Fried corn tortilla, topped w/ refried beans, cheese, avocado, salsa and olives, along with oven-roasted canned tomatoes and fiesta corn |
Friday
for the one person at home that evening:
Fried rice, with spinach, mushrooms, peas, tofu and egg
Pumpkin-ham soup
Chocolate chip cookies
Saturday
Black bean tacos
Tomato Florentine soup
Pumpkin pie
Sunday
for the two people at home that evening (February is shaping up to be a busy month):
Black bean tacos
Oranges
Pumpkin pie
Monday
Pork roast with garlic and rosemary
Rosemary potatoes
Spinach and onions sauteed with bacon bits
Pumpkin pie
Tuesday
Fried rice (with eggs, peas, peanuts, onions, garlic), topped with a garlic and peanut sauce
Tofu and orange salad in a ginger-soy vinaigrette
Wednesday
Fried corn tortillas, topped with
refried beans, cheese, avocado, salsa and black olives
fiesta corn (frozen corn sauteed with onion, green pepper and chili powder)
oven-roasted canned tomatoes
Thursday
baked chicken leg quarters
canned tomato, onion, garlic, green pepper and herb sauce
brown rice
pumpkin pie (from freezer)
If I had to choose which meal was my favorite this week, I think it would have been Monday's pork roast. I took a 1-lb section of a pork loin out of the freezer, and chopped off about 3 ounces, to grind in my food processor for filling for wontons. We'll be having homemade wonton soup for dinner tonight, using the wontons I made on Monday (in the freezer right now), and homemade chicken stock with the bones from last night's dinner.
I was able to buy avocados for 53 cents each last week, and am now beginning to use them. For produce, I have some frozen plums, rhubarb, blackberries. strawberries, pumpkin, peas, corn, green beans, and spinach. I finished off the frozen green peppers last night. In fresh, I have 1 large pumpkin, 1 butternut squash, a drawer full of onions, 20 lbs of potatoes, a handful of oranges and about 10 avocados. I also have lots of canned tomatoes, whole and in paste. In the garden, I have kale, chard, radish greens, beet greens, sorrel and watercress, in small amounts, each. Its not a lot of fruits and vegetables, but it seems to be just enough.
My freezers still look rather full. Part of that is a frozen turkey and 2 hams, plus 20 lbs of chicken leg quarters, some pork and ground beef. I also have a couple of jugs of milk in the freezers. All of this takes up space. I imagine as spring unfolds, at least one freezer will begin to look more empty.
I have a strange aversion to using the last of anything up, it seems. I was down to just a small baggie of frozen green peppers, and had to practically force myself to just use it all. Strange, I know. But that is what my freezer tends to look like, lots of small bags of different things. But I do know that I will have to use it all up, or have it become so freezer burned, that it's inedible.
The other thing that stands out to me is that I really do just make-do, this time of year, especially in the produce department. Canned whole tomatoes may not sound like a side-dish to go with dinner, but they can be. Most of the time, I think of canned tomatoes as an ingredient in a soup or chili, but halved and oven-roasted, they become a side dish to go with some other entree. Or with the tofu and orange segment salad, on Tuesday. I don't have a recipe for tofu and orange salad. I just was looking around the kitchen for what could go into a "salad" for a fresher tasting side, paired with the heavier fried rice and peanut sauce. Tofu and oranges stood out as possibilities for something fresh-tasting.
Sometimes, I stretch the idea of what constitutes a serving of fruit or vegetables. Pumpkin pie frequents my list of vegetable-serving stand-ins. Or, as in Wednesday night's dinner, as I was heaping the sliced olives onto the Mexican-inspired dish, I proclaimed to one daughter, "olives are a fruit tonight". Would it be simpler to stop by the grocery store to buy more traditional pairings to go with entrees? Yes. but making do will save me money, and I think it makes the menus more interesting as a bonus.
Over to you. What was on your menu this week? Did you have a favorite meal?