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| This is Tuesday's dinner with the pumpkin soufflé. The soufflé isn't a super fluffy dish, but the egg does hold it all together and makes it lighter than straight pumpkin. |
Friday (daughter made dinner)
scratch pepperoni pizza
roasted pumpkin*
frozen peas
Saturday (cook-out around the fire ring -- fun time!)
hot dogs
homemade buns, using part of the dough I'd made for a loaf of French bread this day
Swiss chard* sautéed in bacon fat
steamed carrots
s'mores
steamed carrots
s'mores
Sunday
bean and cheese burritos in homemade flour tortillas, beans cooked from dried
cabbage and nasturtium leaf* slaw
roasted pumpkin cubes*
leftover Halloween cookies
Monday
roasted chicken with gravy
bread, celery*, and sage* dressing, using chicken stock from freezer to moisten
sweet potato oven fries, roasted in beef fat
sautéed beet greens*, using some of the chicken fat from the roast chicken
pecan pie (courtesy of my daughters)
Tuesday
leftover chicken heated in salsa with avocado, tomato*, cilantro* (last red tomato from garden, a couple of yellow tomatoes left now)
brown rice
pumpkin* soufflé
stewed prunes*
Wednesday (daughter made dinner)
chicken and vegetable soup (vegetables -- celery*, onion, purple potatoes*, garlic*, carrots, frozen peas, herbs*)
chocolate chip muffins
Thursday
Shepherd's Pie, using beef, celery*, carrot, carrot leaves*, beet greens*, onions*, garlic*, nasturtium leaves*, herbs* , and beef stock from freezer, all under a mashed potato topping. (I used the potato peels to make oven-roasted potato peels as a snack this afternoon. Yum!)
fig-applesauce* on the side
*denote garden produce
Pumpkin Soufflé
When I need an orange vegetable side dish, and what I have is pumpkin puree (and I want this to be a "fork-able" dish), I turn it into a soufflé of sorts.
Here's how I make it:
1 pint pumpkin puree
1 large egg
2 teaspoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
about 1/4 teaspoon combined cinnamon and nutmeg
pat of butter to top casserole
Butter a small baking dish (I use a couple of small white Corningware round bakers).
Beat egg well with a fork in a medium bowl. Beat in the pumpkin, sugar, salt, and spices. Pour into the prepared baking dish and top with the butter pat.
Bake at 350 to 375 degrees F, whatever I need for the other foods I'm baking. If not baking anything else, I bake this at 350 degrees F. Total baking time -- about 20-25 minutes. A knife inserted in center will come out clean.
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| I use 2 of these Corningware bakers for this recipe. 5 1/2 inches at opening and 2 inches tall |
Notes
If what you're accustomed to for chicken soup comes from a can, cooking it at home adds a seriously amazing aroma to the kitchen. On Thursday I simmered the carcass from our most recent roasted whole chicken. The house smelled delicious all day. As we had chicken soup on Wednesday, I chose to freeze the resulting chicken stock with meat for making a chicken and vegetable soup at some future moment.
You may have noticed that there have been fewer garden veggies and more store bought ones in our meals the last couple of weeks. Earlier this week I started a batch of lentil sprouts, our first for this season. Lentil sprouts add bulk to our winter salads and sandwiches for just pennies.
Grocery shopping
I went to Walmart last Friday and picked up a couple of things, a bunch of bananas, a 3 lb bag of sweet potatoes, and a pound of lean grass fed ground beef. I spent $11.06, also my total for the month. (I also picked up cleaning supplies, as we were out of liquid dish detergent.) I'll be going to WinCo in the next couple of days and do a big stock-up then. My spending total will jump from that.
What was the best meal you had this week?
I would like eating at your house. :) It looks like you have new dishes every meal with sometimes using leftover ingredients in a new dish. Do you ever just make a large quantity of something and have it for a couple of days. We like to do that here because neither one of us is into cooking. However, I know that some people don't like leftovers or eating the same thing for lunch and dinner a couple of days in a row.
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteOkay, you do the dishes. Swing by around 5:30 for dinner?
Some weeks we do eat basically the same thing for a couple of nights. For instance, with a roasted whole chicken, there is enough meat and gravy to just do a repeat. This week, I chose to do a Mex-inspired chicken the second night, as I had a avocado to use ASAP. And I let my daughter use some of the leftover stuff from the chicken in a soup. She added the last of the gravy, thawed chicken stock, and chicken drippings plus meat to the soup. But for the most part, I've never been good at preparing enough for more than one meal at a time. It's like I don't know what something looks like if I were to make double. We do use leftovers for lunch the next day, however. I think I also like the variation from day to day. Maybe it's just what I'm used to. Someday, when it's just my husband and I, we will be eating leftovers every other day. Because I don't know how to cook for two people.
I was home late from work on Wed. but I had roast chicken planned for dinner. Chicken was still mostly frozen even though it had been set out to thaw. I got it into the oven late and it needed more time to cook so dinner was mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans that we ate first, then roast chicken as it finally was cooked. We put all the bones, skin, etc. into the crockpot with onion and let it cook overnight. By morning it was the best broth to be used in a soup dish later this month.
ReplyDeleteAlice
Hi Alice,
DeleteI'm surprised that you were able to get the chicken roasted to eat that evening. Well done! And your meal sounds delicious and warming for these cold evenings. Has it snowed in your area yet?
Yes, isn't homemade chicken broth sooooo good?! It's worth taking the time to make when you have the bones, skin, and all.
The souffle sounds good. Can you please clarify what size baking dish you use?
ReplyDeleteHi Kris,
DeleteIt's a delicious, and not too sweet, way to use pumpkin puree as a side dish. I added a photo of the dish above in the post. It's one of those white Corningware round dishes. The top opening is wider for about 1/2-inch, then straight-sided the rest of the dish. 5 1/2 inches across the opening, 2 inches tall, with just over 2 cups capacity to the very top. I do the souffle in 2 dishes, so it bakes faster. But it could be baked in a larger dish all together, just for longer.
We got the first three of these for free at a Sears promotion about 35 years ago. I have since bought more at thrift stores, so we have about 5, I think. They make great microwaveable dishes. When we have leftover soup or stew, I divide it between a couple of these to keep in the fridge overnight. Then the next day, whoever wants for lunch just reheats a dish.