Monday Musings: 01.21.2013 Edition January 21, 2013
Posted by Toy Lady in Big Lug, Food, meal plan monday, Musings, Stupor Kitty.Tags: menu plan monday
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I don’t like to brag, but I like to think I can put together a pretty mean breakfast sandwich. My secret? It’s simple – I just don’t limit myself to breakfast-y things. After all, isn’t that what Breakfast For Dinner is for?
As much as I’m a fan of a quick smoothie in the morning, I have found that, if I have a heartier breakfast before I leave for work, that keeps me satisfied for much longer – I’m not scrounging around the office by 10:00 looking for something – anything! – to snack on.
Since we had a bit of garden kale left last week, I’ve been enjoying that in the mornings – one morning, I sauteed up a bit of the green stuff (with some garlic, of course!) and added an egg- then I put a slice of gouda cheese on my green eggs (ha!) and turned the whole thing onto some leftover baguette. Breakfast!
My new favorite, though, is a grilled chicken sandwich! I spread mayo on a couple of slices of bread, then lay some leftover roasted chicken breast on top. Put the sandwich together and brush the outside of each slice with some good olive oil, then grill.
That, together with a little more sauteed kale – a fan-freaking-tastic way to start the day!
Speaking of breakfast – remember our little experiment with the cat last week?
How Peeps didn’t set the coffee maker to turn on, so she didn’t know it was breakfast time? And we got to sleep in until 5:30?
Well, we did that last Sunday morning, then we did it again Monday (Peeps’s day off), and it worked like a charm.
Then, this weekend, we tried it again.
Apparently, her new motto is:
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on you again.
Fool me three times, I don’t think so – FEED ME NOW!!!
It’s a good thing I cut her nails last weekend. . .
The Jar enjoyed a nice bone this weekend – somehow he knows when it’s the weekend, so, starting around mid-morning on Saturday, every time I go to the basement for something, when I come back up, he’s waiting at the kitchen door with this expectant look on his face.
You know, just in case I’d gone in the freezer and into the Bone Stash.
Finally, Sunday afternoon, while we were in the kitchen working on the week’s dinners, Jar got his bone.
Then we played the in-and-out game for a while. But really, how can you resist that face? And the waggy tail? And the cute little Gizmo ear?
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. Winter is back this week, that’s for sure! We’re looking forward to some cold-weather, heart-warming meals this week – slow-cooked, full of flavor, and, best of all, mostly already cooked!
Monday - One thing we haven’t had in too long is our white chili – and how fortunate that I’ve got plenty of dried beans from the bean guy at the market on hand! I do need to get used to the fact that fresh dried beans soak up less liquid and cook faster – not that any of that is a bad thing!
Tuesday - I was listening to the America’s Test Kitchen podcast the other day, and they were talking about Cuban beans and rice. I thought to myself “boy, that sounds good” – and so, the first opportunity that came up to suggest a meatless meal, here it is! Though it isn’t truly meatless, having a bit of bacon in, but I don’t think bacon counts as “meat” anyway – it’s more “seasoning.” Yeah, that’s it.
Wednesday - I actually printed this recipe for Belgian beef, beer & onion stew back in 2007 – and we finally made it for the first time last winter. BOY is it good! However, apparently America’s Test Kitchen doesn’t make recipes from old episodes available for free anymore, though they do allow for a 2-week “free trial.” We’ll serve this stew with either noodles or barley – depends on our mood, I guess. I’ll bet some nice green beans would be good, too.
Thursday - The only evening this week we’re actually cooking, I’m going to try Cooking Light’s Meyer lemon chicken piccata – I think it’ll be a nice, bright change after a week of braised, cold-weather dishes, don’t you? Probably serve with rice and some sort of vegetable.
Friday - We do love our pizza night! We picked up some hard salami (on sale) , so guess what we’re all having on our pizza this week! Well, except the dog – he’ll stick with his Kong toy.
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
Monday Musings: 01 14 2013 Edition January 14, 2013
Posted by Toy Lady in Cooking, Eating Down the Fridge, meal plan monday, random stuff, Stupor Kitty.Tags: menu plan monday, that darn cat
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Another market week, another pile of produce! (Pay no attention to those mini cheesecakes – I have no idea how they got there!)
You know, I started out with a very short list – carrots, celery, snow peas, leeks. And I even forgot the leeks!
But one thing I’ve learned at the Public Market is to jump on a good deal when you see it, because it won’t be there next time. Which is why I bought 3 avocados (for a buck), two freakishly huge sweet potatoes (a buck again) and even a bag of Meyer lemons (yet another dollar).
