Hello friends. It is now sunny and warming up in Ottawa and the big dumping of snow we got last month has almost melted and the grass is showing! It is brown dead grass but I can now see it! It won’t be long and the snow will completely melt and the grass and flowers will come to life. I am also planning on getting caught up on museum visits the next few weeks since it won’t be long when festival season arrives. We have lots of festivals in Ottawa during the summer months so I am hoping to tie in one or two over the summer months. Meals this week will involve finishing up bits and bobs in the fridge since I ordered a Good Food Box for this week. The food box I ordered is a service provided by a local community centre. It operates year round but I order from them during the winter when the CSA season is over. Pick up day is Wednesday so I would like to have the fridge as emptied out as much as possible by then. Onto my menu plan for this week:
Today: Take-out lunch was pork bone soup from the Korean grocery store. The shop I go to sells mostly groceries however they have a refrigerated section at the front of the store that sells prepared meals made in-house. Their pork bone soup is one of my favourites but they don’t have it out often and when they do, people snap it up fast. I was lucky enough to score the last soup today! Since the soup is my big meal of the day, I will have a salad for dinner.
Saturday: Fridge and freezer clean out day. Time to take inventory of everything. I will have either a risotto or a shrimp salad for dinner depending on how hungry I am.
Sunday: A museum visit during the day, dinner will be whatever I didn’t have last night.
Monday: Ginger bok choy soup with noodles to finish up the last couple of bok choys in the fridge and I’m having them in a soup dish before it gets too warm out for soup. I am optimistic spring will come this year!
Thursday: Angel hair pasta with cilantro, sundried tomatoes and feta. Veggies tbd. This is a recipe I found on the internet ages ago and saved it as a Word document but didn’t make note of where I found it. However a Google search came up with an exact match.
Have a nice weekend everyone. I hope it is sunny and warm where you are.
I’ll be glad to take a turn. ETA: unless someone wants to fight me for it, I am happy to pick this up, starting with May, through the rest of this year and then look for who wants the next turn.
Thanks @MidwesternerTT for your labors here over a long time, much appreciated!!
One more week till Spring Break. Not that I’m counting… Will be relying heavily on freezer and pantry items.
For two adults in San Diego:
Breakfasts: TJ’s chocolate croissants to start off the week
S: (tonight) Takeout - Chile verde burrito
Su: Fried egg sandwiches with bacon and cheese, apple slices
M: Tortilla soup with langostinos - seafood/soup
T: TJ’s green chile cheese tamales, salad - vegetarian
W: Bacon and spinach flatbread, caesar salad
Th: TJ’s gorgonzola gnocchi with spinach, shallots, and spiced pecans
F: Spending the weekend in Anaheim for WonderCon. We will probably wander over to Downtown Disney because it’s one of the few places near the convention center with ample outdoor seating.
Feeding 3 in the Boston burbs, where life is getting more hectic and will stay that way for the next couple of weeks. The good thing about spring is that when I have 1:1 meetings, I can throw on sneakers and a coat, and have a “walking meeting” - daylight, motion, and productivity all in one!
Sun: I’ve got pulled pork in the InstantPot right now. Dinner will be fresh pasta (fettucine, probably) with sautéed chicken, broccoli, and ricotta.
*side note: someone commented on the pasta recipe that it can’t be called dairy free because it contains eggs. A respondent said: “Unless your eggs are being squeezed out of an udder, they are not and have never been considered dairy.”
Thurs: I was going to toss together some fried rice, but just realized as I’m typing this that it’s DH’s birthday and he is probably not going to want that… hm…
Fri: was supposed to be pulled pork again… maybe swap Thurs and Fri…?
Hi, all! Cooking for 1 in Sacramento, where I’m watching DD’s cats and enjoying that California sunshine (though I hear Chattanooga’s also having lovely spring weather…). Last week was a blur of takeout, meal-kit meals that my sister subscribes to and never gets around to cooking, and (successful!) wedding cake baking. I’m going to try to make myself some simple meals to get me through the week and perhaps stock the freezer.
Sunday, March 23 (today): SK Keepers breakfast potato chips and sheet pan eggs, which I over salted with a seasoning mix but is otherwise simple and delicious, broccoli and apple salad, rice pudding
Monday: TBD
Tuesday: Pinto bean enfrijoladas (basically quesadillas with bean sauce)
Wednesday: Leftovers with perhaps a side of asparagus
Thursday: Crustless quiche with asparagus if I don’t have too many leftovers
Friday: Leftovers/takeout
Saturday: Kids come home from vacation in the evening: red lentil soup to welcome them. I may bake a cake as well.
