One Week of Menus

Josie talked to me about planning a week's worth of menus, and having basically the same day each week. The purpose is to not only simplify the planning and preparation of meals, but, perhaps more importantly, to make mealtimes dependable and familiar for the family. My little experiment with yogurt reminded me that we don't like yogurt that much. Maybe someday I'll try the cottage cheese, since we do like cottage cheese. But for now I'm going to stick with some dependable and familiar meals so we can have dinner on the table each night. Referring to my previous posts about "backward menu planning," then, here is this week's plan. And if it works out well, it may be next week's plan, too. And the next week's, and the week after that, and so on. I know Dad would appreciate the continuity. He didn't really care for that yogurt experiment...

Monday

Orange Chicken

Mashed Potatoes

Broccoli, carrots and cauliflower

Homemade bread

Tuesday

Hamburger bean enchiladas

Corn

Spanish Rice

Green salad

Wednesday

Pork chops and rice

with carrots

Green salad

Peach cobbler and ice cream

Thursday

Hamburger/Pasta Goulash

Green beans

Carrot and celery sticks

Apple/orange/banana/pear/strawberry/canned pineapple fruit salad

Friday

Baked fish

Scalloped potatoes

Broccoli

Raspberry muffins

More Backward Menu Planning with Food Storage

I don't know why I call this menu planning, because my 'planning' takes place when Jim calls to say that he's on his way home from work, and I know I have 30 minutes to get dinner on the table. I guess you could call it my own personal little challenge. Also, I've gotten spoiled with this microwave that Matthew gave us, that used to by Mother's and Daddy's, that thaws meat so quickly and efficiently. But, that was last night. Let me back up to the night before.

Monday, January 23

• Hamburger-Bean Enchiladas
• Spanish Rice with Mixed Vegetables

Tuesday, January 24

• Orange Chicken
• Mashed Potatoes
• Green Beans

It's been 12 days since I've been to the grocery store. I still have chicken chicken thighs and two salmon fillets in the freezer, as well as canned chicken and pork. I've used the 2-pound block of cheese sparingly, and we still have about half a pound of it left. I used the last of the eggs on Sunday morning, so no more scrambled eggs for breakfast. But that's okay because I use my powdered eggs to make hot cakes or muffins, and today we had oatmeal. Oh, yeah, I used the last of the (sour) milk for hot cakes yesterday morning. But a couple of days ago I mixed up some powdered milk, and that is just fine with us to have to pour on our oatmeal or granola. We still have oranges and 'cuties' in our fruit basket, along with a couple of apples, and we really need to eat more of those. But even if we didn't have them, we have plenty of grape juice and apricot nectar and bottled peaches and pears and canned applesauce to get us by.

I'm kind of taking pride in not having to go to the store. However, I'm getting ready to make a trip soon and buy some more eggs and bananas and some green veggies and carrots. I'm almost out of raisins. The canned pineapple needs replenishing. And I want to make a trip to the local Mill to get some more whole grain cereals, rolled and cracked.

My goal is to keep using the food storage and minimize trips to the store, and when I do buy stuff, let it be things to keep the food storage rotation moving along.

More Menus

Last night's dinner was baked bbq pork chops--the kind where you put two pork chops in a small casserole dish and find the almost-gone bottle of bbq sauce that's in the fridge and add a bit of water to the bottle and shake it up good to try to get every last bit of bbq sauce out and pour it over the pork chops before putting a lid on the casserole dish and baking it at 350 degrees for an hour or so. I also had half a head of cauliflower and a piece of broccoli left from what I bought last week, and it needed to be used or thrown out, so I tried roasting it in the oven as the pork chops baked, sort of like they did on Our Best Bites, only probably not really, and it turned out okay. And then I cooked some white rice on the stove. And that was dinner. Dinner was kind of rushed last night, because we were anxious to get out the door to go to a movie. Do you know how often we go to movies? Not very. We went and saw We Bought a Zoo, and we both enjoyed it very much.

• Barbecue Pork Chops
• Roasted cauliflower and broccoli
• White rice with butter and salt

For tonight's dinner, I thought peanut butter chicken over spaghetti noodles would be good. But I can never seem to find the recipe that Talena has given me a dozen times, probably because I always think "Oh, that's simple--I'll remember it." Also, knowing that it calls for Italian salad dressing from a bottle, which I don't have on-hand, I decided to experiment and come up with something similar. It turned out okay. In fact, I think it may be a keeper.

