Tiffanie: this week's menu

Very late this week!

My plans/history:

• bok choy and chickpeas with toasted cashews. Onion pancakes, baked marinated tofu.
• sweet potato corn chowder with kale. A no-knead loaf, of cherry and walnuts.
• a wild rice pilaf to supplement the soups (from Clean Food).
• green salads with beets, to eat up the two lettuces in the CSA box.
• pancake night, with roasted potatoes and smoothies. (Kid request)
• an apple and squash soup (puree)

Tiffanie: this week's menu

A nice normal week!

My plans:

• finally made the quinoa black eyed pea croquettes with mushroom gravy from Vegan with a Vengeance. Delicious as always! Added sweet potato fries on the side.
• have two more Field Roast sausages, so I'll put in another pasta and kale night with sausage. I have two beets left over from my big batch of roasting, so they'll become salad.
• a big stew: the potato tofu mushroom stew with miso gravy. Love it. It's a solid two meal dish; and is great over rice or pasta. I want roasted cauliflower on the side.
• I have a few lovely leeks from the last CSA box, so I shall make a leek potato soup. 

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Feeling lazy this week... here we go! Most of these are easy meals.

Plans:

• Sunday night leftovers, of the yummy lentils and rice with caramelized onions and spiced pita crisps. I found my zatar, so I used that on the pita. The young kale that I braised with red onion was also leftovers; husband thought it was bitter, but I liked it.
• Pasta with greens and Field Roast Italian sausage, roasted butternut squash (with leeks?), and vegan chocolate pudding.
• fundraiser night at Aqui on Tuesday, so doing that.
• White bean and roasted garlic soup. Two heads of roasted garlic! Yum! More no-knead bread, and also beet salad.
• A breakfast dinner, with pancakes, corn fritters, smoothies, and veggie bacon.
• Quinoa and black eyed pea croquettes with mushroom gravy, and sweet potato fries.

Still trying to work through my fridge and not buy so much each week. Not quite as successful this week, but I'll be using up my chard, butternut squash, leeks, beets from the CSA box. I may also make myself some kale and baked eggs for a solo dinner; I can add some carrots and beet greens, too.

The soup and the corn fritters and the croquettes are from Vegan with a Vengeance. I haven't made the soup before; it calls for Great Northern White beans, and the bulk section was out of them, so I took the easy way out and bought them canned. At least it's from Eden, they do excellent canned beans, and they were on sale. :-) 

I flipped through the cookie and dessert sections of the cookbook, and I may try out the chocolate thumbprint cookies. I have raspberry jam... might be good. I'm also tempted by an orange rum tea cake, but I don't have any rum on hand. Would brandy be as good?

comfort food recipes

I have been lousy at meal planning this year but here are a few recipes that I've tried which have worked out well. Pretty much all of these are kid friendly recipes and mostly from the Food Network. I've been in the mood for comfort food since the new year began.

The Lady's Chicken Noodle Soup from Paula Deen. When I got back from Ohio on New Year's Eve, the entire family was sick with a cold. As far as making chicken noodle soup from scratch goes, this was very easy and quick and quite good. Definitely a recipe I'll try again. Unfortunately, the preschooler refused to taste it but hopefully she'll be more willing to try it out next time. I left out the heavy cream.

Big Chocolate Birthday Cake from Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman. The preschooler's birthday was Christmas but we celebrated in January. This makes a huge cake! It's meant to be 4 layers but I separated it into two cakes each with 2 layers and one cake was enough to feed a party of 30 people. I thought the cake was a little bitter the first day but that it mellowed out and was much better the next day. It was also a nice moist, dense chocolate cake, which I prefer over drier, airier cakes. I also used a different frosting recipe since I needed something simple and quick but while the frosting was simple and quick, I wasn't a big fan of the frosting recipe so I'm not going to add that link here.

For some reason, I was unable to bake a decent cake in 2012, even with tried and true recipes. Every time I tried to bake a cake, it was disastrous, so I'm happy that I'm starting off with better luck in 2013.

Mac and Cheese from Ina Garten. I made this for the preschooler's birthday party and didn't get a chance to taste it while it was still warm. It seemed to heat up okay. I may try this one again.

