Friday (we watched a movie while eating pizza -- The Russians Are Coming, 1966, comedy)
scratch pepperoni pizza
canned green beans
celery sticks
gingered pear crumble (frozen pears)
Saturday
cook-out
hot dogs (the uncured beef ones -- Marketside from Walmart), with all the relishes but no buns
canned corn
red and green slaw
dried fruit from the freezer
Sunday
scratch refried beans, salsa and cheese
oven-fried corn tortilla chips (using plain corn tortillas)
avocado slices
orange wedges
Monday
tuna-macaroni salad (with a couple of boiled eggs, some thawed frozen peas and fresh celery in the salad)
avocado slices
steamed spinach (from frozen)
chocolate chip cookies
Tuesday
beef stew over baked potatoes (Need to use up the wrinkly potatoes. Baked seemed the way to go)
crabapple-applesauce (both frozen, thawed then mixed together for taste)
chocolate chip cookies
Wednesday
beet green and potato frittata (this night I used the worst of the wrinkly potatoes, peeled, sliced very thin, and placed at the bottom of the frittata. Turned out well.)
mixed vegetables (from frozen)
rhubarb crumble (first cutting of rhubarb this season, the freezer stash is now gone)
Thursday
ground beef and broccoli stir fry (frozen broccoli cuts, which are less expensive than broccoli florets)
brown rice
crabapple-applesauce (freezer stash)
It's been a super busy week, getting the garden worked and started the planting. We don't have a tiller, so I turn all the soil over with a shovel. It's back-strengthening work, if I don't keel over first. Anyway, meals needed to be simpler than usual. My favorite meal was the beef stew over baked potatoes. I had 3 large potatoes to use. So after baking I cut each into long quarters, and we each had 3 quarters. I smothered them with stew. It was a tasty way to have stew. I was hesitant to cube the potatoes to put into the stew. I wanted to leave the skin on for minerals. I thought the skins would fall off in the stew if I added them outright. I thought about making biscuits to go with the stew and skipping the potatoes. But baked potatoes was quicker as far as hands-on work went.
My other meal triumph was Thursday's dinner. I had a headache all day. Our neighbor is using a backhoe this week, all day every day. And it's noisy. Whether or not I would have had a headache anyway, having the added noise made it much worse. And then when he quit, our other neighbor began with a chainsaw on some trees. It was noisy today, and my head felt fragile. So I decided to do one of my quick meals. Ground beef, frozen vegetables, onions, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, black pepper, served over steamed rice. I had the applesauce and crabapple sauce thawed in the fridge and just needed to mix the two and serve. Aside from the time to steam the rice, the rest of dinner came together in under 30 minutes.
Our deep freeze is looking emptier and emptier these days. It's nice to be able to find what I'm looking for in there now. I do see several more containers of frozen cherries for pies. I might make a French cobbler with a container of cherries over the weekend. The small meat freezer is about half full now. We've used almost all of the chicken and most of the beef. I have a lot of chicken stock in there. I'll have to come up with ways to use some of it this weekend. Vegetable soup, perhaps? I need to thaw the two stand alone freezers beginning of June for one and early July for the other.
What was on your menu this week? What was your favorite meal? Did you make any particularly easy or quick meals this week?
I pulled two small containers of two different soups, one big container of homemade spaghetti sauce all used this very busy work week. I made oven fried chicken with mashed potatoes and green bean casserole (enough for lunches this week). I had some lettuce, red/orange peppers, carrots left from last week so I made another 7 layer salad. I did have to shop for groceries and got two rotisserie chickens and croissants so we had hot chicken sandwiches with salad for supper. Made chicken broth out of the chicken bones and froze one chicken for another meal in the next week or so. Bought other groceries as well that will last for much of the month of May. Lili, your meals always give me inspiration for our meals. I will probably do a stir fry and a pizza soon too.
ReplyDeleteI would have been happy to eat at your house this week. I think the beef stew would have been my favorite, too.
ReplyDeleteI do rice in microwave ,takes about 15 min in my old GE.My rule is to cover rice in 1inch liquid and turn it around a couple of times.I understand not everyone is fan of microwaves though...
ReplyDeleteWith just 2 of us at home most of the time, I veer towards cooking once/eating twice. We've been able to do that with Asian-style chicken legs with couscous (I have couscous that needs to be eaten) as well as venison/tomato/barley soup and bread. I made pizza last night because I really wanted pizza. There was enough left over for lunches today, which makes for easier lunches to assemble for work.
ReplyDeleteYour beef stew over potatoes sounds like a great way to use up wrinkly potatoes.