Peanut Butter Chicken

In a frying pan heat a teaspoon or two of oil and then add:

A chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces*

Stir and cook it till it's white on all sides. While it's browning (or "whiting), mix together in a small bowl:

2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 to 2 tablespoons vinegar (I used a little balsamic, and a little red wine, but rice vinegar would probably be the best)

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 pinches (probably 1/8 teaspoon) crushed red pepper

When the chicken is white on all sides, but not cooked through, add the sauce to the pan, cover, and simmer on low while you cook the spaghetti noodles according to the package instructions. Serve chicken and sauce over noodles.

*Tonight I took the frozen chicken breast from the freezer and thawed it in the microwave. I actually prefer doing that, because the chicken breast is still partially frozen, and it's easy to cut it with a pair of scissors into bite-size pieces and drop them directly into the hot pan.

Also, in reading one of the books that I checked out of the library, called Stocking Up, I learned a bit about freezing vegetables, and I remembered that last summer we actually preserved some of our green bean harvest by blanching and freezing two or three gallon-size bags of them, and I realized that I need to be using those and not expecting them to stay good in the freezer forever, especially while I buy frozen green beans from Sam's Club to use instead. So tonight I got out some of those green beans from our very own garden and cooked them up to have with our peanut butter chicken and spaghetti. Turned out pretty good.

• Peanut Butter Chicken
• Spaghetti Noodles
• Green Beans
• Brownies with cream cheese frosting and chocolate-mint-M&M's-sprinkles on top

Oh, and you may have noticed that I had a dessert tonight of special mint brownie cupcakes. Aunt Louise made these, posted about it on her blog, and sent me some to taste! I enjoyed them very much.

Incidentally, one of the things I read about in the book Stocking Up is how to make your own cheese and cottage cheese. A lady at the temple was telling me that she has taught classes through the USU extension service about using powdered milk, including how to make your own cottage cheese from powdered milk. Hopefully I'll soon be writing a post about my own homemade cottage cheese, made from powdered milk. But don't hold your breath too long...

Food Storage Meal

So today I looked through our food storage and learned that--guess what?--we already have dehydrated vegetables. We have celery, onions, mixed peppers, carrots, and potato cubes. Plus we have a can of dried apple slices. We have dehydrated re-fried beans. We have a #10 can of instant chocolate pudding mix. And we have a #10 can of butter powder. I think there's even a can of dehydrated mushrooms. Who knew?

Those are all in addition to the bottled peaches, pears, apricot nectar, grape juice, tomatoes, and jams that I knew we had. Oh, did I mention that we have jam? Plum syrup and jam from 2009. Apricot jam from 2006. Strawberry jams from 2007. Blackberry jam from 2009. Apricot jam from 2010. And more blackberry jam from 2011. Then there is the case of strawberry jam and the case of marionberry jam from the cannery from 2011. Anyone need jam?

So I decided to try making a meal from the dehydrated vegetables. I followed the recipe in the Foodstorage in a Nutshell book for rehydrated potatoes potato soup. But partway through I switched it out for scalloped potatoes and ham. Only I don't have ham; I have cans of pork. So that's what we're going to have for dinner tonight. We have approximately 16!!! #10 cans of dehydrated diced potatoes, so now I've learned a way to use them, and I'll let you know if and how we like them.

Tonight's menu:

• Scalloped potatoes with pork
• Canned green beans
• Carrot sticks, broccoli and cauliflower florettes
• Grape juice
• Molasses Ginger Cookies (recipe follows)

3/4 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup molasses

2 tablespoons water

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon powdered egg

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Additional sugar

Cream shortening and sugar, then cream in molasses and water. Add the flour, powdered egg, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and ginger all at once and mix. Drop by rounded teaspoons into a bowl of sugar and roll it around, then place on cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Backward Menu Planning

I am going to tell about the meals we have, after we have them, and let you know whether or not I liked it. I'm experimenting with recipes this week, trying to use the food we have on-hand, rather than buying more. Do you ever have those times where you run out of grocery money and need to use what you already have? Well, this is one of those times. Between our freezer and our pantry and our food storage, we have a lot of food to choose from, so it's not a big deal. I just have to be creative.