Crunchy Parmesan Chicken Tenders from Giada de Laurentis. A big hit with my husband. Not so much with the preschooler. They're baked so slightly more healthy, and the breading on the top of the chicken tender was crunchy. My only changes were to use panko bread crumbs and add my own seasonings plus I left out the garlic vinaigrette that Giada devices as the dipping sauce.

Southern Buttermilk Biscuits. I had extra buttermilk from baking the preschooler's birthday cake, so I made the chicken tenders mentioned above and these buttermilk biscuits. I always thought biscuits were labor intensive but was pleased to find out that they're very easy to make. Definitely a keeper. I want to make more and the recipe says you can shape the biscuits and store in the freezer for a month so I may make another batch if I don't think of another use for the rest of the buttermilk.

As far as food resolutions, my big project for the year is trying to get the preschooler to eat a wider variety of foods, particularly vegetables, and for me not to become a short order cook for her. I also want to get the baby off to a good start on solids. I can't believe she's almost 6 months already!

A belated happy 2013!

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Oops, missed last week. It was overly busy, but I assure you we did in fact eat each night. :-)

This week's plans:

• a breakfast night, consisting of pancakes, hash browns, and smoothies.
• golden split pea soup and homemade bread; planning to make my first no-knead bread of the winter. Possibly with cherries and walnuts in it, nom nom.
• tempeh shepherdess' pie: lovely mushrooms and peas and corn and tempeh under a mashed potato crust... mmm...
• lentils and rice and spiced pita crisps. A big spiced mash of caramelized onions and red lentils and basmati rice. So so good and simple. Braised greens on the side.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Happy New Year! Have any eating goals for the year? I'm pretty happy about how I've been integrating whole foods into our diet, thanks to our CSA box. I would like to increase the variety in the kids' diets -- they would prefer that I only feed them cheese and wheat combinations (for the girl) or tortillas with beans and cheese and rice and corn (for the boy). On the positive side, they do ask for a vegetable with each meal if one is lacking, so at least they are getting some good habits. I think I'll be trying out more recipes from Vegan Lunch Box, and trying to get them to eat more soups.

I'm using my Clean Food cookbook this week, and trying to largely choose recipes that I have nearly all the ingredients for already. Frugality! We're going to be keeping a close watch on our expenditures, as part of another goal this year, so my grocery purchases will be remarked upon. :-D

My plans include:

• lentil walnut pate, as a snack food to eat with crackers.
• roasted kabocha squash and creminis, creamy cauliflower soup, baked chickpea pancake with rosemary.
• stuffed squash with rice and chickpeas, tamari-braised mustard greens.
• Goodness soup (sort of a winter vegetable bean soup), and wholegrain pancakes (baked patties of a grain (quinoa, millet, or rice) mixed with some onion and carrot and oil and flour) with applesauce.

Yes, I have many winter squash in my cold garage to eat. The CSA box this week gave me kale, mustard greens, apples, carrots, beets, cauliflower, leeks, and butternut squashes (3!). Tonight I'm using the kale and beet greens in a tofu scramble with yellow rice, and I have many roasted beets already on hand for a salad. The mustard greens, cauliflower, leeks, and the biggest squash are going to be used in the recipes above. That leaves me with many delicious Granny Smith apples, two smaller squash, and plenty of beets and carrots.

I am also going to attempt handmade pasta this week, as I am planning on running a kindergarten cooking class on making noodles on Monday. Looks straightforward enough -- I'm doing the simple flour/egg/water/salt combination, and I'm going to see if it tastes good with the traditional butter and cinnamon-sugar sprinkle (it's what the Italians did before tomato sauce, and is supposed to be very good).

Happy eating!

pork and udon soup recipe and this week's meals

I haven't posted lately but I have been cooking - although nothing worth writing about, mostly old standbys like spaghetti, breakfast for dinner, or turkey tacos, etc. However, this weekend, I did manage to make a new recipe: pork and udon soup.

It's a meal that you need to make in two steps. I did it over two days.

Day one: I roasted the pork. Very easy but it required about 3.5 hours in the oven.
Day two: I chopped the veggies and threw the veggies and pork in broth to simmer for a half hour to make the soup. I also boiled the noodles separately. I didn't have any udon so I used somen and that worked fine.

