Current Menu options

Pork Schnitzel with baked zucchini
Stuffed turkey breast (Assuming I can find one not already marinated & beaten flat) and broccoli
Rosemary Beef Roast & mashed veg (crock pot)
Braciole and polenta
Pork filled Acorn Squash *new
Monte Cristo & salad
Pizza (TBD by leftovers)
Roasted chicken & vegetables
Swiss Chicken (crock pot) and glazed carrots & parsnips
Soup (TBD by leftovers) & salad.

I was going to do the schnizel last night but had a bad case of the chills & went to bed with a mug of chicken broth as soon as DH came home. He & the boys ate many Tyson Chicken Patties & leftover meatloaf.

Me & a pan of hot oil.

It's never been a good idea, but it is slowly becoming more common as I expand my repetoir. Generally speaking, in this house, if the recipe calls for more than a tablespoon or so of oil in the pan, the recipe does not get made. This is not for reasons of health but for reasons of fear - fear of burns, fear of fire, fear of smoke alarms, fear of the greasy spattered mess to clean. But today I once again ventured into the fry arena. This time it was Rachel Ray's chicken tenders. i won, but it was a struggle. The problem again was equipment. To bread the chicken you need a plate of flour, a plate with eggs and a plate of breadcrumbs. 3 plates. and since the breading takes a bit of time for me I need a cooling rack to let them rest while I get 6 of them ready for the skillet. I lack contiguous counter space of suffient size. (say that 3 times fast) So here is my problem. There is no way to be food safe & bread chicken at the same time. You don't want to be spreading raw chicken all over your counters. (not to mention the counters have plates & things on them already) So I used very tiny plates and very very slowly breaded 6 pieces of chicken. They fried up well & then went into the oven to finish cooking. I'm not good with oil due to lack of experience so it got a little to hot & a couple pieces got browner than needed but nothing burned.

The boys wouldn't eat it. It's breaded fried chicken. The one thing in the whole of the vast world of food that the little demons can be counted on to eat and they wouldn't eat it. It is very very frustrating. I don't know that they actually disliked it so much as they just were not in the mood to eat. DS2 had 2 bites of chicken and a few more of spinach salad. DS1 ended up eating maybe 4 bites of chicken & 2 of salad. It had been 3 hours since they last ate, so they should have been hungry, but all they really wanted to do was goof off. Thats been the thing lately, goof off & not eat. I think we give them plenty of time. Really 30 minutes to eat 8 bites of chicken & some spinach salad is plenty. We gave them a 10 minute warning (at the end of the 30 minutes), which was when DS1 actually ate something, and when the time was up the food was gone. Suddenly drama about being SO HUNGRY!!! Oh but not for that chicken. I'm so tired of this.

I wonder if they will eat it on the pizza tomorrow?

Bad week so far

Monday - DH calls & says he'll be home after 7p. Boys have taquitos & spinach salad for dinner. I have a danish.

Tuesday - Bunco night & I am unable to make the planned pizza because we did not have the chicken last night for me to have leftovers. Boys have mac & cheese with peas. I ate at Bunco later

Wednesday - DH calls & says he will be home around 8p. Boys have oatmeal & apples for dinner. I have a bowl of cereal.

Tomorrow I'll hit Safeway for lunchmeat (the Food Lion selection was unappealing & I don't trust the prices) and plan for either the Tandoori Chicken (if DH deigns to come home for dinner) or the Monte Cristo sandwiches.