Have a good week, everyone. Happy cooking!
Hello to everyone from the blustery Twin Cities of MN where I am having an acute case of what the heck day of the week it is. With a combination of spring break and very few residents I haven’t worked at all this month= until today. My boss was desperate for help and bid kiddo suggested I could work instead of taking them to swim lessons. Sold!
Actuals and plans for 2 adults and 2 growing girls where skate show rehearsals are picking up and rehearsals for the spring musical are starting too. Big kiddo is Rapunzel. Something about the 7 dwarves have a talk show in singing form? Big kiddos hair is almost to her waist so there is no way she is going to let me trim it now.
Fri 21: Popcorn shrimp, mashed potatoes, roasted broccoli… Salads I had my shrimp on a big caesar salad.
Sat 22: Breakfast for dinner. NYT yeasted waffles with ricotta and strawberries
Sun 23: Tonight! Spinach salads loosely adapted from Alton Brown, Garlic bread or similar. Need to bake some banana bread for big kiddo to have for theater rehearsal snacks for the week
Mon 24: Leftover Monday. There are a whole bunch of odds and ends in there. First muscle rehearsal, both kiddos have skate show pictures, and then big kiddo has a skate rehearsal.
Tues 25: Something involving pulled pork from the freezer, Little one loves cuban style pot roast. roasted broccoli
Weds 26: Both kiddos have skating lessons. Gyros (meat from costco) with the usual fixings
Thurs 27: Freezer dive and see what veggies are on sale. Maybe grill out if it’s not too blustery. Pretty sure I have some jumbo shrimp in the freezer somewhere
Fri 28: Probably order some pizza so have leftovers for lunches over the weekend
@Autumm2 and @LulusMom1 I’ve made that steak salad a bunch of times, usually with steak tips. We really like and it’s easy for each of us to customize our own plates. This will be my first time with chicken but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work! I do like the idea of adding a bit of ginger to the marinade.
Sunday: take-out. Take-out fried chicken thighs and cole slaw from Mary Brown’s, and a take-out appetizer sampler, navratan Korma, dal with spinach, mango lassi and kheer (rice pudding) from an Indian restaurant. I’m trying to cut back on frequent fried chicken for myself. One of my dining companions has been requesting it almost weekly. LOL. Which means I’m also cooking less chicken at home lately. It used to be that I roasted a whole chicken on Mondays.
Monday: lamb barbacoa. Maybe this recipe
Or this one
Maybe Mexican rice
Guacamole
Beans
Tuesday: I think a braised beef blade . No idea how I will prep it yet.
That’s all I’ve got
Loaded up on vegetables in Chinatown and elsewhere, and hit a couple unexpectedly good meat deals so I stocked up a bit. And I now have sourdough starter from a friend so I need to learn about that so I can try out a test loaf!
Ideas for the week:
– Spinach souffle or kuku or crespelle (or all, I just sauteed down a bag of spinach) + salad
– Kimchi fried rice or Kimchi pancake / Kimchijeon (with added cabbage) + fried egg
– Swordfish kababs + lentil salad + greens
– Trumpet mushroom and black fungus stir-fry Malaysian-style (approximating a delicious restaurant dish I ate last week) + quinoa-rice blend + greens
– Thai chicken satay bowls (using TJs ready sauce) OR Thai green curry chicken with assorted veg + quinoa-rice blend
More involved ideas:
– Chicken Akhni (Pulao) – want to recreate a dish a friend’s mom cooked for me last year. Apparently a Memon community recipe that uses a green herb base and coconut milk. Maybe a spinach burhani / raita on the side.
– Goat curry of some sort, maybe Champaran or Mangsho + green veg + quinoa-rice blend.
Will add a soup or two, at least one with lentils, for accompaniment through the week.
Plus Pongal , which I have been finding simple, filling, and comforting at any time of the day.
Also want to try a single serving of the eggless version of the self-saucing cake, or bake a small chocolate loaf cake.
I forgot about sticky toffee pudding – will have to make a mental note for the next time I’m making dessert for the same group of friends, because we all love it!
I’ve made lemon sponge pudding a bunch of times; not exactly self-saucing, but separates into a light sponge layer on top and a custardy layer beneath when baking.
Glad you’re feeling better! I had a sourdough starter for about 18 months, and had fun with it (although it was almost like having a kid - had to worry about whether it would need a sitter if I was away). I tried bread, crumpets, crackers, all sorts of things. The family favorite was definitely the crackers. I did a few different variations, all were hits and everyone loved them, always gone within 2 days. I believe I was using the recipe on the KA site. Away from home so can’t verify.
