Menu Plan Monday, May 2nd

I have to say I am loving life since I have so many wonderful dinner options waiting for me in the freezer each day! The photo above shows all of the items I had prepped in the freezer when I finished my most recent Freezer Cooking Day. I've been slowly working through the older items as well as trying the new recipes my friend and I put together from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. I'm a visual person, so I find it helpful to look at this photo to remind myself what our options are from week to week.

I even put together a last minute menu for a Book Club meeting yesterday!

The Plan for this week:

• Monday: Sesame Soy Sirloin (from the freezer) with salad and brown rice pilaf
• Tuesday: Soy Glazed Salmon with Sweet Potato Black Bean Salsa
• Wednesday: Whole wheat pasta with Trader Joe's Turkey meatballs and sauce, steamed veggies, and bread
• Thursday: Mustard Oregano Pork Chops (from the freezer), salt and pepper potatoes, steamed broccoli
• Friday: Pizza Night (Carry-out)
• Saturday: Leftovers
• Sunday: Out to Dinner (Have an empowering Mother's Day!)
• Monday: Cashew Chicken Stir Fry (from the freezer) with brown rice

 Find more meal planning inspiration at orgjunkie.com!

Book Club Menu Plan

A few of my friends and I got together last night to discuss The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain, a fascinating depiction of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage from the perspective of his first wife. (We all liked the book.)

I was in charge of snacks, and I was pleased to discover (at the last minute) that I had enough resources in the house to put together the entire meal with very little effort.

The Menu:
Deviled Eggs-The kids dyed these hard-boiled eggs for Easter and decorated them to look like monsters. Some of the whites were a little colorful, but the eggs were tasty. I just mixed the yolks with some mayonnaise and sweet relish, and used my mini scoop to fill the egg halves back up.

Cheese Bites-I pulled out my last 2 dozen cheese bites from the freezer and baked them up. Amazing how butter, cheese, flour, and a little cayenne pepper can be so tasty!

Veggies and hummus-I stopped by the store for a cucumber and a red bell pepper, sliced them up, and served them with carrots and hummus I had on hand.

Grapes-washed and served in my beautiful glass hobnail bowl from my late mother-in-law.

Lemon Lavender Butter Cookies-again the freezer came to the rescue with these delicious, scented cookies!

Homemade Skillet Cornbread

Homemade Skillet Cornbread with 15-Bean Soup

I've been recyling my non-stick cookware and replacing it with some vintage cast iron over the past year. (I still have 2 pots and 1 pan that I need to replace!) I've enjoyed learning to cook with cast iron, including this recipe for cornbread that I adapted from a package of Arrowhead Mills corn meal. I used to make conrbread in a glass pie plate, but it never turned out as well as it does in the cast iron pan!

The down side of this recipe? It's dish-intensive, and requires two mixing bowls to prepare.

Ingredients:

for the pan:

2 Tablespoons shortening

for a large mixing bowl:

1 cup white flour (or 1/2 cup white, 1/2 cup whole wheat)

1 cup corn meal

1 T baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

for a smaller mixing bowl:

2 eggs

1 cup milk (or buttermilk, or any dairy product that you need to use up)

2 T butter, melted or very soft

4 T honey (or less--I like my cornbread sweet!)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place 2 tablespoons shortening in 8 inch cast iron pan and place in oven during preheating time.

2. Meanwhile, combine flours, baking powder and salt in large mixing bowl, mixing well.

3. Combine eggs, milk, butter, and honey in small mixing bowl

4. When oven is preheated, pour liquid mixture into the flour mixture and stir gently until *barely* combined. Remove hot pan from oven (use mitts!) and carefully pour the batter into the pan. It will sizzle when it comes into contact with the melted shortening, resulting in a crunchy, delicious crust. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Makes 8 large slices.

Some like to add chiles, cheese, or jalapenos to cornbread, but for now I am sticking to this simple version so that my kids will continue to eat it.

Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Bag: An Experiment

I wanted to try growing potatoes this year, and one popular way to do this is to grow them in a growing bag. When I mentioned my plans to a friend of mine, she told me that she grew potatoes in heavy duty garbage bags last year, which is much cheaper, especially if you have a husband who saves clean yet used garbage bags.

Why grow potatoes in a bag rather than the ground, you ask? Well, for one, apparently potatoes don't like to get too wet (which can happen in my area, we have heavy clay soil). In additiona, wen you are growing potatoes and you want to increase your potato yield, you add soil to cover the lower branches of the plant every few weeks as the plant grows, and this is quite easy to do when you have sides of a bag to raise up as the season progresses. My friend tells me that the lower branches will then turn into roots and grow more potatoes!

