans

I was kind of dreading getting started with this meal, but it actually came together fairly easily. I cut up the leeks and soaked them in water to clean them and then sliced them up. I threw them in a hot pan with olive oil in it. The leeks cooked with some salt and pepper until soft. Then I put in some chicken broth and some cannelloni beans with some dried sage. At this point I took a potato masher and smooshed (good technical term, right?) most of the beans to make the sauce thicker. This cooked for a while and then I put in some lemon juice, some half n half (was supposed to be heavy cream, but I didn't have any) and some fresh grated Parmesan cheese. At this point the sauce was getting nice and creamy and smelling delicious. When the sauce was all done, I drained my spaghetti and put it into the sauce. Dinner is served.

This ended up being a really good dinner. All four of us liked it and I have a lot of it left over. I think that is all I have for now. I hope that this is readable and understandable. If not, I'll fix it later. =)

Day Seventy--Zucchini Corn skillet

I fear I'm going to be a day behind each day this week. The kids are attending a Peace Camp this week and they are having soooo much fun. I'm volunteering to help out where I can and take pictures and keep my eye on Connor's blood sugars. This means that I'm gone all day and I am behind in blogging. Sorry.

Enough of the excuses...on to last night's dinner. If I'm still awake enough, I might actually try to do tonight's post too. Last night's dinner was delicious. I was skeptical when we were putting it together and it made me question my sanity when I was making up menus.

Zucchini Corn skillet

Thankfully, Tim helped whip this together. We used the zucchini that we got at the farmer's market. We sliced the zukes up and sautéed them in some olive oil and some chopped onion. This cooked for a few minutes and then we dumped in a small bag of frozen organic corn and a can of organic diced tomatoes. For seasoning, just salt, pepper, and garlic powder. That's it. It all cooked together for about ten minutes until the zukes were soft. Then it was time to shred fresh cheese. It was a mixture of Monterey jack and cheddar. The recipe called for a half pound of each cheese and I just thought it was too much cheese so I halved that. When it was all done, we served it up on the burger buns I had made the night before.

Three of the four of us enjoyed this. Can you guess who didn't like it? Yup, it was Aidan. He was not having it. He did eat a few bites of it and then we put him out of his misery. It was really good and easy to do. Like I said, I'm glad Tim helped me out because I came home from Peace Camp with a crazy headache. 53 children. Loud children. Children having fun. It made for a crazy headache. So that sums up our meatless Monday. It was a good day.

Day Sixty-nine--Burgers and Fries

This is going to be a very short post. I was out all day today and will most likely be out all week. This post is for Sunday night's dinner. It seems we've gotten in the habit of grilling at least once on the weekend. We tried to grill last night but the grill was out of gas. No problem. We just dragged out the grill top that goes on the stove.


Burgers and fries

I made the burgers the same way that I've gotten used to. It is the best tasting burger we've found. I just cut up and onion and grate 2 cloves of garlic, toss in a little bit of bread crumbs and then hit it with a couple of sauces. HP brown sauce and a little Worcestershire sauce. Mix it all together and patty it up. Tim cooked them for me while I got the steak fries ready. I had originally thrown them in the oven but when Tim was done with the burgers I finished the fries up on the grill pan. We were going to have beet greens as a side too but when we went to cut them up, we saw they were past their prime and kind of gross.

The dinner was delish. We just need to remember to refill our propane before next weekend.

Day Sixty-eight--Summer Rolls and Sushi

Hello. Second post in a row. I'm taking advantage of the short window of opportunity with the computer. Thankfully, my laptop should be home tomorrow or Tuesday. Ok, on to last night's dinner. This one almost didn't happen. I almost got lazy and ordered subs from Wegmans, but we muscled through our exhaustion and pulled it off. I did half ass part of it. We bought sushi to go with our summer rolls.

Sushi and Summer rolls

Last week, on a whim, I picked up a copy of Everyday Foods. I used to have a subscription to this magazine and I might have to subscribe to it again. In this issue there was an article on how to make summer rolls. I have had rice paper wrappers in my cupboard for probably over a year so I decided to finally use them.

This was fairly easy to do, but it made quite the mess in my kitchen. In all honesty, Tim wrapped them all up. I sliced the shrimp and made the peanut sauce, but he had the messy part of wrapping them. Connor got into the action too. He mounded the rice vermicelli noodles up on a board and then topped the noodles with a squirt of fish sauce. Then he put two halves of a shrimp on top and then on top of the shrimp he put either a peppermint leaf or a basil leaf. Then Tim would soak the wrapper and grab a little mound from Connor and wrap it up. It was a little time consuming and like I said it was messy, but it was tasty. It was a nice light cool dinner after a hot day.

There you have it. Last night's dinner. Now I have to go wash my kitchen floor so it doesn't smell like fish sauce out there. I hope everyone has a great day!

Day Sixty-seven--PIzza night

Yes, I know. I'm two days late. I have two posts to do. Sorry. I couldn't get any time on the computer yesterday. Between my being busy all day and Connor hogging the computer, it just didn't happen. I am going to do two posts right now instead of being lazy and lumping two dinners into one post. That's good, right?

So Friday...that is our pizza night. What a pizza I had. Oh my. I was afraid I had missed my opportunity of asparagus pizza this year. I thought asparagus was done for this season. Imagine my surprise when one of the farms at the market had beautiful bunches of asparagus. I snapped up two bunches. I would have my pizza after all.

Asparagus Bacon Pizza

This pizza, I think, is my new favorite pizza. I was scared to try it because well, it's asparagus on a pizza. Fear not. Try it, when it's in season again. I tweaked my recipe a bit to add the bacon but I had a little bit of uncured bacon left in my fridge and I didn't want it to go bad. I fried up the bacon and then discarded most of the grease. In what little grease that was left I fried up some sliced onions. While I was doing that, Tim was kind enough to roll out the dough for the pizzas. I made the kids pizza and threw it in the oven and then got to shredding my asparagus. This was not an easy task. I think it was because the stalks were thin tender little guys. I did my best until I had a big bowl of shredded asparagus. I tossed it with the tiniest bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. My pizza crust was waiting for me and I got to building my pie.

