Tiffanie: this week's menu

Oh, the cold weather has arrived! And the late autumn veggies!

My plans include:

• lentil soup (Barefoot Contessa recipe); I have a lot of celery on  hand from my CSA box. I think one entire bunch with leaves will go into this. Homemade bread on the side.
• posole verde. Found beautiful poblano peppers at the farmer's market this week, so it's a must. My veggie version has lots of hominy, beans, roasted poblanos, tomatillos, and mushrooms in it.
• creole hoppin' jean. Comfort food: beans, tomatoes, rice, spices. Great with guac and chips. Roasted sweet potato side.
• chickpea cutlets, by request. Roasted cauliflower. Maybe mashed potatoes?

I never made any of the extra things in last week's post, so hopefully this week we'll make pretzels and lentil pate and popcorn balls. And granola, since someone keeps eating it all.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

My CSA box is guiding the meals this week, as it should. :-)

The plans include:

• tofu scramble with greens and roasted potatoes, wrapped up in tortillas. Smoothies.
• cauliflower mushroom pot pie with olive biscuit crust. Green salad.
• roasted squash (kabocha or butternut) with rice and chickpea pilaf, roasted beets. Leftovers with sauteed kale and shallots.
• massur dal and carrot soup. Spiced pita crisps. Green salad.
• Kids and mama night: potato frittata or sweet potato hash.
• backup plan: peanut noodles and baked tofu and cabbage slaw
• extras: maple mustard tempeh (for my lunch wraps), lentil walnut pate (for crackers), easy potato salad (something to try with the kids), pretzels (baking lesson), and rosemary chocolate chip cookies (new recipe to try)

The girl told me today that all my soups are yucky. HOWEVER! Her brother really liked the simple ginger pumpkin soup I made this week. As did I; it was superb with chopped chives.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Oh, it feels like autumn! Though the forecast for this coming week is back to hot. I never made the pumpkin soup last week, plus I got a surprise pumpkin in the CSA box, so now I have TWO pumpkins (ok, a kabucha and a pumpkin). Ended up making broccoli and tofu stirfy, which everyone LOVED. Even the kids! I remembered to press the tofu, which really aided in giving the fried cubes of tofu a great crust. And it turns out that naming each floret of broccoli makes eating them fun. Kids just like to torture their food, they really are like cats.

This week's plans include:

• pumpkin soup! With either homemade bread or fresh bagels. And green salad.
• spaghetti and beanballs, green salad.
• Field Roast sausages in buns, with fried onions and peppers, and roasted sweet potato wedges. Strangely, the kids love the Italian sausages, despite their "spiciness". Gateway to spice?
• sweet potato hash, as always. It is especially good with peppers.
• for snacks, popcorn balls (still haven't made them this month!), no-bake energy balls (boy is in a growth spurt), and cookies (boy is asking for the chocolate-chip recipe without the chips, I'm angling to try out a snickerdoodle recipe).

I'm a bit short for the week on meals, but something will suggest itself, either with the new CSA box or when I peek at a cookbook...

Tiffanie: this week's menu

It's still pretty hot on some days, but the nights and mornings are so cool that my menu planning is wandering into winter territory.

Plans for this week include:

• popcorn balls, since we never did it last week
• broccoli with cheddar cheese. The kids love this, but I prefer it on toast with mustard. To each her own.
• pumpkin soup, with homemade walnut-cherry bread, and salad. I bought a lovely Kabocha squash for this from a harvest festival.
• lal dal (lentil curry) over rice, with beet salad and pita crisps.
• tempeh shepherd's pie, green salad.
• garlic tomato soup, perhaps with some ravioli in it.
• sweet potato and veggie hash with eggs.
• spaghetti and beanballs, as a backup meal.

What do you feel like eating these days?