So. . . since I’ve never actually used Meyer lemons, I’ll be looking for cool, exciting things to do with them this week!
Last week we roasted a chicken, which was, as usual, very good. One of the best things about roast chicken, though, is chicken salad sandwiches, am I right?
However, to make chicken salad, you need mayonise, and I haven’t actually bought mayonnaise in, well, a long time. But as much as I love my homemade mayo (I scoff at Hellman’s now!),I do have to plan ahead a bit- so the other day, I pulled an egg out of the fridge so it would be room-temperature that afternoon. And, just in case I forgot, I asked Peeps to remind me.
We communicate like this you see: I wrote “for mayo” on the egg and set it on top of the coffee canister. He came home from work, saw my notated egg, and probably shook his head. Maybe he even rolled his eyes.
Then, when I got home, he said “did you seriously WRITE on an EGG?” thus reminding me to make mayonnaise.
See how that worked out?
Remember all that snow we had last week? What was it, about 3 feet of the stuff?
Yeah, that’s all gone now. This weekend, the temperatures were, I kid you not, near 70. In January. In Rochester.
The perfect time to get out to my garden! See, kale is what they call a “hardy” green – it can withstand a little cold and snow. Or even, apparently, a LOT of cold and snow!
(For what it’s worth, just a couple of days ago, all those plants were buried – I couldn’t even see where they were, let alone pick anything!)
So I went out and picked my kale and stuffed it into a 5-gallon bucket. And piled it onto the bucket.
I guess I probably should have taken care of this last fall, but in the fall, there’s so much other stuff to take care of, and the idea of leaving something in the garden to come back to in January, well, how could I not?
I know we’ve been working on emptying the freezer – and really, we are!
However, our local butcher shop had whole rib loins on sale for, well, a really, really good price – with complimentary cutting. Since we’ve been eating mostly out of the freezer, we’ve been squirreling away part of the grocery money for large-ish meat purchases. And hey, look, 18 very nice inch-thick ribeye steaks in the freezer for. . . just under $3 each.
Well, okay, 16 in the freezer and two for dinner this weekend. Hey, it’s 70 degrees out – who wouldn’t fire up the grill?
Um yeah, that was a lot of kale, wasn’t it? I almost want to think I need more bowls, but I’d need more counter, too, and that’s not going to happen any time soon!
I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon cleaning kale and, well, that was about it.
Then Peeps helped me blanch it and pack it up into little packets to go in the freezer.
What started out as 5-gallons PLUS of fresh kale?
8 eight-ounce packages. Plus enough for a batch of soup this week, and about 6 ounces that wouldn’t fit in the bag.
Maybe I’ll try a kale omelet for breakfast this week.
So the cat has this Pavlovian thing going on – Peeps has the coffeemaker set to turn on and brew coffee about 20 minutes before we get up, or, for us, that would be 3:40 in the morning.
And when our alarm goes off, he gets up and feeds the cat, then pours coffee.
The cat has learned, of course, that when the coffee maker starts, she’s going to get be fed soon.
Every morning starts like this:
The coffeemaker starts brewing at 3:40. The cat says, “OH I AM SO STARVING” and she comes upstairs to tell Peeps.
The DOG, meanwhile, who DOESN’T get fed right away, doesn’t want to hear it, and, when the cat comes upstairs with her Starving Kitty Act, he’ll move himself out to the hallway, effectively chasing her back downstairs.
Where she continues her piteous carrying on until Jarly will get BACK up, come into the bedroom, walk over to Peeps, and BARK! in his face to wake him up, whereupon Peeps gets up, goes downstairs, and feeds the cat — all before the alarm even goes off.
This weekend, Peeps had the bright idea to NOT set the timer on the coffeemaker. If the coffee didn’t start at 3:40, maybe the cat wouldn’t come upstairs at 3:41, and maybe the dog wouldn’t BARK him out of bed at 3:45.
Heh. We slept until 5:30!
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. The tell us that January will, in fact, be back this week, so we’ve planned our meals accordingly. Additionally, we’re always trying to cook and eat as much from the freezer (and the garden!) as we can, and, of course, keep as it healthy and budget-friendly as possible.
Monday - We absolutely love this slow-roasted pork shoulder – and it makes a TON, which means leftovers for lunches, for something next week, and maybe even a bit in the freezer! We’ve got plenty of carrots and some parsnips that need to be used, so, rather than roast the carrots as directed, I’m going to do these roasted root vegetables - getting a head start on my Meyer lemon usage!