First thing that went on the crust was some of my sauteed onions. I didn't use any pizza sauce, just put the onions right down. Then I had cubed up a little ball of mozzarella cheese and scattered that over the onions. Then I dropped all the shredded asparagus on top of the cheese. I finished by crumbling a couple of strips of bacon over the top. That's all that I put on it.

Oh. My. God. This pizza was so good. The crust came out perfectly too. I don't know if it was because I had my oven hotter than usual or if it was because there was no pizza sauce on it, but my crust was perfect. I love making my own pizza dough. It always does so well.

So there you have it. Friday night pizza night. The kids and Tim made different pizzas and we munched on the leftovers yesterday. Everyone was happy with this meal. We always are.

Day Sixty-six--Our non-dinner

I'm not sure why. Maybe the heat, maybe the fact that we were all very busy and tired, maybe we were still full from lunch but we had a non-dinner last night. I have no pictures. I have no recipes. I got nothing. We just picked at a couple of things in the fridge and that was it.

Tim had a plate of apples, cheese and some fresh snap peas. Connor had an apple with cheese. Aidan and I had a bagel and I had some fresh snap peas. We weren't very hungry and this suited us just fine. I guess there will be nights like this. It did make for an easy kitchen clean up though. =)

I hope everyone is staying cool.

Day Sixty-five--Pot Roast and Mashed Potatoes

Hello all. Whew. It's been hot around here lately. Too hot. I moved out of Florida to escape the heat. Last summer was perfect for me. High 70's to low 80's with a day or maybe two days of the mercury seeing 90. Those one or two days were perfect to drag out the kiddie pool and go nuts. It would then go back to it's normal 70s and 80s. It appears we are having our 90's this week. I did see in the forecast 70's again next week. Whew.

Now, on to dinner. It was a good one. I finally did something I've never done before. I cooked a pot roast. That's right, I've never done it before. I've never really been a beef person. I'm not sure why, but I never order steak out. Never have. The extent of my beef consumption has been burgers. The first time we ordered our grass fed beef from Chris and Amanda I asked for mostly ground beef because I use them to make chilies, tacos, burgers. They humored me and also threw in a couple of steaks. I think this was done for Tim's sake. They also knew that once we had them, we would be hooked. Well, we have a freezer full of roasts and big hunks of meat. I'm wasn't sure what to do with them. Then, I got my new cookbook that I'm absolutely in love with. The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I've been making recipes off of her most fantastic blog and had to have the cookbook. One thing to note is that these recipes are not low in calorie. I have to remind myself that her family runs a cattle ranch. They burn a lot more calories than my family does so I will not be using this cookbook on a daily basis, unless I start using my treadmill for four hours a day and I don't see that happening any time soon.

Anywhooo...on to dinner:

Pot roast with mashed potatoes

This was a nice middle of the week meal. It was very filling. It made a ton. We had lots of leftovers. They boys inhaled the mashed potatoes. They were very good. They weren't too big on the beef but did enjoy the carrots. I myself obsess about carrots that have been roasting with beef for a long period of time. Everyone knows that I get a huge claim to them. The recipe was very easy to follow. I think the thing that I liked the most was that I made it all earlier in the afternoon. The roast baked in the oven at a low temp for 3 hours and then I just reheated the potatoes. Once Connor came home from karate, dinner was ready and the kitchen was clean. Those are my kind of nights. We even went out and worked in the yard after dinner. That rarely happens.

I think that is all for now. Until later...peace out. =)

Day Sixty-four--Bacon Spinach Quiche

Wahoo. I'm posting dinner right after dinner. I know, novel idea. Tonight's dinner was a home-run. It was supposed to be a fritatta, but my cousin-in-law(there is such a thing, right) posted on facebook yesterday that she made this quiche and her family enjoyed it. I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.


Bacon spinach quiche

I had to make a pie crust. Actually, I have one crust in my refrigerator still that I need to figure out what to do with it. I'm thinking Shoo-fly pie. We'll see if I'm being overly ambitious. Anyway, back to dinner. I rolled out one of the crusts and put it into my pie plate. That got set to the side while I got everything else ready. Four slices of pepper bacon, fried and cut up. Four eggs. Some milk and shredded cheese. Some chopped onion and spinach. All of those things got mixed together into a bowl and then put into the pie crust. I did run in to one problem. That problem was the fact that my pie plate was apparently not big enough. The egg mixture spilled out over the top a bit. No problem. I just pushed a cookie sheet in onto the bottom rack of my oven and it caught everything that spilled out of the pie plate. I did sprinkle a little bit more shredded cheddar on top and then carefully put the quiche in the oven. It baked for 40 minutes and then was done.

This meal was so delicious. It was everything in one plate. Protein, veggies, carbs...all in one plate. It can't get much easier than that. Aidan didn't really like it. I think it was because of the onions and spinach and the fact that it was something new that we've never had. I think a couple more times and he'll eat it. He did tell me that he wasn't that hungry.

So, thanks Emily for posting your meal last night. We enjoyed it tonight!

Day Sixty-three--Cuban Black Beans and Rice

Yes. I know. I'm late again today. I'm not sure why. I just didn't have much gumption to fight for time on the computer. Actually, I haven't done all that much today. I'm calling it a mental health day. I did get my treadmill time done so that's good.

Last night's dinner was good. It was Monday so that means Meatless Monday here in our little home. Black beans and rice is something I picked up living in Florida. Sadly, I can't make it as well as those cute little Cuban women but I try my best. It's super easy to make. The hardest part is waiting for the brown rice to be done cooking.


Black Beans and Rice

This meal couldn't be any easier. I swirled some olive oil around the pan and then threw in a chopped onion, and chopped green pepper and 2 cloves of mashed garlic. This cooked for a few minutes to soften and then I added some cumin to cook for a minute. Then to the mix you add two cans (drained) or organic black beans and a cup of water. Oh, and some oregano and a splash of red wine vinegar. That's it. Easy, no? Like I said, the worst part was waiting for the brown rice to finish. I've learned my lesson though. I always start my rice way before I need it.

Simple meal. Enjoyed by most. Aidan didn't really like it. He ended up just eating a big bowl of rice. Connor had two bowls of the beans and rice and I could only eat about a half of a bowl. I wasn't all that hungry. It was tasty though.

