Tiffanie: this week's menu

I'm even more behind than usual, since we went to the Maker Faire on Sunday and I didn't do any meal planning or shopping. Fortunately we've got leftovers, and plenty of produce left over from the CSA box. The bean and escarole soup was delicious, and is now all gone (two dinners, one lunch). We ended up making pizza at home on Saturday, with homemade fresh pesto. I also made a tofu ricotta, which I liked more than the mozzarella the kids ate. Way more flavor and texture.

My plans include:

• millet and spinach polenta, with sun dried tomato pesto. Sauteed fava beans with garlic. Roasted sweet potato fries and summer squash.
• spaghetti with kale and vegan sausage. Kids will manage to get cheese on their pasta. Green salad with radishes. Might add fava beans to the pasta, too. I've got a lot of fava beans.

On Wednesday I'll get another CSA box and work off of that... at the moment I'm not coming up with much. Honestly, those two bullet points are three dinners, which takes me to Thursday-sweet-potato-hash-night. And Friday we're going out to dinner for a date night. So I guess I can be lazy this week. :-)

Today we made blueberry-banana-honey-yogurt popsicles, and I also made thyme-honey-whiskey-iced-tea. We're going to try out both this afternoon (well, the kids don't get the whiskey tea). I should also make more energy balls, to fatten up my kids.

Bernadette: Meal Plan

I haven't been good at making myself meal plan so I finally decided to try out a meal planning service. I found one called Cook Smarts, which had a free email subscription at the time that I joined but which has now switched to a paid subscription service. I continued with it because the recipes are pretty simple and using the meal plan helps get me out of my cooking rut. There's always one vegetarian meal and the dinner is usually seems pretty balanced. Each recipe also lets you know what you can make ahead of time, very handy for when I just have a few minutes to do something useful before one of the kids need me. If I don't like the sound of a dish for a particular day, I just look for another recipe from a different source but at least there are a few meals for the week already planned.


This week, I've made the following:

Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa, Black Beans, and Corn with a side of Roasted Asparagus - This dish was much easier to make than I expected and everyone liked it. The 4 year old helped me assemble the peppers and sprinkle cheese on top and was so excited to pick her pepper. She tried to eat it but mostly ate the cheese. I think she wasn't sure about the quinoa though and really doesn't like beans. She loved the corn though.
Baked Chicken Cordon Bleu and Roasted Broccoli - This one got rave reviews from the husband and we even served it to a dinner guest. I liked it because I got to pound the chicken flat although the recipe involved a little more work than I like - it can be inconvenient to watch 2 kids and handle raw meat at the same time. I didn't think the 4 year old would eat it so I broke my rule about trying to get the 4 year old to eat what we eat and made chicken tenders on the side. Making the chicken tenders was easy since all the ingredients were already there and it just meant not rolling up the chicken with the cheese and prosciutto.

I liked both dishes enough that I'd be happy to make either of them again.

Tomorrow is Honey Lime Salmon with Quinoa and over the weekend we'll probably be using our new grill which means sausages and corn and other veggies.

Tiffanie: this week's menu

This week's plans:

• leftovers of a lentil rice caramelized onion dish, with spiced pita crisps. Steamed artichokes.
• tofu kale scramble with chipotle raspberry sauce, yellow rice.
• broccoli tofu stir fry with rice
• curried split pea soup, green salad
• white bean escarole soup (slow cooker; got a huge head of escarole in the CSA box today). Must make bread to go with this!

My CSA box has spinach, basil, summer squash, and beets, which I have no immediate plans for. The beets I may cook tonight for a salad. The squash usually gets roasted, since the boy loves roasted squash. I might turn the spinach into millet spinach polenta, and use the basil for a sun dried tomato pesto to smother it in...

The energy balls last week were quickly eaten, so I shall make them again. I also made a banana bread, using coconut oil. Devoured! 

I'm snack parent at preschool tomorrow, and it's my last one ever, so I'm trying to do it in style. For the kids: plain yogurt mixed with blueberries, homemade granola, bananas. The day is themed as Mixing Day, so this will give them a chance to mix it all together. For the adults, a many-layered dip of refried beans, guac, salsa, scallions, cheese, and sour cream with chips, and a strawberry cobbler. I'm going to make the granola at home, and assemble the cobbler at home, then bake the cobbler at school. The dip is easy enough to assemble at school. Ugh, just realized the cobbler recipe has almond meal in it, so I'll have to improvise that out. Maybe more oats and flour...