Saturday January 14: Jim's birthday dinner request

• Sloppy joes seasoned with Wal-mart brand sloppy joe seasoning packets and tomato sauce
• Macaroni salad
• Potato salad
• Green Salad
• Potato chips
• Apple pie and ice cream

This is not my favorite menu, but Jim likes it, so that's good.

Sunday January 15

• Chicken Rice Casserole made with 3 cups of rice, 6 cups of water, 2 cans of cream of chicken soup, 2 or 3 cups of baby carrots, 8 chicken thighs, and a package of onion soup mix--all baked in the oven at 350 degrees for 3 hours.
• Green Salad
• Peach Cobbler and ice cream

We had company over for dinner on Sunday, and this is what we served. It's always a big hit.

Monday January 16

• Chicken Mexican Soup: I'm not sure what recipe I altered from the Campbell's Soup Recipe website, but it may have been along these lines: Santa Fe Chicken Tortilla Soup or maybe it was this one: Slow-Simmered Chicken Rice Soup. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was neither of those. But I sauteed a large onion and a red bell pepper, then added a can of tomatoes and a can of water, a teaspoon or two of chicken bouillon granules, and half a teaspoon each of cumin and garlic powder, then simmered those for ten minutes before adding a can of chicken and simmering it for another ten minutes. After that I stirred in about a cup and a half of leftover rice from the chicken-rice dinner we had the day before. After we put the soup in our bowls, we sprinkled a little grated cheese on top. It was a little heavy on the chicken, in my opinion, but really good. (I don't generally like cumin, because it smells like stinky tennis shoes, but the recipe called for it so I put in about half of what it called for, and it wasn't bad at all.)
• Country Cornbread from the Lean and Free 2000 Plus book (Thanks, Josie, for telling me the recipe.) This recipe does not call for any sugar, but I assumed that the canned creamed corn would help to sweeten it a bit. Well, we ate it with lots of honey. And maybe it could have used a little more salt, too--but then, I didn't measure the salt.
• Bottled Pears for dessert

Tuesday January 17

• Baked salmon fillets (no seasonings other than the sauteed stuff below)
• Baked potatoes
• Baked acorn squash
• Steamed broccoli
• Sauteed onions, mushrooms, canned tomatoes, garlic powder, dill weed, and lemon juice--served over the top of the salmon. This is a recipe from one of the menu mailers from Leanne Ely, so I'm not going to give the proportions here as that would be breaking copyright laws.
• Experimental Pineapple Ranger Cookies

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon powdered eggs

1 cup oatmeal

1 cup crushed honey bunches of oats with cinnamon crunches

1/2 cup coconut

1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

1 cup chocolate chips

Mix all the ingredients together, creaming shortening and sugars, then adding the others one at a time. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

I started making these Ranger cookies, (with my substitutions, as usual) and when I got in the fridge to find the coconut, I saw the leftover crushed pineapple sitting in there, begging to be used, so I added it. Big mistake! The pineapple turned this chewy cookie into a cake-like cookie. Also, the honey bunches of oats that no one has liked did not help it. Even so, I'm sure we'll eat them. Just not a keeper.

As for the rest of the dinner, the topping for the fish was pretty flavorful on the dill and lemon side, but I liked the texture of the onions, and it was nice to have something to flavor the fish. And I like baked potatoes and squash and broccoli, so the rest of the meal is a keeper.

My Menu for the Week

I'm writing this here partly to share with you all, and partly because I lost my menu and I want to remember what I have planned so I'll do it :)

Tue: Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken

Put the chicken (whatever kind you want, I used chicken breasts, but you could use wings or thighs) into the crock pot. In a bowl mix 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1 cup water. Pour over chicken and cook on low or high for as long as you need to. I did about 7 hours on low. Half an hour before serving, put some rice on to cook and add some pineapples to the crock pot. I served with broccoli and green salad. I was still hungry afterward, but it was delicious! Oh, and I also tried to add some cornstarch when I added the pineapples to thicken the sauce but it didn't work. I think I should have transferred it to another pan and warmed it more but I didn't want to do all that.

Wed: Taco soup and twice baked potatoes

Thur: Hawaiian Haystacks (using the leftover pineapples I saved from Tue)

Fri: Leftovers (and get a roast out to thaw for Sun.)

Sat: Homemade pizza (and make extra dough for rolls tomorrow)

Sun: Roast and mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls

Mon: Chimichanga's using leftover roast

Let me know if you'r interested in any other recipes, and I would love to see your menu's too!