That is all I have for now. I'm about a minute from pulling tonight's dinner out of the oven. Hopefully will post tonight. No promises though.

Days Sixty thru Sixty-two--Wrap-up

I don't really like doing wrap-up posts. I like to get my posts done the day of or the morning after our dinner. This weekend was crazy busy though and I couldn't get to the computer. Even as it is, this is probably going to be a quick post to put out what we ate. I have a lot to do again today. It's good because I'm not bored, but it feels like our summer is flying by.

So, let's get to it. Friday was our pizza night. I like that we always know that Friday night is pizza night. It is one less night I have to worry about figuring out a meal. I had really looked forward to making a Shaved Asparagus pizza. All week, I had been thinking about it. Friday came and we went out to the farm (where there is usually a bucket on the counter with bundles of asparagus) and found that the asparagus is done for the season. Boo. I will have to put it on my list for next spring. I will look forward to that. I ended up just throwing cheese, kalamata olives, mushrooms and onions on my pizza. It was delicious. We watched Labyrinth with it. I don't know why I've never seen that movie, but it was great. Although, I was falling asleep through the last part of it.


Pizza! (day 60)

Day Sixty-one--Saturday. It was a weird day. I woke up dreaming about biscuits and sausage gravy. I had to make some. My grandmother used to make this all the time and it was just as good as I remembered it. I just made quick and easy drop biscuits and Aidan inhaled them. I do have to say they are really good with the fresh jam I just made. We ended up eating breakfast really late and it held us until late afternoon. At that point everyone just snacked on leftover pizza. Dinner time rolled around and no one was hungry. Around 8 pm Tim got up and made quick eggs in the basket. We had just enough maple oatmeal bread left for each of us to have one egg in the basket. I'm sure you all know what those are. You make a little circle in the middle of the bread and drop an egg in the middle and cook it up that way. Tim and the boys all love "dippy" eggs where the yolks are still runny and then they use the bread to dip in the yolk. Personally, dippy eggs make me gag. I have to have the yolk cooked all the way through. Tim calls them hockey pucks by the time mine are done. So, that was what our dinner was on Saturday night. I didn't even take any pictures. Bad me. I was busy reading The Little House on the Prairie Cookbook. I had no time for picture taking.

This brings us to Sunday. Day sixty-two. Remember how I talked about how I check the weather and plan meals accordingly. That way I'm careful not to have the oven running on days that it's really hot. Well, Sunday was a fail. I don't know what I was thinking. I spent all day in the kitchen and it was HOT. Early in the morning I went out and got the food shopping done for the week. I was happy because I only spent 80 dollars for groceries this week. Part of that is because I didn't really buy any produce because our farmer's market finally starts up this week. I'll do my produce shopping in the square this week. When I got home, I immediately got started on baked beans. Last year for my birthday, my mother-in-law got me this beautiful bean crock from Sturbridge, MA. It's been in my hutch all year looking pretty. I was kind of scared of using it and having it break in the oven. Plus, I really didn't know how to use the crock. There isn't much on the internet about cooking beans in a crock. Early last week I had decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at it. I soaked my beans overnight on Saturday and while reading The Little House cookbook, I found the recipe that was used way back when. I had everything I needed except the salt pork. After some digging around at Wegmans I found that. Bean making is a lot of steps. It can be messy too. First, I cooked the beans in water for 5 minutes and then put in a teaspoon of baking soda. I'm not sure of the science of this and why it said to do it, but it made a huge mess. It bubbled all over my stove and turned the bean water this weird yellow color. I'll have to google later and find out why. After that was done, the beans simmered in that yellow water for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, I drained off the gross water and covered the beans with fresh water and then added the hunk of salt pork. This cooked for about 30 minutes. After the final boil, I added them to the bean crock. I put the piece of salt pork down at the bottom and then added the beans. The beans were super soft by this point. On top of the beans, I threw a chopped onion and then drizzled about a 1/4 cup of molasses. Then it cooked in my oven for 4 hours. At 350 degrees. Hot.

While the beans were cooking, I made coleslaw. That wasn't too difficult. I chopped the cabbage up nice and fine and then grated a couple of carrots. I made the dressing (which for future reference...I think I can make half the dressing.) Coleslaw is done and gelling in the fridge. Now it's time to take a break.


Beans in the crock

On the break, I cleaned out more of the basement. Nice break. After the break, I came upstairs and made the dough for hot dog rolls. This is the first time I've made hot dog rolls. I am pretty much a pro at hamburger buns now, but hot dogs...that's a whole new ball game. The recipe made for a nice fluffy bun. I just wasn't sure how to shape them. I rolled them out into rectangles and then rolled them up into little logs. I made them a wee bit too long. They rose nicely though and made for some pretty good buns. Next time, I won't make them as long as there were. Although, I will say that our hot dogs pretty much went the entire length of the bun.

I only had one more thing to make at this point. Whew. In honor of Father's Day, I made Tim a pineapple upside down cake. I've never made one before. I have a new cookbook. A new favorite cookbook. I'll talk more about that later, but in this cookbook there is a recipe for said upside down cake made in a cast iron skillet. Once the hot dog buns were in the oven baking, I started on the cake. It was crazy easy to make. Buns came out of oven and cake went in. I did have to cook the cake for twice the time it said I would but I think that's because I only had an 8 inch skillet, not a 10 inch one. That's ok, because good things come to those who wait, right?

While the cake was baking, we were enjoying dinner. We invited Nancy over for dinner again because she had been working really hard cleaning out her garages and looked like she needed some good food. Plus, it's fun to cook for others and share. We were going to eat outside on the patio but it was so oppressively hot that we opted for indoor dining.


Hot dogs, beans and coleslaw

It looks like a simple enough dinner. Looks can be deceiving. Everything on that plate was homemade. The hot dogs came from happy cows just out of our valley. The verdict: The buns were good, just a little too long. The hot dogs were as good as ever. The coleslaw was delicious even though it was a little too runny. The beans, oh the beans. They were divine. They had such great flavor. I had a couple of little bowls of molasses on the table if people wanted to drizzle a little on their beans (because that's the way the Ingalls did it). They were a little mushy and not individual beans. That was ok though because the flavor made up for the texture. Everyone loved them, even Aidan. All of this plus fresh southern sweet tea. I even made Connor a pitcher of sweet tea with stevia in it. I was skeptical but it turned out pretty good. I might wean myself off the sugar tea. Although, I don't really make it all that often. Only when it's really hot out. Thankfully, we don't have too many scorchers here.