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.

Deadra: lack of a menu, menu, and talk of kitchen chemistry.

This week Adam is going out of town for a while, and then his parents and brother and his family will be in town, so I suspect I'll make a couple large meals then mostly we'll be going out to eat.  So my menu this week is kind of a lack of a menu, geared towards the small people, there will be mac and cheese on the menu.
For me since I am eating impaired lately I have been following what I tend to want, so there is no planning for that, but it is pretty predictable.  I want brothy soups, bibimbap and milk.  Unfortunately it's pretty hot, so brothy soups are not fun to make!  I'll persevere though!
I've been fermenting up a lot lately too.  I'm plowing through a batch of vegan kimchi I made, I had a continuous brew of kefir water and kombucha going and I just started milk kefir again.  I am also soaking some organic soybeans to make a fresh batch of natto.  The warm weather makes everything ferment faster, so I really need to stay on top of it.  I think I'm going to convert my stone fireplace into a fermenting cabinet, it's nice and cool in there, it'll be perfect for fermenting in the summer months.
Although I have picky eaters for the most part (according to my palate) I am lucky that they like ferments!
Happy eating!

Tiffanie: this week's menu

This week I've got house-guests, starting on Wednesday, so we'll be doing more eating-out. I'll have to be extra vigilant about the CSA greens and make sure we eat them quickly.

My plans this week:

• homemade pizza and green salad. I'm having a lazy Sunday afternoon at home with the kids, so I think we'll make some pizza dough and create individual pizzas.
• lentil soup, bread, salad. It's going to be sort of hot for soup this week, but I have all the ingredients on hand and it's handy to have soup around when there are guests to feed.
• spaghetti with garlic, olives, tomatoes, and arugula. Borrowing from Jamie Oliver, here, for a simple and tasty pasta dinner. I like strong pasta sauces like this one. I have a bunch of English peas this week, too, so I might try another of his recipes and cook them in white wine with scallions and spinach.
• I want to try the recipe below, for no-bake energy balls. Seems like a good way to fatten up my skinny little children. Also, they can help make them.

No-bake energy balls:
1 cup raw oats
1 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup chia seeds, ground or raw (you can also use flax instead)
1/4 chocolate chips (optional)
1 tsp vanilla

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, refrigerate for 30 minutes, roll into bite-sized balls. Makes about 20 1-inch balls that can be refrigerated in an airtight container for 1 week. Enjoy!

Tiffanie: this week's menu (and last weeks)

Hmm, spring break seems to have interrupted my menu posting. I thought I'd done this already! So, last week we ate... leek and potato soup, green salads, sweet potato hash with kale and spring onions and oyster mushrooms, spicy cauliflower chickpea curry soup, roasted butternut squash with rice chickpea pilaf... can't remember what else.

This week's plans:

• leftover leek and potato soup, with chickpea flour rosemary flatbread, green salad and steamed artichokes.
• tempeh salad in a wrap. Need something else here, maybe a fruit salad.
• Creole Hoppin' Jean, with corn chips and sauteed chard.
• sweet potato hash for me on husband-works-late-night
• we're going out to eat one night (daughter has late class)
• some broccoli grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids.

I'm doing well against the CSA onslaught, though I still have a black radish and a daikon radish, plus random beets and turnips and celery roots rolling about. I'll try and slip them into things.

Deadra: Reinventing the Wheel.

I've started making a two week menu, as I discussed a while ago.  I really enjoy perusing my "Food, Glorious Food, Want to Try" pin board on my pintrest account and choosing meals from there for my menu. However, while many of them are amazing, sometimes I need to reflect on what my family loves.  Granted many of the things I make rather harken to what tastes we love, but I need to make things that I KNOW we love.  Today I made soft meatballs with noodles and red sauce.  (tomato sauce)  It was so yummy, everyone stuffed themselves silly and left the table satiated.  There was no begging to try a bite, no Mama getting exasperated from the lack of tasting.  It was yummy and a hit!