Tuesday - I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it or not, but we’ve got plenty of kale at the moment. It seemed silly to just freeze it all without using some of it, so I thought a nice kale soup would be perfect. I’ll add some chick peas, I think, and maybe I’ll even get home early enough to do some naan.
Wednesday - While I was digging chicken stock makings out of the freezer last weekend, I found a lonely container of Peeps’s Cincinnati chili. We figured it would be very nice as the winter weather starts coming back.
Thursday - Quite a while ago, I received in a Cuisine at Home e-newsletter this recipe for Chinese chicken & corn soup. We made it once and really enjoyed it, and, since we had the better part of a leftover roasted chicken handy, as well as everything else (except snow peas, which I picked up at the market), we’re looking forward to revisiting that soup this week.
Friday - Gosh,pizza night makes life easier! It’s the end of the week, and the last thing we want to do is THINK about what we’re going to do for dinner! Peeps’s pizza rivals anything we can easily get in this area, which makes it even better.
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
Monday Musings: 10.15.2012 Edition October 15, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Big Lug, canning, meal plan monday, Musings, random stuff, Stupor Kitty.Tags: monday meal plan
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Well, the garden is pretty much tucked in for the fall. It’s kind of a sad day, isn’t it? They were forecasting a “killing frost” for Friday night, which, apparently didn’t happen. Or maybe it did – it’s hard to tell. Peeps had frost on the top of his car Saturday morning, but not on the windshield. And the late row of green beans seems to be unscathed, yet of two baby “volunteer” tomato plants I found, one was brown and shriveled (frosted for sure!) and the other, just inches away from it, was at least partially sheltered by ridiculous kale leaves, was as good as new. (Until I pulled it up.)
Our one row of garlic is in, the kale will be good until . . . whenever it gets used, and the komatsuna should be okay at least as long.
So we were out shopping this weekend, and Peeps pointed out that we didn’t have anything sweet in the house.
Now, while that is probably a good thing in the long run, we’ve grown to enjoy something dessert-like in the evenings, without actually committing to, say, baking anything.
We came across this new candy – it’s called Unreal. The idea is that it’s better for you than “regular” candy in that it’s got more real ingredients and NONE of the objectionable ingredients – no corn syrup, no artificial colors or flavors, no hydrogenated oils, and no GMOs.
Basically, it’s hippy candy. But it’s really, really good hippy candy. If you see it available, do give it a try. Really. You’ll thank me.
So we’ve been working on Puppy-Kitty Tolerance – and boy, is that fun!
Basically, after I get back from our morning walk, the dog gets fed, and the cat gets a little one-on-one treat time with me.
Then, when the dog’s done with his breakfast, he comes out to the kitchen and lies down next to me while the cat skitters away.
However, the magic of chicken, pork and hot dogs will lure her back, even to within a tongue’s length of the Big Scary Dog that she goes out of her way to annoy.
The two of them take turns having treats, and I’ve been getting them closer and closer together. I even got Peeps to play along!
Besides the whole treat thing, the two of them are becoming ever-so-slightly more tolerant of each other – the Kitty will come out and prance around the the living room and dining room, and the dog will pretty much ignore her as long as she doesn’t start whining to be fed.
It’s something. . .
Poor Jar – every time I set up his pills, I marvel at just how much “stuff” he’s on!
Mostly it’s because of his joints – he’s on MSM supplements (from the horse aisle) and glucosamine supplements twice a day, plus the meloxicam (his miracle drug) once, and antacids with it because it tends to cause nausea.
And he’s still on the Prozac, too – we’ve actually increased it a bit, so now he gets the big pill in the morning and the smaller on in the evening.
I feel like a pharmacist sometimes. . .
Oh, exciting news!
For the very first time EVER I canned a batch of soup! I made one of my absolute favorites – the Spanish kale and bean soup. I made a couple of adjustments to the original recipe (and may make a couple more), but I researched the heck out of canning soup, beans, bean soup, and soups with meat, and I have had 8 pints of lovely, lovely soup.
I can hardly wait until I try a batch of chili! Or even while chili!
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. Gosh, doesn’t it seem like there’s always so much going on? I started to say “in the fall,” but then I realized that there’s a lot going on in the summer, too. And the spring. So I guess the only chance we get to really relax is in the winter, and even that’s not without its share of busy-ness, either.
Monday - You know about Groupon, right? Well, Peeps and I try to get out periodically on Saturdays for lunch – it’s cheaper, and going out for dinner gets late. However, I have one that’s expiring very soon, and we just weren’t able to get there Saturday for lunch, they are closed Sundays, so Monday we’re going out to a Korean place – and I’m very much looking forward to it!