About an hour after dinner, we enjoyed this:

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Again, this was my first time making it. It was fun to make. It was delicious. 'Nuf said.

So, that sums up our weekend. I'm hoping that I'll be able to get back to regular daily posting. It will help when I have my laptop back too.

Day Fifty-nine--Macaroni and Cheese

Wow. I'm late in posting today. My pizza dough for tonight's dinner is going through it's final rise and I'm just now getting to posting last night's dinner. Last night's dinner was done on the road. We had Macaroni and Cheese. None of that gross boxed stuff here.



I've made this recipe several times. It's from the River Cottage Family Cookbook. The first time I made this recipe Aidan swore off boxed macaroni. Both boys helped make it this time. It's pretty simple to throw together. You make a flour/butter rue and then slowly add warmed milk. Once it's slightly bubbling, then you get to the cheese shredding. We picked up a nice big brick of cheddar cheese in Cuba, NY while we were visiting Laurie last week and I used that. This is where the boys came into play. They were in charge of shredding. They added the shredded cheese to the milk mixture and melted it all down. Oh, and there was a bay leaf cooking in the milk the whole. My macaroni was boiling the whole time the milk and cheese was melting together. Then, you just drain the macaroni and add it to the cheesy goodness that is bubbling away in the other pot. I also added a wee bit of salt and fresh ground pepper. Then it all just gets dumped into a casserole dish and I put some fresh shredded Parmesan cheese on the top of it. Throw it in the oven and bake it for 20 minutes. Then it's done.

The recipe also calls to put 8 slices of bacon on top of it. I only used 3 slices that I cut in half. It adds a nice smoky flavor to the mac n cheese. I wish I would have thought to bring some hot sauce with us in the car because I think that would have added the last finishing touch to the meal, but we were in a rush to get out of the house. It was enjoyed by all on the road.

Whew. Now it's time to go make tonight's dinner. Until later. Happy cooking!

Day Fifty-eight--Chicken Parmesian with pasta

Woohoo, last night's dinner was a doozy. It filled our bellies up! It took two and a half hours from start to finish but not all of that time was active time. Just most of it.

I started at 4 pm by making the pasta dough. I made the dough and then let it rest for about 45 minutes. While it was resting, I made the sauce and chatted with my mom. The sauce was my fave recipe for sauce my good ol' friend Jamie Oliver. This is my go-to sauce now. I'm very happy that I have left over sauce for pizza on Friday too. The sauce is so easy. I put olive oil in the pan and let it heat up. Then I chop an onion, slice two cloves of garlic and chop up a dried red chili. I cook them all together for 10 minutes. Then I dump in three cans of diced tomatoes with basil in them. Again, thank you Wegmans for carrying store brand organic tomatoes. This cooks for about 30 minutes and then I throw in some fresh basil. I ran outside and grabbed a handful, while noting that my basil is going to seed already. What gives with that?! Once it simmers just a bit more with the basil, I put the sauce in a big bowl and ran my immersion blender through it to get rid of the chunks of onion and tomato. This way, Aidan has no idea that there are actual vegetables in it. =) Now, sauce is done.

I move back to the pasta. I roll it out paper thin and get to cutting thin strips. Right now I am still using my pizza cutter to cut up the pasta, but I think I'm going to look into the attachment for my mixer to cut pasta. Although I still need to replace my food processor. I guess I'll do that first. I'm going to need it soon with canning season upon us. I had four hangers hanging around my kitchen with pasta hanging on it to dry. This took the bulk of my time I think. It was time consuming, but at the same time it was really relaxing.

By this time it was almost 6. Tim and Connor would be home from karate in 30 minutes. It was time for the chicken. I had three beautiful organic breasts that I split in half, ending up with 6 pieces of chicken. I shredded some fresh Parmesan cheese and mixed it with bread crumbs. I dipped each piece of chicken into a bowl with a beaten egg and then dredged it in the bread crumb cheese mixture. Then that chicken went into a pan with hot olive oil waiting for it. It sizzled on each side for a couple of minutes until the crust was a nice dark color, then I flipped it over. I repeated this with all six of the breasts. I poured a little bit of the tomato sauce into a 13 x 9 cake pan and then put the chicken pieces on top of the sauce. Then I sliced fresh mozzarella and put a piece on top of each breast. Ok, ready for oven. Crank up the broiler and slide it in for 5 minutes. Done.

6:30 rolled around. I was just taking the chicken out of the oven and I had a big pot of salted water coming to a boil. As soon as Tim and Connor rolled in the door, the fresh pasta hit the pot. Three minutes it was done. It's amazing that in three minutes Connor can get out of his karate outfit and in clothes, whereas when I need him to get dressed to go out it takes him 30 minutes. Interesting.


Chicken Parmesan with pasta

This meal was enjoyed by all. We shared a plate of it with Nancy because she worked late and we wanted to share. This is a container in the fridge for lunch that I can tell there will be a battle over. Aidan even ate a whole bunch of his salad. He was very proud of himself.

Today's dinner I'm making early in the afternoon. I am going to pack it up and we are eating on the road tonight. We are whisking the boys off to a top secret surprise that is two hours from us. I can't wait!

Day Fifty-seven--Chicken Taco Chili

Hello all. Whew, I had a busy day yesterday. It felt good though. I got a lot done. I have now preserved all of the strawberries we picked into luscious jams. That will give us a taste of spring/summer in the middle of the horrid winter. I also made a loaf of my favorite Maple Oatmeal bread for us to have for yummy sammies.

Dinner was the least of my work yesterday because I threw it all in the crockpot yesterday morning. This is one of Tim's favorite chilies and through the winter I make it every couple of weeks.