turkey cutlets

I made Rachel Ray's turkey cutlets for dinner last night. They were very good. I had to make some modifications to method & ingredient but I like the result. My biggest problem with RR meals is the number of pots & pans used. I have a 10 year old bottom of the line stove. 2 large burners, 2 small burners. I have little storage so I am not stocked with a wide variety of stuff & assorted sizes. I don't own a pasta pot but regularly make spaghetti in what would be called 'too little water' by damn near everyone. But I have no place for a big pasta pot, so oversized soup pan it is! I have one large skillet, one small skillet and a cast iron pan of the standard size you think of when you think of a cast iron pan. I have 2 small pots and 2 soup sized pots and the oversized soup pot. I also have a dutch oven & assorted silicone bakeware. RR's equipment list can be a challenge for me, especially if you need to have more than 2 burners going. For this meal I needed a pasta pot, a large skillet and a medium skillet. Assuming I owned all these things, I could not actually have all of them on the stove at once (at least not at an effective heat because one of them would be on a small burner). I ended up with my large pot & using my large skillet twice, which meant the turkey got a little cool. I'm also lacking in counter space which made the 'dust the pasta' part of the cooking go a bit slowly & I ended up dusting a fair amount of the kitchen floor in the process. Having made the meal I am wondering how she cooked the pasta effectively in the medium skillet as I used a large one & still needed to do it in 2 batches. The sauce needed thickening with a roux I think. Also I am glad I stuck with one lemon instead of using the 2 recommended as the first words out of DH's mouth were "Thats lemony!" I will be making the cutlets again. Not with the pasta though, or not with the pasta in that way. I like pasta crisped up in a skillet but the little boys do not & wouldn't eat it. However I think just regular cooked pasta served with the thicker sauce on it and the turkey would go over well.

so far so good

This week we have had

Pesto Tortellini w/raddichio salad
Ham Scones with spinach salad
Potato & Leek soup Baked Potato Soup
Beef Ragou w/grilled winter veggies

Thursday night we had something random & Friday we had take out. The boys ate dinner every night but Saturday, when we had the ragu. They don't really care for steak, ground beef is ok but not whole bits of steak. Plus daddy had given them each a coupe mugs of hot chocolate within an hour or so of dinner. everything turned out really well, except the roasted veggies last night. The pan was on too low of a rack & should have had more oil. tonight I am going to make the Turkey cutlets one, which is new for me. We'll see how that goes.

Menu Jan 8 to Jan 21

I sat down at lunchtime & assembled a menu.

Pesto Tortellini w/raddichio salad
Fake Tandoori chicken w/grilled squash & couscous
Potato & Leek soup
Fish Cakes w/herb roasted veggies
Turkey Cutlets & Ravioli w/garlic sauteed broccoli
Ham Scones with spinach salad
Pizza
Beef Ragou w/grilled winter veggies
Chicken Tenders Parmesan w/pasta
Monte Cristo sandwich with salad

That is 10 meals, most of which have sides and one new meal (the turkey cutlets). 5 of the meals are from Rachel Ray as I had suspected might happen.

I will also be attempting banana bread and pesto bread sticks.

no menu

ok, so its the 5th and I have no menu yet. This week we ate homemade pizza (with a spinach basil crust that was really good if I do say so myself), spinach ravioli with spinach pesto, then lobster bisque from Safeway with spinach salad (Sensing a theme?), then we had chinese take out (no spinach) and tonight we had meatloaf with microwaved Green Giant mixed veggies (including spinach, what can I say, it's the only thing my kids will eat).

So far I suck at my resolutions. But i have all weekend to get my act together for the next 2 weeks & I plan to do so. I am already looking at things to do with broccoli.

new toys

We had a gift exchange with some online friends & I got some new toys. I got a really nice quality set of silicone spatulas & a silicone bundt pan. I've been looking all over for a silicone bundt pan. I saw one months ago at BB&B but didn't get it & have not seen one since. I have a few recipes that call for one but have no storage space for a metal one, especially since it won't see a lot of use. Silicone can be folded & squished into small spaces & I like that in a bake pan. I'm slowly replacing all my stuff with silicone - except my stone bread loaf pan and my special 'as seen on tv' meat loaf pan. I'm really loving the silicone stuff. I still need to replace my regular cake pans & get one of those 12 muffin muffin pans & I should be set. Then I need to convince myself it is ok to throw out the old metal pans.....