Tuesday - We dug some veal chops out of the freezer – Peeps picked them up on sale a while back, so, rather than let them get lost in there, we’ll go ahead and grill them while we can. We have some sort of fries in the freezer and some fresh broccoli from the market.
Wednesday - You’ll recall that I picked up a couple of nice squashes last week – time for soup! I found this Roasted Butternut Squash Chowder that sounds quite nice – Peeps will start the squash roasting when he gets home from work, so the soup will be freshly made at dinnertime.
Thursday - Part of our never-ending project of emptying the freezer is to cook and eat the large hunks of meat that have made their way to the bottom of the freezer – this week it’s roasted chicken with potatoes and the beets I pulled from the garden. And for bonus points, we’re going to take the the leftover chicken and mole it up for dinner over the weekend.
Friday - Friday pizza night - the tomatoes are done, though I did manage to make a micro-batch of roasted tomato sauce that went into the freezer – just enough for two meals for the two of us. We may use that, or I may save it for the depths of winter. I guess we’ll see what kind of mood we’re in, huh?
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
Monday Musings: 03.26.2012 March 26, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Big Lug, meal plan monday, random stuff, Stupor Kitty.comments closed
This was a market weekend for me, and, though I’ve been doing so well lately at not going overboard, this week, well, I couldn’t help myself!
I mean – freshly pressed cider (from the end of last year’s apples, I’m sure, but still!), gorgeous leeks (for $2 a bunch!), kale (watch for that to appear on next week’s menu) and escarole, not to mention ground lamb (I never see that!), and, best of all, the first of the ramps!
Sometimes, I just wish someone would smack me upside the head and be done with it!
Do you have any idea how long I’ve been buying fresh greens, washing them, sticking them in big old Tupperware bowls, and filling the refrigerator with them?
Yes, I know, they keep better unwashed, BUT they’re more likely to get used if they’re already cleaned, so there’s that.
But do you know how much easier it is to just wash the buggers and stuff them in a zip-top bag? And, most importantly, how much less refrigerator space they use?
*smack*
I’ve still got the Christmas tree in the window- not decorated of course (never mind about the wreath), plus an amaryllis, Christmas cactus (yes, it’s still kind of blooming) and a couple of coffee-bean plants.
Poor kitty – when she wants to sun herself in the garden window, she has to squeeeeze between the greenery.
Though I think she kind of likes playing “jungle kitty,” don’t you?
Jar’s been running a little low on bones lately.
I find that we do best when I buy a BIG bag of them at the market, then wrap them individually in plastic wrap.
The individual bones then get stashed in a bag in the freezer. Wrapping them separately makes it SO much easier to just pull one out – and I give them to him frozen (unwrapped first, of course).
Jarly doesn’t mind a little frost on his treat.
Of course, when I bring the bones home, they’re unfrozen.
You know what that means, right?
I walk into the house with a bag full of fresh, raw meat and bones, and Mr. Nosy McSniffypants won’t leave me alone until he gets one!
Honestly, that dog follows me from the front door through the house into the kitchen – with his nose INSIDE the bag that’s got the bones in it (which makes for more than a little awkwardness when it comes to trying to walk!).
While Jar was outside enjoying his bone, I took the opportunity to fill his Friday Night Kongs – I stir together a cup of kibble with a can of Mighty Dog, then stuff the mixture into the two Kongs, cover them, and shove them in the freezer. (Freezing the Kong toy slows him down a bit.)
While I was doing that, the Kitty came out and made such a PEST of herself that I finally just let her lick the can.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no, that wasn’t chopped up actual dogs in there.
Before I forget, I wanted to mention that I’d heard from Jarly’s swim guy – he’s been down with an injury for a few months now, and he’s finally gotten the green light to back to swimming dogs! We’re so happy for him – and for all his charges!
He’s starting small right now – hopefully we’ll be able to get Jar back in the water before too long!
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. After an utterly fantastic week, weather-wise anyway, I guess we’re back to March. Not that I’m complaining – March is a million times better than February!
Monday - Although the weather has cooled off, now that we’ve fired up the grill, we’re, well, fired up about it. When I saw the ground lamb at the market this weekend, I knew this would be a good time for some knock-off gyros – we may stand in front of the grill shivering, but so be it. I can’t let the fresh ground meat languish in the fridge any longer.
Tuesday - Tuesday actually looks to be slightly warmer than Monday, so we’re going to grill pork chops. Not sure yet how, or what we’ll do with them, but there’ll be pork chops, anyway. Maybe something sweet potato-y.
