Tiffanie: this week's menu

Cool weather is back! I'm relieved. :-) The house guests leave on Tuesday morning, so it's back to regular menu planning.

My plans include:

• a black bean chili with lots of tomatoes, peppers, and corn. It's very colorful and includes salsa. I used to make this weekly about a decade ago, so it's time to bring it back. Cornbread and collard greens to complete it.
• A spinach tomato curry, with rice and a green salad.
• A curried split pea soup, with coconut jasmine rice, pita bread, and steamed artichokes.
• sweet potato hash with greens and mushrooms, for my eat-alone night.
• still haven't made those energy balls, so that's still planned, plus a strawberry breakfast cobbler and a lemon coconut bundt cake.

I cook something vegan and gluten-free for a friend each week, and I think this week I'll make him a spicy chana masala (chickpea curry), and a warm lentil salad, in the French style. 

I'm also going to start a vegan kimchi fermenting, since we love kimchi. I love it way more than sauerkraut, which I still find odd, though tasty. I tasted the pickled fennel and lemons I made a while back, they taste very strongly of vinegar, but are quite edible. I might rinse them before adding them to things, so they don't overpower the food. The lemon flavor is good.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Spring is here and I'm meal planning on the weekends again!

My plans:

• this delicious looking Mushroom Stout Pie with Potato Biscuit. *drool*
• I am beginning a weekly chili -- it's time the children learn to appreciate chili and fixings. This week's will be the Cook's Illustrated Best Vegetarian Chili. It's a fun recipe, lots of dried chilis and secret ingredients like walnuts and shiitake and bulgur. 
• on my solo dinner night, sweet potato hash, with a bit of carrot and kale and red onion, and fried eggs on top. Tried this last week, and it was so so good.
• something quick and easy, based on what I have from my CSA box. Maybe a tofu kale scramble, or a breakfast-for-dinner... I kind of wish I could sneak in a pureed soup, but this might not be the week for it.

I just put together a quick fennel pickle, with Meyer lemons sliced in, and black pepper. I'm worried I made it too salty, but I can always dilute it, I suppose. I might pickle up some beets and carrots, too... our visit to Happy Girl Kitchen has brought pickles back into my life. 

Bernadette: back to the kitchen

With more than a week of illnesses by various members of the family, including a case of pneumonia, as well as a move earlier this week, we've been eating out - or ordering in - a lot. Too much. So I'm looking forward to some very simple to make, home cooked meals.

Today, lunch was a bit random with PB&J sandwiches for the toddler and leftover pasta for me, but I served a little mango before we dug into our respective entrees. This particular mango was one of the smaller, yellow champagne mangoes which are sweeter than the big green and red ones. The toddler has loved mangoes ever since she could eat finger food but for some reason I haven't bought them for awhile. Growing up, we always just sliced the mangoes into slivers, but years back, I saw Martha Stewart serve up mangoes in a much prettier way.

The toddler refers to mangos served up this way as "puzzles."

The presentation delighted the toddler and she's getting the knack of taking her spoon to scoop off the cube of her choice. I still have to help her a bit though since she can get a little fastidious at meal times.

I also finally figured out where the movers stowed the slow cooker and made beef and black bean chili. I used the precut beef stew meat from the butcher and plopped it into the slow cooker along with the black beans, red onion, garlic, chili powder, salt, pepper, and 2 cups of water. Eight hours later, the toddler refused to touch it so she had pasta noodles and the husband and I had delicious chili. The recipe recommends topping the chili with diced red onion and sour cream but the husband topped his with pasta (weird because I would think pasta would go on the bottom) and I topped mine with sliced avocado and shredded colby jack. I like this recipe a lot because it's 10 minutes of prep for a big, hearty meal packed with a lot of rich flavor.

My food photography skills need a bit of work.

We're going to eat leftovers til I figure out the next batch of dinners. I'll re-form the leftovers from our turkey taco night earlier this week into turkey taco salad and eat more chili. As for next week, I've only decided on making linguini with avocado and arugula pesto and will figure out the rest later.