Overall, I would say that the broth is not as rich or complex as ones made from scratch but the soup was very filling and good for about 40 minutes cooking time - much of that time was made up of leaving the soup to simmer on the stove rather than active time.  The soup seemed much less Japanese as the udon in the recipe would suggest but tasted more like pho especially since the recipe recommends garnishing with bean sprouts, cilantro, and lime. The toddler picked at it since she didn't like the look of the shitake, cabbage, or carrots, but she ate the noodles. The husband gave the soup an "A."

This week's meal plan (although I'm not sure I'll get around to cooking the sinigang):

• spinach and cheese lasagna rolls
• matzoh ball soup, latkes, and smoked salmon and mache salad (I made the soup last week but never got around to making the latkes during Hannukah)
• slow cooker beef and black bean chili
• sinigang na baboy (a pork and tamarind soup with napa cabbage, taro root, green beans, tomatoes, and onions)

Tiffanie: what are you making for holiday dinners?

Tempted though I am to just make desserts and get take out Chinese food, I may just cook a real holiday dinner. What are you doing?

Tiffanie: this week's menu

That white bean escarole soup with orzo was really delicious! I never made the pumpkin soup, so it's on the plan again this week. I'm also snack parent for preschool on Thursday, so I have planning around that, too.

The plans:

• linguine with sauteed chard and Field Roast sausage
• pumpkin soup, homemade bread with cherries and walnuts, wild rice pilaf
• vegetable chili, corn bread, roasted sweet potatoes. This will be for two dinners; a different side vegetable, maybe some cabbage salad or avocados.

It's a CSA box week, so I'll know soon what I'm getting on Wednesday. That'll inform the meal for the rest of the week, since there will be greens in it.

For the preschoolers and parents... I'm thinking I'll be progressive and make a big batch of the pumpkin soup. It is very simple, just onions and a bit of ginger sauteed in olive oil, then you add broth, some cut up potatoes and squash, and a bay leaf, and simmer until soft. Then puree and add soy milk. I can serve this to both the preschoolers and the parents. For the kids, I think I'll also offer bagels and cream cheese.  For the parents... a baguette sliced up, maybe a baked oatmeal? I do love baked oatmeal. I should really make it for home sometimes. 

Tiffanie: this week's menu

After all that rain, the weather is now sunny and cool. I'm craving warm food!

The plan:

• taco night, as usual, with mushrooms. Also going to make Mexican rice, the type with tomatoes. Love that!
• my old favorite, tofu mushroom potato stew with miso gravy. This is a two-meal dish, so one night will be over rice, with roasted brussels sprouts. Another night will be over pasta, with a green salad or sauteed chard.
• mapo tofu, with rice, and onion pancakes, and roasted seaweed. I need to visit Ranch 99 for my onion pancakes and silken tofu...
• pumpkin ginger soup... I have two red kabocha squash on my counter, so this will use one of them. I may even make my first loaf of bread for the winter, perhaps with cherries and walnuts in it. 
• if I can find some escarole, I'd love to make a slow cooker white bean soup, with some orzo and escarole stirred in at the end. Such a fantastic thick soup... perhaps I'll get some Field Roast sausage to fry up alongside.

Today I made a batch of dough for St Lucia buns, from the King Arthur Flour recipe on the web. It's a yellow dough, with lots of milk and butter and eggs. You roll bits of dough into a snake, then shape a compact S. Two golden raisins are tucked into the folds, then brushed with egg white and sprinkled with coarse sugar. The kindergarten class will be making these tomorrow, and I felt I needed a practice run. I'm happy to announce they are good -- slightly sweet, fairly dense, very pretty color. The original recipe uses 1/4 tsp of saffron to add color to the milk, but as I ran out of saffron, I decided to try 1/8 tsp of turmeric. It worked very well; the turmeric is not detectable by scent or taste. Just a lovely yellow color!

Jolene: this week's menu

Last night, I made "Tilapia en Papillote" - meaning something (tilapia) cooked in parchment paper.  It took about 4x as long to cook I think because I used a hybrid - aluminum/parchment paper mix. Turned out pretty good with sliced tomatoes, yellow squash, zuchinni, a sprinkle of salt and Penzeys "Mural of Color" seasoning, and feta cheese. Also, steamed some brussel sprouts as a side.