Wednesday - Since I just couldn’t resist a 75-cent head of escarole, and I still have some “fresh” (grown last fall, anyway) dried kidney beans, I decided I wanted to do some sort of “beans and greens” – after all, we have greens, and we have beans, so. . . I found this Crunchy & Creamy Beans & Greens – obviously, I’ll be using kidney beans instead of white beans, and escarole instead of chard, but other than those substitutions (you know, the, um, beans and the greens) it should be pretty much the same as written.
Thursday - We had leftover chicken knocking around in the freezer, plus loads of corn from last season to use up. When I got this recipe for Chinese Chicken & Corn Soup in my email the other day, well, I was All Over It!
Friday - And that brings us back to pizza night - last week’s pie with the leftover bacony chicken and barbecue sauce was nothing short of fantastic. It’s going to be a tough act to follow!
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
Monday Musings: 02.20.2012 February 20, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Big Lug, random stuff, Shopping With Peeps, Stupor Kitty.Tags: monday menu plan
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Wow, did we have a rough weekend.
We’ve had to have some work done in the bathroom – specifically, we had the tub surround replaced. Although the shower has been usable these past couple of weeks since the original was damaged, we certainly didn’t want to push our luck.
So, when the guy showed up bright and early Saturday morning to do the work, it was actually two guys, which is good.
But, as I feared, there was more damage that we’d initially thought – some of it probably pre-dating my owning the house. So, for 9 solid hours, poor Jarly had to tolerate two strangers, not just in the house, but wandering around up and down the stairs, and in and out of the house.
He was not a happy camper.
So the least I could do, after they left, was give him a nice peanut butter jar to lick out. (If you look closely, you can see that his tongue reaches almost – but not quite – to the bottom of the jar!)
This definitely calls for an installment of Shopping With Peeps!
You know, the petals have barely even fallen off the Valentine’s Day roses, and everyone’s already hauling out the Easter decorations.
We were out shopping, and Peeps pointed out the most laugh-out-loud silly thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a plush Darth Vader - wearing bunny ears!
Is that not one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen?
We were doing our weekly grocery shopping, and we picked up several little cans of canned dog food on sale.
The chatty checkout lady asked if we fed our dog a whole can of Mighty Dog at once, or if we divided it between two meals.
I looked at Peeps, and he looked at me, and we sort of laughed.
Then we explained that a can of Mighty Dog is, for our dog, a mere snack. You see, I take a can of Mighty Dog, combine it with a cup or so of Jar’s regular kibble, and use the mixture to stuff his Kongs. A frozen Kong will give us about 45 minutes of quiet (and not so quiet) slurping for pizza night.
We have a winner for the Personal Silicone Steamers from last week – we received nine replies, and comment number three was selected by the Random Number Generator.
I’ve been in contact with our regular reader and commenter, Judy, and she’s expecting a package.
Thanks to all who participated – it’s good to know people are reading!
I know, enough with the dog already, right?
BUT.
Long-time readers are aware of the enmity that exists between the kitty and the dog.
In short, she hates him.
And he exploits that. It’s fun for him to charge at her and get her worked up.
Of course, she tries to get him in trouble – she’ll growl at him for no reason until he does, which invariably gets him chased out of the room.
Well, we are working very hard to see the two of them peacefully co-exist. You see, I’ve realized that the two of them are playing a game – the dog isn’t going to eat the cat, and the cat’s not terrified of the dog.
The two of them are more than happy to co-exist, though, if there are treats involved, aren’t they?
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. It’s finally starting to look and feel like winter out there – snow, cold, frozen sidewalks, and, of course, winter food.
We love winter food. This week, we’ll be trying some new things and revisiting some old favorites.
Monday - I found a recipe for halibut with mustard-nut crust that looked intriguing – you may recall the pan-roasted chicken with hazelnuts that we so love – this is the same chef. I’ll trust him.
Tuesday - We’ve got obedience class Tuesdays for the time being, so Tuesday is soup night. We found this chickpea stew in the recent Bon Appetit magazine which, while not soup, is close enough.
Wednesday - The Boy has changed his schedule, so he’s home on Wednesdays. We try to have a dinner he’ll enjoy (he’s not so much into soup or meatless meals), and this week, we’re going to go with our favorite weeknight pot roast – I’ve got potatoes and a bunch of baby carrots that will be perfect.
Thursday - Peeps spent the better part of Sunday making our old favorite sugo - we’ve got dinner for Thursday and three in the freezer.
Friday - And again, Friday is Kong-and-pizza night. Peeps’s mom comes over on Fridays, too, and she enjoys pizza and TV. It’s also a good opportunity to work with The Jar on not scaring people. He needs all the help he can get with that!
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
