Week of 5/14- 5/20 Menu

Here's the plan for this week. A couple days are going to be really busy around dinner time, so a few of these meals are super fast and easy.

Monday 5/14
Romaine salad with carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, corn, olives, black beans, and ranch

Tues 5/15
Hawaiian Haystacks (we're going to try this one more time....we ended up eating at McDonald's last week instead of making this)

Wed 5/16
Baked Potatoes

Thurs 5/17
Hot Dogs with french fries and carrot sticks

Friday 5/18
Pizza night-pepperoni for one, and the second pizza will be decided later

Saturday 5/19
Freezer meal from my freezer meal group (we'll shop the freezer Thursday night)

Sunday 5/20
15 Bean Soup and biscuits

Foil packed grilled potatoes

For Mother's Day I requested grilled steaks, grilled potatoes, and green beans. Again, I didn't think about taking a picture until I was 2/3 finished with my steak, had eaten my green beans, and one of three foil packed potatoes was eaten. I took a picture of my steak anyway, but Tom saw the picture and kindly told me how unappetizing it was. So imagine a deliciously seasoned, wonderfully grilled T-bone steak. Okay, now on to potatoes. I love eating grilled potatoes, and they're super easy. Well, that's easy for me to say because I just do the prep work...Tom does the grilling. Here's the recipe:

Foil Packet Grilled Potatoes (for 1 packet)
1 medium red potato, cubed
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
dried minced onion
salt
fresh cracked pepper
water

Tear two 15-18 inch lengths of aluminum foil and lay one to top of the other. Pile on your potatoes, carrots, garlic, a generous sprinkling of dried onion, then season with salt and pepper. Bring the long sides together and fold the ends together to crimp them down. Do the same with one short end. Before closing the other short end, pour about 1-2 Tbsp water inside. Then crimp the other short side. Grill over medium heat for about 20 minutes turning once (I think...remember, I don't do the grilling!).

Okay, I'm about 90% positive about that cooking time. This was the first time we added carrots, and our kids loved it. Even our 7-month-old love it!

Here's another variation for sauteed green beans:

Parmesan Green Beans
1 1/2 cups washed, cut green beans
1 Tbsp butter
salt
fresh cracked pepper
2 Tbsp parmesan cheese

Heat your sautee pan over medium heat then add all the ingredients. Cook for a little longer than 5 minutes, or until the parmesan cheese is toasty and golden, and the beans are a bright shade of green.

Rhubarb Streusel Muffins

Like I said in the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie post, our rhubarb is ready for harvest. To take advantage of this wonderful harvest time, I tried out a new recipe: Rhubarb Streusel Muffins. They were super yummy. The rhubarb gets all soft and adds this wonderful moistness to the muffins. My kids loved them.

I think that by the time I remembered to take a picture, this was the last muffin. Here's the recipe:

Rhubarb Streusel Muffins

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1/2 inch chunks

Streusel:
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 Tbs melted butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Beat in egg. Beat in flour and sour cream alternately until blended. Mix in vanilla. Stir in rhubarb chunks. Grease muffin tins and fill with batter.

For topping, mix togehter sugar, cinnamon and oats. Stir in melted butter. Sprinkle atop each muffin.

Bake for 20-22 minutes or until center just bounces back when touched.

Chicken Bacon Ranch Pizza

Friday night is pizza night at our house. This has been a tradition for our family for a while now...at least a year or more. I make a couple pizzas then we plop in front of the TV and watch AFV or Wipeout or a family movie we've gotten from Netflix. It's something fun we all look forward to, and my oldest likes to help make the pizza, too. For the longest time I made a crust recipe I found in the Tightwad Gazette, but about a month ago, I ran out of yeast, and our grocery store no longer sold the 1 pound vacuum sealed bags. I had to buy one of those little 4 oz jars, and it was so expensive! I decided to try out other recipes that used less yeast. My go-to recipe from Tightwad Gazette used 2 Tbsp of yeast for 2 pizzas, and my current recipe uses 2 1/4 tsp for 2 pizzas. So much better.