Made a friend of a friend's recipe of mac n' cheese. It called for a stick of butter, 8 cups of cheese (cheddar and mozzarella), evaporated milk, and elbow pasta. I think the box stuff has got to be healthier than this concoction, but it sure tastes good.

I have makings for vegetable lasagne tonight, which I haven't started... Boca burgers as back-up and some frozen TJs fettucini alfredo meal, too. Not feeling food inspired at the moment. May make "Silician style halibut" later this week. More later...

p.s. Bought the Cuisinart waffle maker at a sale last week, but also have the Caphalon version on its way -- will be returning one.

Jolene: this week's menu

Thanks for the invite, Tiffanie! This is my first official blog. I haven't really been much of a meal planner (lately, or ever?) -- more like a meal forager -- searching the fridge and cabinets to scramble up a last minute dinner. I confess, I'm also a short-order cook for the kids -- which makes for more work (I know, I'd like to phase this out).

Anyhow, this week I am planing on:

• Veggie burgers with garlic aioli
• Creamy polenta with meatless ragu
• Some sort of tofu veggie stir-fry with Penzeys "Sate" & "Trinidad" seasonings w/brown rice topped with (a newly discovered fav) rice seasoning -- Nori Komi Furikake
• Baked sweet potato w/yogurt chipotle topper

Rainy weather may (hopefully) inspire some soups and/or baked goods...we'll see....

p.s Searching for the ideal belgian waffle maker...any recommendations?

Happy cooking!

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Skipped last week due to lots of restaurant eating during a family visit. The CSA season is over, and the winter season doesn't start until next week, so I've got a chance to empty my fridge, yay!

Plans for this week:

• cabbage vegetable soup (lots of white wine!), baguette.
• baja tempeh tacos with fried mushrooms and fixings.
• massur dal and carrot soup, bread, roasted brussels sprouts.
• broccoli tofu stir fry, onion pancakes, rice. Smoothies?
• black eyed peas with collard greens, over noodles, plus leftover Field Roast chipotle sausage.

Extras:

• popcorn balls, with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, cranberries, currants.
• musubi... trying to figure out what to fill it with. My Vegan Lunch Box cookbook says either pickled plum or peanut butter.
• pumpkin cranberry scones
• kale sauteed with red onion
• roasted cauliflower
• quick pickled fennel

I actually planned on Saturday, so I'm actually a bit short on meals for the week, as I've done the cabbage soup and the black eyed peas already. Tonight will be the tacos... the soup is probably a two-nighter, but I need to plan more meals. Maybe a breakfast for dinner, with biscuits and gravy, or pancakes. And rosemary roasted potatoes, of course.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Hooray, Sunday night and I'm writing my week's entry!

I've been drooling over Home Made and Home Made Winter, which have lovely photos and drawings of the British Isles and food. So this week I'm trying out a few recipes in their honor (besides the 3 minute sticky chocolate cake in a mug). Also, using the vegetables from my CSA box!

Planned meals:

• a cauliflower gruyere risotto dish, that is baked with bread crumbs on top. Not vegan, but decided to try it as it seems kid friendly and delicious.
• a sweet potato cabbage parsnip mash (this is my Scottish heritage speaking up), with cornbread and Field Roast sausages on the side.
• a soup of sweet potatoes and chickpeas and leeks, with buttered cashews on top. Can't resist dishes with cashews on top... Also, a nice loaf of rosemary olive bread I picked up today at Whole Foods.

I haven't figured out what desserty things are due. Maybe a chocolate chocolate-chip walnut cookie?

My in-laws are visiting for nearly a week, starting Friday, so we'll be doing a bit of eating out. And I've decreed Thanksgiving to be Chinese food, either take-out or restaurant. Kids don't appreciate my food enough for me to cook for three hours so they can be done in ten minutes. Liberation!

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Late again, writing this up!

Plan for this week:

• polenta with sauteed swiss chard and pumpkin seeds, with some Field Roast sausages. Sliced tomatoes.
• Spaghetti and beanballs, roasted seaweed, cantaloupe.
• lentils and potatoes and spinach and sausage stew, cantaloupe.
• corn chowder with sweet potatoes and kale, bread.
• peanut noodles, baked tofu, onion pancakes, cabbage salad.

Sauerkraut turned out well, onwards to kimchi! Also need to make granola for our breakfast habit...