Chicken Taco Chili

It's really easy to do. Everything that went into it was organic. It had the house smelling like chili around 11 am and it made me hungry all day. Right before Tim got home I also made some cornbread. I used a different recipe this time and he liked it much better. The last one I made was delicious but he wanted one that had a little bit of sweetness to it. This one was perfect! The dinner came together nicely before Tim had to go to his aikido class. We shredded some Cuba cheddar cheese on top. I had a little butter and honey on my cornbread. The kids loved the cornbread...the chili, not so much. They like it sometimes, and sometimes not. Last nights, not. Oh well, there is a ton of it left to eat for lunches over the next couple of days.

Day Fifty-six--Greek Salad

I'm back! I'm late in writing, but I'm back. We got home late Sunday night and yesterday I just didn't have a chance to get to the computer. The weekend was a lot of fun. It was nice to get away and not have to think about anything that needed to be done. We went to a fair with Laurie and the boys each won prizes. We ate Renna's pizza. We watched Alice in Wonderland. It was a lot of fun.

We didn't eat the best while we were out. We caught fast food (ICK) on the way there on Friday night because I was not organized. It was interesting because while I ate it, I had serious issues with eating it this time. I almost didn't eat it but was feeling woozy and knew I needed to eat something. I kind of miss the days where diners were along the road and you had the chance to eat real food while traveling. We actually decided that next time we go over to see Laurie we are going to stay off the interstate and enjoy the back roads.

Yesterday I was able to get to the store and go food shopping for the first time in a couple of weeks. It's nice to have a menu planned out and everything I need ready to go. Last nights dinner was a much needed dinner and it tasted so good.

We had:

Greek Salad

It was romaine lettuce, red onion, green pepper, kalamata olives, cucumber, tomato and feta cheese. Tim made the dressing while I was cutting up all the veggies. The dressing was awesome and we've elected Tim to the official post of salad dressing maker. The dressing was just olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, garlic and oregano.

The salad was perfect after a weekend of eating what we consider junk now. It's funny how my thinking has shifted with food. I was telling Tim that as good as Renna's pizza was...and it is the best as far as I'm concerned, the salad tasted better. It was cool. It was crisp. The dressing was flavorful. We had it with a loaf of ciabatta bread and three of the four of us enjoyed it. Aidan wouldn't touch the salad. Connor ate a ton of it. Last time I made Greek salad he wasn't too impressed with it but this time he ate it and loved it.

So, it's good to be home. It's good to be back to my routine and I look forward to this week. I hope everyone is doing fine and enjoying this beautiful weather we are finally having!

Weekend off

I'm just posting really fast because we are about to head out the door for a weekend away. We are going to try to stick to our way of eating, but I won't have my laptop to keep this up to date. I'll post how the weekend went when we get home either Sunday night or more likely Monday morning. Have a great weekend. Catch you on the other side.

Day Fifty-five--Chicken Tostadas

I had my act together a little better today. It was a busy day. I made some jam with the strawberries we picked a couple of days ago. I cleaned out the basement a bit. I took the boys out for some fun. I made dinner.

Dinner was a little later than usual. I kept the car today so I had to pick Tim up from work. He worked late tonight so that we can hopefully leave early tomorrow. He came home, changed and then left for his Aikido. Before I left to pick him up, I threw some chicken in a pot to slow cook while we were gone for ten minutes. It finished cooking when we got home and then I shredded it up. I picked up a packed of Simply Organic Fajita mix and threw that in with the shredded chicken. While that worked together I fried up a bunch of corn tortillas. I cut up some romaine lettuce I had in the fridge and shredded some of the local jack cheese I got the other day. Throw it all together and you get this:


Chicken tostadas

The kids and I loved them. I put a little salsa on top of Connor's and mine. Aidan just had chicken, lettuce and cheese on his. Aidan actually asked for seconds on this one. The chicken wasn't organic. It was chicken that had been buried in the freezer from before I started buying organic meats. I couldn't waste it and I couldn't eat oatmeal another night so we ate it and cleared out room in the freezer for good for us food.

That is about all I have for you now. I am going to go read the rest of my Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and bemoan the fact that it's done. And then I might read it over again. Yes, I loved it that much! Have a good night!

Day Fifty-four--Steel Cut Oats

Yup. It was one of those nights. My creativity was tapped out. I had nothing. I was actually seriously wanting some Chinese food. I haven't eaten Chinese food for over three months now. I'm sure that is a record for me. Tim put his foot down and said no, much to Aidan's dismay (mine too).

What we did end up having was just a big bowl of steel cut oats. I didn't even bother with a picture because it really wasn't all that attractive. Again, we all eat ours a little differently. Connor and Aidan had a tiny touch of butter melted in theirs with some maple syrup and milk. I had a little smidge of butter and molasses in mine with a splash of milk. Tim....well, he went all weird again. I think he does things like this just to gross us out. He had a bit of butter, maple syrup and brace yourself, spirulina powder. It ended up being this bright green bowl of goo. Gross.

My oatmeal was delicious. It was just what I needed too. It was cold and grey all day and the warm bowl of creamy goodness warmed me up. I am also reminded of how much I love molasses. I have been trying desperately to find a local source of sorghum. I used to love that stuff as a kid. We would always end up with a gallon of it from my grandmother and I have been seriously jonesing for it for a while now. I think I should be able to get some south of here in Amish country and I might just have to venture out for some. I've craving it so badly, that I ordered blackstrap sorghum seeds to attempt to grow my own and make syrup myself. Do you comprehend how much I am wanting sorghum. For now the molasses will have to do. It totally hit the spot last night on my oatmeal.

On a different note...I have learned one thing this week. I NEED a menu plan. I need to have an idea of what I'm going to make each night or all hell breaks loose. That being said, I'm going to work on my menu for next week and get the food shopping done tomorrow as we are going out of town for the weekend. I want to come home Sunday night and not have to worry about going to the store.

Day Fifty-three--Fruit, Cheese and Bread

Once in a while we have a night where no one is particularly hungry and we go for the light dinner. Tonight was one of those nights. The inspiration for our dinner came from our day.

It was a beautiful day. The highs were in the high 60's (which is great for June) and the sun was high in the sky. Early in the morning, I had gotten everything done in the house that I wanted and I didn't want to just burn the day inside. I did a quick check on the "pick your own" site and found a farm near us that had pick your own strawberries. Since we've gone to mostly seasonal eating, we were dying for fruit.