The texture between the doughs is quite different. The quick 2 Tbsp recipe is much more bready while the 2 1/4 tsp recipe is chewy and comparable to carry-out pizza. They're both very yummy. When making this first recipe, I would start mixing dough about 1 hour before I wanted to start eating. When making the new recipe, I need to have the dough mixed and rising about 2 1/2 hours before I want to be eating. Okay. Enough. Here are the dough recipes:

Quick Pizza Dough (yields 2 pizzas)
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 Tbsp yeast
2 tsp sugar
4 cups flour
1 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
2 Tbsp olive oil
~1 cup lukewarm water

Combine water, yeast, and sugar and let sit for 5-10 minutes or until the yeast is foamy. Mix together flour, salt, seasonings, and olive oil in a medium bowl. Add yeast mixture. Slowly mix in enough water to form a soft, smooth dough. Divide into 2 equal pieces, place on greased pizza pans, cover, and let rise for about 10 minutes, or as long as it takes to get all your pizza toppings together. Roll out your dough and top with your favorite sauce and toppings. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

Now this is my new recipe from Annie's Eats:

Technical difficulties. For an odd reason, I can't copy and paste the recipe. Well, just click on the Annie's Eats link and it will take you there. If you're familiar with her blog at all, you'll know that she has some really tasty recipes and knows what she's talking about. She gives some good tips like weighing the flour instead of just measuring with a cup. Do it. And brushing the crust with olive oil. Do it. I know I should preheat my pizza stone, but I don't. You should. Do it.

Now as the title suggests, here is how I do my Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza (yum!)

Ingredients:
Ranch dressing
chicken, cubed and cooked (I like to season it with garlic salt and pepper)
2 strips bacon, cooked and chopped
1 green onion, slices
about 2/3 of a tomato, chopped
mozzarella cheese

Layer it all on to your heart's content. I do sauce then cheese, chicken, bacon, onions, tomatoes, then a little more cheese. Yum.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

To be completely honest,  not everything I make is from scratch. Like most people, I pull some convenience food out of the freezer for dinner occasionally. Last summer "the meat guy" sold us a box of chicken and a box of steak. I was organizing our chest freezer and saw the box of chicken cordon bleu, and I was so excited to see that we had two left.

So using a little convenience food with some homemade sides makes for a really easy, delicious meal. On the side we had lemon pepper rice and green beans.

The lemon pepper rice just takes a little bit more effort than cooking plain white rice, but is so worth the little extra time.

Lemon Pepper Rice
1 cup rice
2 1/4 cup water
2 tsp chicken bouillon
lemon zest from 1 lemon
juice from 1/2 lemon
fresh cracked pepper

Combine rice, water, and bouillon. Bring to a light boil, turn heat down to low, cover, and cook for 20 minutes. Add lemon zest, juice, pepper, stir, and serve.

For the green beans, I just washed some fresh green beans from my bountiful basket, broke off the stems, and then broke them into about 2 or 3 pieces. I sauteed them in butter for 5-10 minutes with salt and pepper, then sprinkled with lemon zest and a little lemon juice. Yum!

Jicama Corn Salad

We received 2 jicama in our bountiful basket. I'd never had jicama before, so I went on a  recipe hunt on pinterest. I found this recipe. I didn't follow it exactly because I didn't want to make a huge salad.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 4 cups frozen corn kernels, thawed
• 2 pounds jicama, peeled and diced
• 4 medium mangos - peeled, seeded, and diced
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2 cup lime juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. In a large serving bowl, combine the corn kernels, jicama, mango, red onion and cilantro. Pour the lime juice over, and season with salt and pepper. Toss until well blended.

I  also used green onion instead of red and left out the cilantro. Strangely enough, at first taste I thought jicama tasted like fresh green beans. Weird. 

