Menu Planning Monday - Post Houseguests

We finally have our house back to ourselves for the first time since late August. Since we are going to the granparents for Thanksgiving all I have to do work on feeding my little family for awhile.

Our freezer is a mess and I would love to defrost it but have no where to put all the food while I do so we are working on trying to eat out of the freezer while at the same time I am trying to take advantage of some holiday food sales.

Sunday - Homemade pizza
Monday - Shepards Pie and Salad (from the freezer)
Tuesday - Tofu Stir Fry/ rice / Keem
Wednesday - Pasta, Homemade Sauce, salad, garlic bread
Thursday - Brown Sugar Salmon, Rice, broccoli
Friday - PreK Shabbat Dinner at Synagogue
Saturday - Chili (from freezer), chips and salad

MPM - A day early

We have long term house guests now. Which means cooking for 7 instead of 3 all of whom have their own needs and desires for me to learn. It has been a major adjustment but I feel like I am finally getting the hang of it. And part of that is getting back to my regular menu planning and shopping. For this week, we will have

StirFry, rice and keem
Pizza
Tilapia
Chicken Kebobs and peas
Shabbat - Picnic in the sukkah at shul - Frittata,salad,challah,chocolate chip zucchini bread

And I will be baking

Challah, sandwich bread, zucchini bread, pumpkin raisin cookies (I use applesauce instead of the oil), apple muffins, pancake mini muffins

WFMW - Winging It

Over time I have gotten lots more adventurous in the kitchen. With Froggy going dairy-free I have been forced to not only try new recipes but experiment with new ideas and become willing to tweak recipes to meet our family's needs.

So I have started to Wing It in the kitchen. We have lots of failures when I wing it but we have some great successes too. Here is one of the more recent. I added some pictures of it.

And out of desperation again I am now winging it in the craft room too. After hunting for the perfect pattern too often I have given up and started creating my own. Froggy's latest dress (pictures to follow) is a combination of this tutorial, a pattern we had and a great deal of improvisation. I think it turned out beautiful but I am just a little biased. It could not be too bad since I had trouble getting her out of it.

So winging it works for me. For other WFMW tips check out WEARETHATFAMILY

MPM - The Last of the Tomatoes

This week I am trying to put by the last of the summer tomatoes. Next week I start back at school and we enter the busy Fall schedule. So this week is the last chance I have to do any putting up food for the winter.

Before I get to this week's menu. Here is a review of last week.

I liked the Vegetable Tagine but no one else did. It made way more than expected. The recipe claims it makes 8 main dish servings. However after dinner for 2 adults and 1 lunch for me, I froze enough to easily serve 8 adults.

Our peaches were wonderful. The jam turned out delicious even though it did not jell up as well as I had hoped.

Breakfasts - my nephew (really my best friend's son but since he calls me Auntie I figure I can call him my nephew) will be joining us so I am cooking more
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Waffles (need to remember to get our waffle iron back from Aunt Petal)
Oatmeal
Scrambled eggs
Smoothies

Lunches - again with the nephew who is strictly vegetarian.
cold cut Sandwiches
Tagine on Couscous
Eggplant Croquettes
pbJ
Red Beans and Rice

Dinner - with all the cooking I am doing during the day I get a break here. Two nights we are out with friends and I have a meeting for a third. Shabbat dinner is a Potluck at the shul.
Tofu Stir Fry
Ratatulli with With White Beans - another experiment from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen
Salmon Burgers.
Pasta and Sauce

The Sweet of the Peach

Well we got a ton of peaches from a local farm. They came a bit earlier than expected.

I was going to wait until Shabbat to make Peach Crisp but I just could not hold out. Crisp is one of our favorite easy fruit desserts. It is so simple. We slice the fruit and top with an Oatmeal Crumb Topping. Bake and you are good to go. We made some lovely non-dairy peach icecream/frozen yogurt to go with it. I would share the ice cream recipe but I failed to write it down as I invented it. All this was a lovely treat during the middle of the week but left me scrambling for a dessert for Shabbat.

I still had more peaches to use but we also still had crisp sitting in the fridge.


What to do? Peach cake! No recipe? Well that is no problem any more. I remember a time not long ago when a lack of a recipe for exactly what I wanted would have scared me. No longer. Now I am free to experiment and invent in the kitchen.

The cake was simple and yummy. I used a boxed white cake mix. Instead of water I used fresh peach puree. I spread homemade peach jam and very thin fresh peach slices between the layers A nice light butter cream frosting and some more slices for decoration and dessert was ready. We served it with some of the ice cream from earlier in the week.

WFMW - Patience

Last Friday at our home school park day, I sought advice from the other moms regarding Froggy. She is almost four and still had not ever drawn any representational art at all. All her pictures were lines, random squiggles which even Froggy said had no other description than "a picture".

Well if I had been just a bit more patient I would not have needed to worry. Yesterday with out any prompting or cajoling Froggy drew me a person. We were coloring together as we often do. She drew a circle and then gave it features and the circle quickly became a "funny grandpa with earrings and silly hair" He even has fingers and toes.Patience is important. We started homeschooling so that she could go at her own pace without pressure. Moments like this help me find the patience again to allow her to do just that.

MPM - Peaches

We got a whole bushel of peaches from a local farm. We are going to try making some peach jam. Magpie Eats shared a lovely jam recipe that we are going to try using these lovely peaches rather than the apricots intended.

Last week's experiments had some wins and some loses. The biggest win was all the meals we got out of the Roast Chicken. Cooking once and eating several times is a huge hit with me. Movie night and the pizza never happened so are making a reappearance this week.

Monday - Shepards Pie using leftover pot roast.
Tuesday -Couscous with Vegetable Tagine from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen
Wednesday - Mock Coq a Vin - from The One-Armed Cook
Thursday - Movie Night and Pizza
Friday - Challah, Maple Glazed Salmon, Rice, Steamed Broccoli, Peach Crisp