The boys and I walked to Tim's office to pick up the car and then headed out to the hills. We went back roads all the way, had the windows open and the music loud. It was so much fun. We spent about an hour picking until our fingers were stained red. On the way home, we passed a little farm stand at a local orchard so I stopped to see if they had anything available. I was able to get a big bag of apples and some local cheese. It was so funny because as we were driving home the boys and I shared one of the apples. We were all so appreciative for the sweet juicy fruit. This apple had been grown on a tree close to our home. It was so delicious and we tore through it.

We got home and had a huge mess to clean up after our dog had gotten very sick. After cleaning that up and giving Patchy a bath, Tim was home from work. So, I through a loaf of bread into the oven and we cut up a couple of apples, some strawberries, some fresh cherries and the cheese. That was our dinner. And you know what? It was perfect. It was all local. It was all fresh. It was just what we needed after being out in the fresh air all afternoon.


A light delicious dinner.

After dinner, Tim went to aikido and I made some shortcakes to enjoy some more of the berries. As for the rest of the berries (we came home with three very big bowls of them) they are destined to be jam today. It's supposed to rain all day so I can't think of anything better to do today. I'll hole up in the kitchen with my Glee soundtrack blasting and jam jars getting filled. Life is good.

Day Fifty-two--Corn Fritters

Last night while I was waiting for Tim and Connor to come home from Connor's karate class, I got this crazy craving. I don't know where it came from. Maybe it was because I know we are going to try and live off of our cupboards and I had done a quick inventory or maybe I was thinking about my childhood. Whatever it was, I had this strong desire for corn fritters. It's funny too because as a child I didn't really like corn fritters. My mom would make them from time to time and I didn't like them. I wanted pancakes, not cakes with corn in them. Ewwww.

I looked around on the internet for a recipe and found a couple just as Tim was coming home. I casually mentioned the idea of it to him and Tim was all for it. He even offered to mix them up and fry them up. Most of the recipes I saw called for 3 to 4 cups of oil for frying. That was not an option. Gross. Tim took what we had and combined a couple of different recipes to get a good looking batter and he ended up frying them in a tiny little bit of oil.


Look at those beauties!

We all plated them up differently. Aidan and I had ours with a tiny bit of maple syrup. I finally went out and got some more local maple syrup. Tim said it's not as good as the NY syrup, but I disagree. I like the PA syrup better. Connor ate his fritters naked. I use the term "ate" loosely. He sucked them up into his little face as fast as he could. Tim went he gross way with his. He put siracha sauce on his. That's not bad. What was disgusting was that he popped open a can of squid (packaged with it's own ink, mind you) and put them on top of his fritters. The smell...oh, it wasn't good. He did make me take a taste and they weren't that bad. Not something I would venture out and eat on my own.


Corn fritters with maple syrup

The dinner ended up being a huge success. Aidan has declared that he wants corn fritters to be in our weekly rotation. He wants them every Monday for dinner.

I think I am going to have to break down and go to the store today to get some basic things like onions and flour. We will have to walk down to Tim's office to pick up the car but it's gorgeous out today so I'm thankful for that.

Until later, happy cooking!

Day Fifty and Fifty-One--Weekend Wrap-up

I'm a bad blogger lately. I'm going to blame it on the fact that my laptop is on it's merry way to being fixed. I'll make this short but sweet.

Saturday (Day 50) was an odd dinner. I didn't even take a picture of it. Saturday we spent a good part of the day gardening. Around 3 pm we realized that we hadn't really eaten anything yet so Tim wanted to get creative in the kitchen. He got some minute steaks out of the freezer and quick defrosted them in some cold water. He then dragged out our wok and stir-fried up some onions, red peppers, shitake mushrooms and then the thin strips of steak. He used a bunch of different rice wine vinegars, tamari sauces and whatever else he could get his little hands on. He boiled up a package of bean threads. Bean threads, by the way, are awesome. They make tiny little noodles and the carb ratio is low on them so that's good for Connor. Plus, a package of them is only 89 cents. We had them in our cupboard so they were used.

This stir-fry ended up being our main meal of the day. I don't know why I didn't think to take a picture. Maybe it's because it was technically lunch, or maybe it was because we were also in the middle of a fierce Sorry game with the boys. This little meal held my hunger at bay until about 8 pm. I had a small bowl of home made granola for dinner. So, that is why there was no official Saturday post. Good food was had, and it was all real food, but it was a little out of order.

Sunday rolled around. I still hadn't been food shopping and barely had a menu made up. Tim wanted to do some grilling so that is what we did. It was another odd day on the eating front though. I guess I should just expect that on weekends. For some unknown reason our children let both Tim and I sleep in until 9 am. That NEVER happens. I woke up and was shocked that we had slept that late. I got up and made buttermilk pancakes. Tim cooked them up for me and added the rest of the strawberries we had left to half of the batter. They were delicious. We ended up eating breakfast around 10:30. Then Tim and I went out with Nancy and Ethan and did some serious weed control, garden bed cleanup before our storms were due to hit. Needless to say we were planting corn in the middle of a major downpour. We were throwing seeds and manure into the ground getting soaked. It was too much fun. The pancakes filled us up so much that we didn't really eat much in the afternoon. Connor and Tim finished off the leftovers from Tim's stir-fry on Saturday, but I wasn't hungry.

I knew that Tim wanted burgers, so I made burger buns again. I gotta tell you, they are crazy easy to make and they are so much better than buying buns in the store. Every time that I make them, they get better. I mixed up the ground beef with some chopped onions, garlic, HP sauce and Worcestershire sauce and Tim grilled the burgers up. We had a little bit of cheddar cheese left so he melted cheese over the tops. Now, I should say that I sent Tim out to the store really fast for a few things. We needed sweet potatoes and swiss chard for the dinner, so he was lovely enough to run out and get them for me. While he was grilling the burgers, I got the swiss chard all ready and kept my eye on the sweet potato fries. Tim actually cut up the fries for me and swooshed them around in olive oil and seasoned them with garlic salt and bit of paprika. I just made sure they didn't burn.