Baby Food-Carrots

I'm a fan of making your own baby food. I do have a stash of jarred food in my storage room for convenience, but when I can, I like to make my own baby food for my kiddos. When Dallin was a baby, I did it mostly from scratch. I'd slice carrots and put them in my steaming basket. Or sweet potatoes. I even made applesauce a couple times (tip: don't make apple sauce unless you have an over abundance of apples or unless you just really want to try it. It's cheaper just to buy it, and it saves time and energy.) With Ruby and Pieter, I've figured out that using canned veggies is a great way to quickly make baby food. I found canned carrots for $.25 a can a walmart a while back and totally stocked up. So for lunch today, Pieter had carrots.

The nice thing about making your own baby food is that you can control what goes in it and do portion control well. Carrots are good mixed with apples or potatoes, or any other flavor you think could go well. To make it go even farther, I'll make baby cereal then mix in the solid food.

P.S. It took me about 1 minute to grab the can, the immersion blender, and puree it up.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Our rhubarb is so happy. When it's big, it's happy. When it's picked, it's happy. So right now, it's a super happy plant.

We got strawberries in our bountiful basket, so the first thing that came to Tom and my minds was Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Two of them, actually, because our next door neighbor loves this pie. It's become a tradition for us to take over a pie.

Dallin has been begging to help cut some rhubarb, so while I pulled out the stalks, he cut off the leaves. If you have your own rhubarb plant, always pull out the stalks. Don't cut them off. And always discard all the leaves because they are poisonous.

I found a new recipe this year from the food network, and it was really good. Like, really good. Here it is!

Ingredients

Crust:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus additional flour as needed, up to 1/4 cup
• 1/2 cup cake flour (recommended: Soft As Silk)
• 3 teaspoons sifted powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening (recommended: Crisco)
• 1/4 cup salted butter
• Pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vinegar
• 1/4 cup ice cold water

Filling:

• 2 1/2 cups chopped red rhubarb, fresh
• 2 1/2 cups de-stemmed, washed and cut strawberries (in larger pieces)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar (1 1/4 cups for high altitude)
• 2 tablespoons minute tapioca
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons butter, cubed small
• 1 egg white beaten with 1 teaspoon water
• Large granule sugar

Crust Preparation:

Directions

Using 2 pastry blenders, blend the flours, sugar, shortening, butter and salt. Whisk the egg, vinegar and water in a 2-cup measure and pour over the dry ingredients incorporating all the liquid without overworking the dough. Toss the additional flour over the ball of dough and chill if possible. Divide the dough into 2 disks. Roll out 1 piece of dough to make a bottom crust. Place into a pie dish. Put dish in refrigerator to chill.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Filling Preparation:

Mix the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, tapioca, flour, zest and juice of lemon, dash of cinnamon, and vanilla. Mix well in a large bowl and pour out into chilled crust. Dot the top of the filling with the butter. Brush edges of pie crust with egg white wash. Roll out the other piece of dough and place over filling. Crimp to seal edges. Brush with egg white wash and garnish with large granule sugar. Collar with foil and bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes. Decrease temperature to 375 degrees F and bake for an additional 45 to 50 minutes, or until the filling starts bubbling. Higher altitude will take 450 degrees F and 400 degrees F respectively. Also, you can use a pie bird for extra decor. Let cool before serving.

Now, I didn't use the crust recipe because I'm perfectly happy with mine. It's my mom's. I'll have to check with her before I put the recipe up here. The trick with pastry is to not over work it. When I roll it out, I use a silicone mat on the bottom and a sheet of waxed paper on top.

The filling ingredients.

Now all mixed together. I wish you could smell it. The cinnamon, lemon, strawberries, and rhubarb meld so well.

Don't forget the butter.

Pieter found some rhubarb on the floor...

...and liked it...raw!

Oh, one more thing. Put a sheet of foil on the rack beneath your pies to catch any filling that overflows. I have a bit of a mess to clean up today!

