Days 88-93

Hello all. I hope everyone is doing well as we wind down summer. At least that is what I keep telling myself. I'm over the heat and I'm ready for some fall fun. This last week was a staycation for us. Well, it was for Tim. I still had to keep the house clean, cook meals and do laundry. It was fun having him around though and we got a lot of stuff done that we had been putting off for a while. Enough about that, let's get to the meals. There was one night that I don't have a picture for because it was kind of thrown together really fast at last minute because no one was really hungry.

Sunday we enjoyed some Spinach Stuffed Shells. These were fabulous. I made my go-to Jamie Oliver red sauce. I used a TON of spinach and garlic. Everyone loved this and Aidan said, "I even like the green stuff!" Score.

Spinach Stuffed Shells

Monday was a quick meal and it was kind of funny how it came about. When Tim took Connor to his karate class at 5 we still had no idea what we wanted for dinner. We're winging it because we are on vacation. He called me a couple of times while Connor was in class and we couldn't figure out what to have. I stood in the kitchen for a minute and then it hit me. We are drowning in tomatoes right now. We are picking 4 to 5 of them a day now. I called him back and told him to go to the store and get a fresh loaf of Italian bread and a ball of mozzarella. He came home and we made bruschetta. It was amazing! It was a nice light dinner and we all enjoyed it.

Bruschetta

Tuesday night was another "we can't figure out what to have" night. This is also when I realize that we really need to have menus and an idea of what we are doing. We all had munched on some popcorn late in the afternoon watching a movie and we weren't really hungry when dinner rolled around. Tim went to his aikido class and then I got hungry. I just whipped together a quick chunky chicken salad and had it with some of my pickled beets on some fresh bread. This would be the meal that I don't have a picture of. The boys weren't thrilled with it so they each had an apple with some cheese and that was enough for us.

Wednesday I finally made it to the store after staying up late the night before and finally making a menu up. For Wednesdays dinner we went to a good 'ol standby that we all love. It's quick and simple and filling. Too filling. We had beef and bean burritos. There was enough for our dinner and then lunch on Thursday.

Beef and Bean burritos

Thursday Tim made dinner. He was craving a stir fry and he wanted to use up some of our minute steaks from the freezer. We threw in a huge summer squash that a neighbor shared with us, zucchini, bok choy, shitake mushrooms, onions and bean sprouts. Tim made his own stir fry sauce with rice vinegar, tamari and mirin. We put it on top of some buckwheat noodles. This turned out delicious. Connor ate a huge plate of it and I was shocked. He, of course, picked out all of the mushrooms. Silly boy.

Beef Stir Fry

Friday, ah Friday, how we love thee. Friday night is pizza night. A favorite night in our home. I tried a new pizza for myself. I made a potato leek pizza. There was no sauce on this pizza. It was crust with a splash of olive oil, a layer of super thin sliced potatoes, a layer of mozzarella, a layer of sauteed leeks, then crumbled bacon and goat cheese on top of the leeks. Oh. My. God. This was so good. What was crazier was the fact that it tasted even better on Saturday as leftovers.

Potato and Leek Pizza

That brings us to Saturday. We had burgers minus the buns. Sadly, this was our last pound of grass fed organic beef from our friends. I am going to have to place another order very soon. We enjoyed our delicious burgers with some fries. Tim picked up a small bag of potatoes at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago and we are still trying to use them up. I guess we don't eat potatoes as much as I thought we did. I used my mandolin and made some crinkle fries and fried them up. It was a special treat for the kids.

Burgers and Fries.

So, that wraps up our week of eating real food. It was a fun week even though part of it wasn't very well planned out. Things are changing next week and I'm a little nervous about it, but we'll see how it all works out. You'll have to tune in next week to get a full report about what's happening. I'll leave you with a couple of treats we enjoyed this week of staycation.

First of all, I made a big pitcher of Sangria. Last week when Tim and I had our date night I had the best glass of sangria. This sangria had a bottle of white wine, a bottle of red wine, some orange rum and some orange vodka. Pour all of that on top of chopped apples, red grapes, green grapes, sliced lemons, sliced lime and sliced oranges. Holy hell. This was some strong stuff. It wasn't was sweet as what I had at The Rustic Kitchen, but it was good. It did get better the longer it all melded together.

Sangria

The other treat was Tim's birthday. He asked for a cheesecake. I had such success making Mike's that I had no problem whipping another one out. I put a blueberry topping on this one and used up the last of the blueberries that we picked in NY.

A half eaten piece of NY style cheesecake

It was delicious but we've agreed that we are over cheesecake for a while now. Thankfully, all birthdays and anniversaries are done for the year. Well, my parents and my brother's anniversary are this month but we aren't close enough to celebrate with them for now. Our waistlines are thankful for this. =)

Ok, now I'm done for the week. I have to go get boys into bed as we are starting school up tomorrow. We're starting a couple of weeks early to bank some time so we can take off in the late fall. All that plus our switch in eating a bit is going to make for an interesting week. Stay tuned.