It all came together at the same time and we enjoyed this:


Burgers, swiss chard, and baked sweet potato french fries

This was a delicious dinner that we enjoyed on the back patio. The wicked storms blew through and left behind much milder temps and a nice cool breeze. How can you not eat outside when it's like that?!

Now, as far as the rest of the week is going to go, we are going to try and live off what we have in our cupboards and freezer. It should prove interesting as we are out of onions and we use onions on a daily basis. It will be an interesting week to see what we can pull together and how creative we can get. Who knows, we might end up eating cereal all week. I do have a lot of beans in the cupboard and we still have more than enough beef in our freezer that I don't even know where to start. Maybe Mr. Crockpot will come out this week. You'll just have to wait and see.

Day Forty-nine--Pizza Night

Wow, I'm posting this really late today. Sorry. I got caught up in weeding and going in a search for heirloom tomatoes. That led me to the farm and I got into a conversation with this fascinating and amazing woman, Anne. She was such a wealth of knowledge about everything I'm trying to learn and do. I came home with my head buzzing and sadly, I forgot a few crucial things that I wanted to. One good thing though is that I can go back and help her at any time in the greenhouse and pick her brain. So, that is why my post for last night's dinner is late.



As we all know, last night was Friday, and Friday night means pizza night. Aidan helped me make the dough this time. He set the time for an hour and then came out and punched it down and put the cover over the top of it again. Then he set the timer for another hour. When it rang, I got busy. I rolled out three different crusts and got all everything chopped up and ready to go. I had the brilliant idea to use the leftover meat sauce from lasagna night as our pizza sauce. It was delicious...and it means that it didn't grow a layer of mold in my fridge. =) Tim and the boys played a card game while I made the pizzas. It was one of those nights where everything worked together perfectly. I was able to clean the kitchen up while the pizza was baking. When the pizzas were done, we all settled down and watched a movie. Another perfect Friday night in our home.

The only problem that I have right now is that it is almost 2:30 in the afternoon and I have no idea what we are having for dinner tonight and I don't have the menu done for next week yet. I better get on that now. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-eight--Pork Chops

I think we should call tonight's dinner a cowboy dinner. It was a damn fine cowboy dinner. It was another one of these "almost didn't happen" nights again though. The plan was that Tim was going to work on the loaded potatoes mashed potatoes and I would do the green beans and the pork chops. I was going to start it all off with making home made chocolate syrup so it could cool off before dessert. My plans were shot when I was in the process of writing the recipe of the syrup down and my laptop just flipped off and had no power. I know the battery was full, and at first I thought maybe we had a power surge, but it was unplugged. Instead of putting Tim on the potato duty he was put to "fix my laptop" duty. Needless to say I'm glad it's still under warranty and it's being shipped out this weekend to get fixed.

Back to dinner:

Fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and garlic Parmesan green beans

Ok, so here is how it went down. I made the chocolate syrup first. Aidan actually was a huge help and did the stirring for me while I threw a few red potatoes in a bowl and chucked them in the microwave. While Aidan was stirring, I also chopped up some garlic and fried a few pieces of bacon. Aidan got bored and I had to finish up the chocolate syrup. No problem, it was almost done. When it was done, I pulled it to the side and let it cool. I checked on the potatoes. I hardly ever use my microwave. I've never cooked anything in it. For the most part it's used to heat up leftovers. I had no idea how long it would take the potatoes to cook. Come to find out it was just over 15 minutes. While the potatoes were still cooking, I cleaned up the green beans and snipped the ends off of them and got them to boiling. Then it was time for the pork chops. These babies were beautiful. Again, they were from a local farm and were good for you pork chops. I dredged them in a mixture of flour and seasoned salt, and black pepper and then put them in some hot canola oil to fry up. At this time, Tim came and said he didn't know what was wrong with my laptop. I know it's bad because Tim can fix anything. He took over the frying of the pork chops and I tended to the green beans. I drained the beans and cooked up some garlic and grated Parmesan cheese and then threw the beans back into the pot and stirred them together. While I was doing this, both Connor and Aidan came in and offered to help. I let them make the potatoes. I had already cut up everything and all they had to do mash and mix. They threw in the butter, chopped bacon, sliced green onions, sour cream and some of those french fried onions, you know, like the ones you put on top of a green bean casserole. Amazingly, everyone was done at the same time. I plated up and we all sat down and enjoyed. I invited Mr. Jack Daniels to meal with me with some coke. Thanks Deb for the coke. We don't ever have soda anymore but Aidan was begging Debbie for some soda this afternoon and she sent some over.

The dinner was a huge success. All four of us loved every bit of it. Aidan even ate the green beans. He was funny too about the onions in the potatoes. He said, "the onions add a nice texture to the potatoes." Pretty funny coming from a boy who generally hates anything crunchy in his food. He's growing up. I have to say that I think my favorite part was the mashed potatoes. They tasted exactly like loaded potato skins that you would get from a restaurant as an appetizer. Dinner was ended with a small bowl of vanilla ice cream from our favorite dairy with some pretty tasty chocolate syrup. Yee-haw! This meal is a keeper!

Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Forty-seven--Chicken Enchiladas

Hello everyone. What a fine day it is today! School is done. Bread is baking. All is right in our little world. Last night's dinner was a success. What else could I ask for? Well, I'm sure I can come up with a couple of things.

Last night dinner was fun to make. It took me the entire hour that Connor was at karate. Part of that was the chicken needing to be cooked. I bought a beautiful chicken from the farm. I have been buying organic roasting chickens or breasts at Wegmans. I got to thinking though that I can't really know how these chickens were raised. When I was at the dairy last week, I ventured over to the section in their little freezer that had chicken in it. I picked up a near 4 pound chicken. I'm not going to lie. It was expensive. It was $17. BUT, it's from a local farm, it was a pastured chicken and it was organic. I swooped it up and took him home.