Romaine Salad

Sorry no picture, but it is just a salad. I just wanted to share a couple tips about storing lettuce that I've learned through trail and error. Now, I've read that when you buy lettuce, you don't wash it until you're going to use it, and keep it in the crisper. In a perfect world, I'll always be able to keep my lettuce in the crisper, but the reality is that I have a lot of veggies in my fridge and a head of romaine takes up about half of my crisper drawer. So it stays on the shelf. To keep my lettuce fresh while sitting on the refrigerator shelf, I give it a quick rinse, wrap it in 1 paper towel, put it in an open food/bread bag and make sure it's near the front since the back of my fridge gets really cold and freezes food sometimes. Sometimes I get lazy and just put it in a bag, and then I have really limp lettuce. To remedy that, I do what I should have done in the first place, then wait a day or two. Then it's all good.

Week of 5/7-5/13 Menu

This afternoon I sat down with my menu binder in my lap and my mouse in my hand and made up the menu for the week. I used ideas from pinterest, recipes that will include a variety of produce from our bountiful basket, as well as some stuff from the freezer. Here it is!

Mon. 5/7
romaine salad with tomatoes, broccoli, cucumber, green onion, cheese, ham, hard boiled eggs, carrots, and croutons. Topped with ranch.

Dessert is rhuberry strawbarb pie. Or strawberry rhubarb pie. Whichever. Two of them....one for our next door neighbor.

Tues. 5/8
BLT's with jicama corn salad

Wed. 5/9
chicken cordon bleu (not homemade, but from our freezer)
lemon rice
sauteed green beans

Thurs. 5/10
Hawaiian Haystacks
sauteed green beans

Fri. 5/11
Pizza night!
chicken bacon ranch
pepperoni

Sat. 5/12
freezer meal

Sun. 5/13
grilled steaks (thanks in advance, honey!)
foil pack grilled red potatoes
sauteed green beans

Hopefully we stick to the menu and all goes well!

Chicken in a Pot

A gal I visit for church just had her 4th child...3rd pregnancy and first boy (yay!), so I planned to take her dinner Sunday night. Since church is from 12:30-3:30 I knew I wanted to make a crock-pot meal, so I decided on chicken in a pot. I wa already assembling 8 freezer meals of this dish for a freezer meal group I'm a part of, so buying a few more drumsticks was no big deal. Especially whem they were only 99 cents/pound.

As a side note, the price limit for this freezer meal group was $60 for all 8 meals, and I only spent $30! Woot!


And now you will see why you can make 8 of these meals (plus 2 more for Sunday dinner, so 10 meals) for $30. Drumsticks, carrots, celery, and onions are about the cheapest meats and vegetables you can buy with maybe the exception of cabbage. And when you put them together in the crock-pot, the most amazing dish results.

Okay, since this is the first food post, I didn't plan to take any pictures. Crock-pot meals don't look that pretty anyway, so that's okay. Here is the recipe (and it's from the manual that came with my crock-pot):

Chicken in a Pot
1 to 2 carrots, sliced
1 to 2 onions, sliced
1 to 2 celery stalks, sliced
2 to 3 pound whole broiler/fryer chicken (I just put in enough drumsticks to feed our fam...just make sure you use drumsticks or thighs so they don't dry out like breasts will)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coarse black pepper
1/2 cup water, chicken broth, or white wine (I usually use water and throw in 1/2 tsp bouillon granules)
1/2 to 1 tsp basil

Put vegetables in bottom of stoneware. Add whole chicken (or drumsticks). Top with salt, pepper, liquid. Sprinkle basil on top. Cover and cook on LOW 8 to 10 hours or HIGH 3 1/2 to 5 hours (using 1 cup liquid). Remove chicken and vegetables with spatuala.

Okay, so here are some tips. I've cooked it both on high and low. High gives you really moist chicken, but your onions are still a little firm. Low will kind of caramelize your veggies (yum!), but dry out your chicken just a little, but not enough that you wouldn't eat 2 drumsticks fast. As you can see, the recipe isn't very exact. In fact, last night I used 4 carrots, 1/2 onion, and 1 1/2 celery stalks.