My meatball recipe is pretty basic:
1 pound organic pastured beef
1/2 pound organic pastured pork
1/2 cup bread crumbs (or so)
4 ice cubes of liver (shhh this is a secret!)
4 eggs
a healthy shake shake shake shake of Worcestershire sauce
3 or 4 or 5 grated cloves of garlic
salt and pepper
1/2 a cup or so of Parmesan cheese (grated)
oil or fat of your choice for the pan.

preheat oven to 350 degrees

mix the meats and let your cubes of liver defrost, mix
add everything else and mix carefully, don't beat the meat too much
using a small disher scoop the balls onto a greased tray, leaving space between them, careful to not pack the meat in too tightly
bake 20 or so minutes until they are cooked through (I had to cut one in half to check)
 remove from oven, let cool slightly and enjoy!

These are very delicate, not really ones to be tossed in a sauce, rather ones to sit atop your noodles and gently caresses with sauce.  They are tender and delicious!
PS you can't taste the liver!

I served them beside the red sauce.

Trixie's favourite Red Sauce.

1 24 ounce jar of organic crushed tomatoes
1/3ish cup of water (this is what I swished out of the jar)
3 or 4 or 5 grated garlic cloves
dry Italian seasoning, basil, parsley all to taste (about 2 teaspoons each)
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon of sugar
 let all simmer together
add 1 or 2 tablespoons of butter, once melted in and everything comes back up to temperature, remove from heat and add a generous squirt of good olive oil.

serve over yummy noodles! (and meatballs!)

Over all the whole dinner took me about 1/2 of an hour to make.

I need to remember this, one does not need to reinvent the wheel to feed one's family food they'll love!

Tiffanie: this week's menu

I'm falling behind on my CSA boxes already! Time to focus on using up the greens this week... fortunately I got a big bag of beets this week, so I've cooked them and they're ready to be added to the salads.

My plans:

• taco night, with mushrooms and maple-mustard tempeh. Big green salad.
• I'm going out to dinner with a friend on Monday night, so it's gardenburgers for the kids and a sweet potato hash with greens for the husband.
• bok choy and chickpea saute with toasted cashews. Rice. Green salad. Possibly hot dogs for the kids, since they don't eat much of this meal beyond the cashews.
• pineapple fried rice
• Sweet potato hash with greens and eggs for myself (late work night for husband), and pasta for the kids.

I'm soaking more sprouts now, so I'll bake some bread mid-week to use for sprout sandwiches. I'll also make a big batch of rosemary white bean soup for a friend, in the slow cooker.

My CSA box gave me lots of lemons, so it may be time for another lemon coconut bundt cake...

Tiffanie: this week's menu

First week of the month, so it's full of school meetings. Easy meals!

My plans:

• taco night, with fried mushrooms and baja style tempeh. 
• veggie curry, using the brown curry in a box. I'll put onions, tofu, carrots, potatoes, celery root, and celery in it. Cabbage salad on the side, with sesame seeds and an asian-inspired dressing.
• lal dal and rice. It's a nice red lentil curry. Sauteed chard.
• potato leek soup, homemade bread, green salad.
• sweet potato hash with greens for nights I'm eating solo (just one this week).
• a tabouli salad to supplement lunches

I'm already lagging a bit behind my CSA box, so this week I'm trying to stick to using up all the greens. I can store the celery roots indefinitely, but the greens only last a week or so. If I stick to this plan, I'll use up everything but the arugula... I might have to make up a pesto with it and freeze it, or add it the salads. 

Deadra: menu

I think this will be less of a menu and more of a EUREKA! post.

I enjoy making menus but it's always been tedious to follow them.  Even though I am married to a Google geek I tend to be a paper and pen girl.  I enjoy the act of writing, but it is wasteful, and the geeky husband isn't so likely to read what I've written on a scrap of paper.  So he's been hounding me forever to use Google Calendar consistently and I'm pretty good, I keep up with my on goings.  But I find it lacking in using it to keep track of my calendar, the kids's calendars, my menus and ongoing tasks.  I lamented to Adam (the geeky husband) that I needed something that combined all of this easily, and sadly Google doesn't have this product.  (yet?)  So Adam's instructed me to do this and that and it's never worked or it just didn't feel seamless to me it was clunky.  Until now.  (you knew that was coming!)  

