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| oven fries baked in beef fat |
Friday (One daughter now does the pizza on Fridays. She wanted to master making pizza from scratch, so I suggested she take over Friday's dinner. She's now a pro.)
scratch pepperoni pizza
cabbage, kale, raisin salad
steamed carrots (saved the residual water to add to my breakfast smoothie the next day)
cabbage, kale, raisin salad
steamed carrots (saved the residual water to add to my breakfast smoothie the next day)
Saturday
bean and cheese burritos in homemade tortillas, salsa on the side
sautéed beet greens and onions
sautéed spiced apples
Sunday (My husband made dinner for us. He has a couple of things he makes regularly for us, soup being one, burritos including the tortillas being another.)
chicken and vegetable soup, using frozen chicken in stock from last week's roasted chicken
scratch biscuits
apple wedges
Monday
BBQ beef bowls -- beef simmered in BBQ spices, a little tomato paste, vinegar, and brown sugar, topped with cheese, all on top of brown rice, with shredded radish leaves dressed in avocado oil, salt, and chive blossom vinegar on the side, along with avocado slices and chopped yellow tomatoes
sweet potato oven fries baked in a mix of beef fat and vegetable oil
carrot cookies
I had some fat that I cut off of the cut of beef I used in the BBQ bowls and set aside until Tuesday. On Tuesday I cut the fat into small dices and rendered fat to use in cooking. This fat was then used in oven fries on Tuesday and Thursday. I froze the last bit of rendered fat after using what I needed to make the fries.
Tuesday
tuna melts on scratch French bread, yum!
roasted pumpkin cubes
oven fries baked in beef fat
sautéed Brussel sprout leaves, kale, and cabbage sprouts in ham fat (cabbage sprouts are the baby plants which grew at the cutting spot from harvesting cabbage heads)
Wednesday (My other daughter has wanted to make eggs Benedict for a while, and this was the night she tried them. The English muffins turned out great and the Hollandaise sauce was perfect. We have some leftover Hollandaise -- any suggestions for using it?)
eggs Benedict on homemade English muffins with scratch Hollandaise sauce
frozen peas
stewed prunes
Thursday
leftover cooked ground beef patties in gravy from the freezer
oven fries baked in beef fat
beet leaves mixed with Swiss chard sautéed in ham fat
roasted pumpkin cubes
sautéed frozen apple chunks, using up last of spiced cider for the liquid
Preparing for Thanksgiving
Our fridge is beginning to empty out after doing my big stock-up at WinCo a week ago. Empty is how I want it going into the prep for Thanksgiving, so this is a good thing. You know how this is. I wish there was a rent-a-fridge just for a holiday, or an expandable feature to temporarily increase the capacity of the fridge you have. I need space to thaw some frozen meat and store casserole dishes as they await baking on Thursday. I will also need space for leftovers on Thanksgiving. I'll do a good cleaning of the fridge in the next couple of days, and that will hopefully identify more than can be used or thrown out. No grocery shopping this week, not even to pick up bananas.
In the garden
Unless we have a very mild rest of November, I think the Brussel sprout leaves and Swiss chard are done for the season. If winter is mild, both might come back briefly in spring. I still have some kale, radish leaves, beet roots, and turnips in the garden. I'm also down to my last homegrown pumpkin (out of 8). This last one is the largest. I think I can get 3 meals out of this one. I still have 2 large purchased Jack o' lantern pumpkins to cook and puree. With each passing week we use more and more purchased vegetables.
My favorite meal this week -- honestly I loved many of them. But if I had to choose one which surprised me how much we all enjoyed it was the BBQ beef bowls. All of the combine flavors and textures made this really delicious. Taking a bite of the tangy radish greens (dressed in an oil and vinegar) along with a slightly sweet bit of BBQ beef and a creamy bite of avocado was awesome.
Did you have a favorite meal this past week?
Your meals look super good to me. All things we would definitely eat. But here we are again with a 2 person family struggling to get through meals I make so we just end up freezing as much as possible for a future meal (taking up so much freezer space). That means variety daily isn't possible but variety sits in the freezer. We'll use those between holidays . We had a beef bulgogi (perhaps you suggested that) last week and thought it was so good. Another good item is a strip steak (a local discount store sells them at a very good prices) in the air fryer. Meat cooked that way is so good. We also made chicken bowls with salsa verde and a cilantro lime dressing which we used cooked leftover chicken breast. Served with tortilla chips. We both liked that a lot.
ReplyDeleteAlice
Alice, I wasn't sure what beef bulgogi was, so I looked it up. Sounds delicious.
DeleteHi Alice,
DeleteYour meals also sound delicious! I especially like the sound of a cilantro-lime dressing on your chicken bowls.
I'm glad you have a plan for using your frozen leftovers between the holidays. Having those ready to heat will mean you'll have more time in the evenings after work, which I'm very glad for you to have.
I've never used an air fryer. They sound like they're great for meat. Thanks for sharing.
If it were me, I'd use the leftover hollandaise sauce for more eggs benedict because I love them. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteI could go for more of them!
Curious about the BBQ beef bowls--would those be like a sloppy joe or was it chunks of beef rather than ground?
ReplyDeleteFavorite meal here so far this week has been beef, cheese, and onion and enchiladas. I regularly make chicken enchiladas with green sauce, but hadn't ever made a red sauce we really enjoyed. This time, I tried the McCormick enchilada sauce packet which you mix with water and tomato sauce, and it tasted just right. I shortcut by layering it as a casserole rather than making individual enchiladas.
Hi Cat,
DeleteI used a chuck steak, simmered in spiced liquid, then shredded before adding a homemade BBQ sauce. I think ground beef could also be used.
I'm not sure I've had enchiladas with a green sauce. My mother always used a red chile sauce, so that's what I've always done.. I'll have to look up a green sauce. That's smart to do it as a layered dish instead of rolling each one.
Yummy stuff, everybody! A couple of times a year, I boil chuck roasts, then shred them, and add BBQ sauce for sandwiches. A couple of months ago, we looked up a BBQ sauce from scratch (not just mixing ketchup and things from the pantry, which many of the "homemade" BBQ recipes are doing); and made two different versions (a "hotter" one and a sweeter one) before we went on a family camping trip. We simmered the shredded beef in the sauce, and then froze it in one-meal portions. It was delicious, so a couple of weeks ago, I did the same thing. Thawing that in a frying pan, and reheating some frozen rolls or buns with a quick carrot salad made a really satisfying "fast food" meal on our second-busiest day of the week. Frozen home-made lasagne was the solution for the busiest day. Yummmmmm! Sara
ReplyDeleteHi Sara,
DeleteThat's a really good idea, to freeze shredded, cooked beef in BBQ sauce to reheat on a busy day. I have a couple of pot-style roasts in the freezer. I may have to follow your lead and make a batch of ready to heat BBQ beef. Thanks for the suggestion!
I'm with L&L on having eggs Benedict again. :)
ReplyDeleteI made a beef and barley/tomato soup yesterday with your Italian bread recipe (well, technically it was ground turkey, not beef) and we had it again tonight, since I worked today and needed something easy. Yesterday was miserable, drizzly weather day, so soup sounded good. I guess that would be my favorite meal.
Your beef and barley soup sounds delicious, Kris! Today was drizzly and cold, here. So we did a soup and bread product dinner, too. That's always a good cold weather meal.
DeleteHollandaise is nice over cooked veg sides like asparagus or broccoli.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for suggesting this. Yes, I've heard of asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. Thanks to your suggestion, I made a vegetable side dish over the weekend and drizzled the last of the sauce over it. Very, very delicious!
Delete