When it's all done, I take out the chicken, put it on a plate then put all the veggies and juice in a large bowl. Then you just pour it all on some mashed taters. BUT you can also strain out the veggies and make a really delicious gravy with the juice. Tom is the gravy maker in our house, but I've watched him do it many times. Here is what he does:

Chicken Gravy

Pour the juice into a pan. Add chicken bouillon and garlic powder. Make a slurry of water and cornstarch (about 1/4 cup water, and a couple spoons of cornstarch) and pour it in the pan. Stir it around, and let it boil until it's a thickened gravy. Yum.

Now I did mention mashed potatoes, and last night I made a really yummy double batch since I was sending dinner over to my friend's house.

Garlic Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes

7 medium to small russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 to 3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup margarine or butter
1/4 cup milk
salt
fresh ground pepper

Put your potatoes in a pot and cover with water so the water is about an inch over the potatoes. Boil until the potatoes are tender. Strain and return to pot. Pour in milk, butter, and cream cheese and mash with a potato masher. Season with salt and fresh ground pepper to your liking.

Here's a few tips on making mashed potatoes. Use either a potato masher or a ricer. Don't use a hand mixer. The hand mixer does funny stuff to the starches in the potatoes and you end up with these gluey potatoes. If you just mash them you get a nice creamy, sticky potatoes with small, hardly noticeable potato pieces. I also just estimated on all those measurements because I don't use recipes for mashed potatoes. Sometimes I'll just do salt, milk, and butter, or sour cream, milk, and butter, or I'll add some parmesan. Or I'll change my mind completely and make potato soup without draining any liquid.

Last but not least, I made Lion House Rolls yesterday. They're yummy yummy rolls. Unfortunately I can never get mine to turn out like the restaurants (light and flakey), but they still tasted yummy. Oh, and the reason I made rolls was because I was home from church with a fevered little girl. So I had the afternoon to make them. Here is the recipe from ksl.com:

Lion House Rolls

Ingredients:

• 2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)
• 2/3 cup nonfat dry milk (instant)
• 2 Tb. dry yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup shortening (butter or margarine)
• 1 egg
• 5-5 1/2 cups flour, all purpose (bread flour can be used if you have it on hand)

Method:

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, combine the water and the milk powder and stir so the milk dissolves. Add the yeast to tthis mixture then the sugar, salt, shortening, egg and 2 cups of the flour. Mix on low speed of mixer until ingredients are wet, then turn to medium speed and mix for 2 minutes. Stop the mixer and add 2 more cups of flour then mix on low speed until the ingredients are wet, then turn mixer on medium speed and mix for 2 minutes. The dough will be getting stiff and you may need to remove the bowl from the mixer and mix in the remaining flour by hand. Add approximately 1/2 cup of flour and mix again. (This can be done by hand or mixer). The dough should be soft, not overly sticky, and not stiff. (It is not necessary to use the entire amount of flour). Scrape the dough off the sides of the bowl and pour approximately on tablespoon of vegetable oil all around the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough over in the bowl so it is covered with the oil. (This helps prevent the dough from drying out.) Cover with plastic and allow to rise in a warm place until double in size. Sprinkle a cutting board or counter with flour and put the dough on the flour. It is now ready to roll out and cut into desired shape and size of rolls. Place on greased (or parchment lined) baking pans. Let rise in a warm place until the rolls are double in size (approx. 1-1 1/2 hours). Bake in a 375-degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until they are browned to your satisfaction. Brush with melted butter while hout. Yields 2 to 2 1/2 dozen rolls.

Here's one last tip: you can never over-knead a yeast bread!

Enjoy!

weekly meal planner pages

In the past I've gone through phases of good meal planning and non-existent meal planning. I've been pretty good about doing a weekly meal planner each week for a couple months now. I've found that I am more sane and can think positively about dinner time because I already know what I'm going to make and that I have all the ingredients for it. The meals I plan include family favorites that we often have ingredients for on hand, recipes I've run across on pinterest, and recipes I've searched for to include items we've received in our bountiful basket.

To plan my menu I use this free printable meal planner from seven thirty three.

 I just print out a handful, 3-hole punch them and put them in a binder. I like it because there is space to write everything for the day as well as a grocery list. I just wish it started on Monday instead of Sunday, but that's just my personal preference.