So what I've been doing has been to create 3 other calendars, menu- dinner, menu- lunch and menu- breakfast, then I hover my cursor under the date and click, creating an event, then I choose the calendar (which has been colour coded, breakfast, lunch, dinner) write as the event the 'what' and if I need to add notes or a link I click on 'edit event'.  So now on my calendar I can see my menus and Adam can decide if he's coming home for dinner.  Plus I love how I don't have to hunt for the link!

So you can see I have dinners planned all next week, but only lunch and breakfast planned for Monday.  (dinner is purple, lunch is blue and breakfast is pink).  Also a peek at my week.  heh. 

So I am sure that this isn't new to many of you, but it's handy for me!

Candice: Two Weeks Out?

Dea has started meal planning for two week periods, which intrigued me. So I tried to put together a two-week menu this weekend, keeping in mind what we already have in the house and what is likely to come in from our every-other-week CSA. This week we are having:

Monday; Tri-tip, mashed potatoes, artichokes, spinach salad

Tuesday: Nacho Night! (This takes many forms, but basically means ground meat of some kind prepped with taco seasoning and guac, salsa, corn, shredded cheese, etc on a bed of tortilla chips or an actual tortilla. Almost healthy!)

Wednesday; We'll be at a comic book signing so dinner will be out somewhere

Thursday; Butternut squash soup with beans, greens and sausage

Friday; Balsamic roasted veggies (fennel, carrots, potatoes) with pork chops and quinoa

Saturday: Leftovers, and I'm making Warm German Potato Salad for an Easter party

Sunday; Who the hell knows

Next week:

Monday; Mama is out for meetings, so dinner will be something frozen or leftovers

Tuesday; Nacho Night! They keep eating it!

Wednesday; Chicken soup with lots of carrots

Thursday; Breakfast for dinner (hash browns, eggs, bacon)

Friday; The boy and I will be in Florida, Daddy and Little Miss will be on their own

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. 

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Oi, I have not kept up this month! I shall do better! We had guests last week, so I made a batch of slow cooker posole verde with the last of my Rancho Gordo hominy. It was so yummy and gone in one sitting. Then we ordered in pizza. Then I left for the weekend for Monterey (thanks, child-raising partner!).

This week we didn't have many dinners with the husband (working late), so we had/are having:

• leftover lal dal
• spaghetti and beanballs
• rosemary white bean soup
• sweet potato hash with kale and carrots and fried eggs (a solo dinner for me)
• creole hoppin' jean

My CSA has started up the spring season! If you are looking for a CSA, I do like High Ground Organics.

My veggie box included fennel, which I want to quick pickle over the weekend. It's a decent way of eating fennel, better than everything else I've tried.

I have a lot of spouts seeds (around 12 oz), so I am going to start up making sprouts for sandwiches. It's a good excuse to make yummy no-knead bread. And to eat cream cheese. :-D

How is spring changing your diet? 

Tiffanie: this week's menu

Hmm... seem to have missed posting last week. I blame the return of school. We ate something.

This week's plans include:

• quinoa and bean croquettes, with more quinoa and mushroom gravy. Green salad.
• African peanut soup with mustard greens. I shall sub in tofu for the chicken.
• Lentils and basmati rice and caramelized onions with spiced pita crisps. Sauteed chard.
• Biscuits and gravy, hash browns, fruit smoothies.
• a butternut ginger soup, homemade bread.
• roasted butternut squash, with a pilaf of chickpeas and cranberries and nuts.
• a gluten free muesli I made once and liked...
• trying a strawberry cobbler recipe... I have a bunch of frozen strawberries that defrosted unexpectedly and refroze, so they're good for baked things.

I am also snack parent on a field trip day, so I'm brainstorming ideas. I'm thinking of making a wholesome oaty fruity bar. What else? Baby carrots? I'm trying to stay away from sugary snacks, so no yogurt tubes. Could do cheese, though they get plenty of cheese in their diets already... Then there are the parents. I could just double up everything for them...