The bird was a whole roasting bird so I had to chop him up and boil him. I had Tim help me chop the chicken up a bit. Big knives tend to scare me sometimes because I'm not the most graceful person. Sadly, Aidan seems to have inherited this trait from me too. We are both accident prone. Tim did most of the chopping but then he had to leave to take Connor to karate, or else Connor would be late. I was kind of grossed out hearing the bones crack and feeling the raw chicken flesh in my hands. Tim then, ever so kindly, reminded me that when we get to the point of having some land and raising animals that I better get used to it. I think I'll let him do it. =)

Once the chicken was all chopped up it went into a big stock pot and boiled for about 30 minutes. While it was cooking, I prepped everything else for the dinner. I chopped onions, opened cans of diced chillies, grated cheese and got tortillas ready (as in nuked them because I didn't want to fry them again). After the chicken was done, I shredded the meat off of the bones. I started frying the onions and then added the shredded chicken to the pan. Then I threw in half of the chillies. After than cooked for a bit, I added a half cup of the chicken broth and a half cup of cream. A dash of paprika was added to the mix and this pan was done and set aside while I started on the next part.

The next part of the meal was the cheesy part. Yum. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and then whisked in a couple of tablespoons of flour. I then added a cup and a half of chicken stock, a half cup of sour cream, and about a cup and a half freshly shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Oh, and I threw in the rest of the green chillies. This all melted together into a glorious cheesy gravy.

Then came the fun part. Putting it all together. I took the corn tortillas out of the microwave, slapped a bit of the chicken/onion mixture into it, topped it with a sprinkle of cheese, wrapped it up and plopped into a baking dish. I ended up with a 13x9 pan full and a 9 inch cake pan filled. Over the top of the rolled up little enchiladas, I poured the cheesy sauce. It went in the oven for 30 minutes. That's it.

White Chicken Enchiladas

I topped the enchiladas with my favorite salsa. I usually make my own salsa, but when I can't get to it, I always get Frontera salsa. I love the chipolte one, the tomatillo one and the jalapeno cilantro one. Yum! All natural goodness.

Three out of four of us liked this dinner. Aidan said he didn't really like it, but he ate a few bites. I think I like the other enchiladas I made a couple of weeks ago because they were more flavorful to me. Although, these were really good too. I guess it is a milder flavor on this one. Tim and Connor loved them. Thankfully we had a ton of leftovers, so I know what lunch is going to be today!

I think that is all I have for now. I am going to run out to the dairy today. I have to get into the habit of Thursday shopping. Our farmers market starts in three weeks and it's on Thursday. I am going to make Thursday my market day. That means I better get into the habit of doing my menus and shopping lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-six--Lasagna

Oh man, tonight's dinner was awesome. It was loved by all. What was it?

Lasagna!

This meal almost didn't happen. Well, it would have happened but it almost ended up being a really late dinner. No worries. It all worked out. My problem was that I forgot to take a pound of ground beef out of the freezer. I momentarily freaked out when I was down in the freezer too. I had to call Tim at work to find out if we had run out of ground beef. It turns out he had stacked it behind a bunch of other steaks. Whew. My problem then turned into the fact that the sauce was supposed to simmer for an hour and a half. It was 2:30 by the time I realized this and I had not started the pasta or anything yet.

I threw the package of ground beef in a cold bowl of water. I then made the pasta dough. While it was resting, I got the other things for the sauce ready. I chopped onions and garlic. I opened all the cans of tomatoes and got all of my spices ready. I got impatient and decided to start the sauce anyway. I cooked the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil and then added a pound of Italian sausage. Once that was all browned up, I threw in the beef. It was mostly thawed and the heat in the pan quickly thawed the rest. Then I added crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and tomato sauce. That's a lot of tomato! You want to know the cool thing? Wegman's sells store brand organic tomatoes. I love buying store brand and not name brand. This is a total change from a younger me. A good change I think. Anywhooo, I got all of the meat sauce ingredients stewing and let it set for an hour and a half. While the sauce was stewing, I rolled out the pasta dough and cut it into lasagna sized pieces. I've decided that lasagna noodles are the easiest pasta to make. I let them hang out and hangers to dry (I learned my lesson from last time). Then I got to grating my Parmesan cheese, mixing my ricotta with an egg and unrolling my roll of fresh mozzarella.

Now comes the assembly line. I dropped a couple of noodles at a time into the boiling water. I ladle a bunch of the meat sauce into the bottom of my pan and then lay some cooked noodles down. Fresh noodles only boil for like 2 minutes. I had a layer of four noodles and then put a layer of the ricotta cheese mixture down. Then I put a small layer of mozzarella cheese down. I top that with a scoop of meat sauce and then a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Rinse, repeat. I had 12 noodles, so I had three layers of four noodles. It made for one very heavy pan of lasagna. It baked in the oven for 25 minutes.

This meal was devoured by all. It was delicious. It also made a ton. Everyone will get to have some for lunch today as well. Yay, one less meal I need to figure out. Works for me. I think that is all I have for now. We have one science lab left to do and then we have the summer off. Well, there will be creative writing projects and I'm going to attempt a quilt, and some gardening...I guess it won't be a summer off, but a summer without sit down school. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-five--Mediterranean Salad

Hello all. I hope everyone survived the holiday weekend. I think I'm still trying to recover from Hershey Park on Friday. I've had a headache since Friday night. Of course, I didn't help my cause with the several bottles of beer on Sunday night. Magic Hat's summer brew is the best!

Yesterday was Monday and we did a meatless Monday. I keep getting updates from Food, Inc on my facebook page about Meatless Monday and I thought, "What the hell?" We do a lot of meatless dinners. Sometime I'll go back and figure the percentage of vegetarian. We were vegan for a year, so we have a pretty good arsenal of vegetarian meals to use. This salad was from the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution book. It was super duper easy!

Mediterranean Salad with fresh bread

I like how Jamie just chops everything on a big board and dresses it on the board. It makes the salad into little bite size pieces. Laurie (hi mom) does this too. It makes the salad easier to eat. I made a fresh loaf of bread to have with the salad. I don't think you really need a recipe for this salad, but I followed it mostly. It's romaine lettuce, an onion, a tomato, and some kalamata olives. The recipe called for basil too, but our basil plant needs to renew itself a bit so I didn't pull any leaves off of it. It's then dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. The bread was super delicious and we ended up making salad sandwiches. Connor came up with this one. It was a nice light dinner after a long weekend of indulging.

That is all I have for now. We are going to try to bust through the last of our school projects today and then I have to make pasta for tonight. It's going to be a busy day. Until later, happy cooking!