Thirdly, potatoes can be easily damaged by a shovel when you go to dig them up. If you grow them in a bag, you can either dump the bag into a wheelbarrow to uncover the potatoes, or you can simply rip the bag open to get to your harvest.

In order to see if all of this fun stuff will actually happen, I went ahead and planted some potato seedlings this week.

Materials needed:

Large heavy duty black trash bag--if it has a few small holes already, even better
Potting soil--good for vegetables
Potato seedlings (don't use eating potatoes, instead use seed potatoes) I picked Red Potatoes

1. Place 8-10 inches of soil in the bottom of the trash bag. Poke plenty of small holes in the bottom and sides of the bag for drainage--I used the point of my heavy duty scissors. I made lots of holes. Scrunch or roll the sides of the bag down/out of the way.

2. Plant the potato seedlings approximately 4-6 inches under the soil line. Water well, and place in a sunny spot.

I hope this works for me! I'll report periodically througout the summer.

Menu Plan Monday April 25th, 2011

Spring Break is over and we are back to the routine... time to come up with a list of quick, easy meals that can be made while my kids are running all over the neighborhood in this beautiful weather! We all need to burn off the chocolate and Lemon Curd Mousse Cake.

• Monday: Mini Hamburgers (from the freezer) with Salt and Pepper Potatoes, steamed broccoli
• Tuesday: Creamy Enchilada Casserole, roasted asparagus
• Wednesday: Molasses Glazed Chicken Thighs (from the freezer) with Green Beans with Shallots and Hazelnuts, and whole wheat couscous
• Thursday: Leftovers (making scones for Friday)
• Friday: Chicken Casserole (from the freezer-sliding from last week) with salad
• Saturday: White Bean and Kale Soup, grilled cheese (sliding from last week)
• Sunday: Leftovers
• Monday: Sesame Sirloin (from the freezer, recipe from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family) with salad and brown rice pilaf

Find more meal planning inspiration at orgjunkie.com!

10 Things I Wish I had time to Write About

I think about sharing stuff on my blog every day, but for the past few months none of those thoughts have made it into an actual blog post. This is a shame, because I have a lot of fun stuff going on!

1. I planted a terrarium. My grandmother gave me a Wardian Case for my birthday last fall, and I am finally got around to planting some tiny plants in it after reading a beautiful book called The New Terrarium: Creating Beautiful Displays for Plants and Nature and reading this very helpful blog post by the same author, Tovah Martin. My terrarium is not be as stunning as those pictured in the book (I dumped the dirt all over the leaves on the tiny African Violet!), but I will enjoy my tiny little plants just the same.

2. I made Lemon Lavender Butter Cookies, yet another recipe from Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family. To make the cookies, I first had to make lavender sugar with some culinary lavender. These cookies are lavender-scented! Because it is a freezer cooking recipe, I have several dozen more balls of cookie dough stashed in the freezer to bake when I feel the urge.

3. I'm planning a cutting garden. I love having fresh flowers in the house, and I will occasionally buy a $5 bouquet of flowers from the grocery store for my table or mantelpiece. Last summer I kept seeing these beautiful bouquets at the farmer's market--like this--which I didn't buy because they were quite costly, but the flowers were beautiful! I finally realized I was looking at zinnias, which are actually quite easy to grow in my area, so I bought some pretty zinnia seeds and planted them. I will add a few more types of flowers to the cutting garden and hopefully I'll have a nice selection of flowers for vases throughout the summer and into the fall.

4. I'm slacking off in the organizing department. I came up with a list of organizing projects at the beginning of the year, and I planned to post about a project each week. I haven't finished any of them, nor posted anything about them. I need to get motivated and knock some of these projects out.

5. I'm also slacking in the decluttering department. The spring consignment sale went on without me. I haven't sold anything on Ebay yet this year. I did manage to donate some summer clothes to collection drive for an orphanage in South America... but otherwise, nothing. All my efforts from last year will be undone if I don't stay on top of this neverending project!

6. I have been using the Motivated Moms half size chore planner to get a handle on what needs to be done and how often around my house. I also use it to track my menu plans and workout schedule, including calories burned per workout. I'll be honest--I never get everything on the chore list done, but at least some things get done and I am gaining a more realistic idea of how often things need to be done in my household. (Never often enough!)

7. We are planting a raised vegetable garden this summer.We planted a small amount of things last year, and it was so much fun we decided to get more serious about it. Like for the flower cutting garden, I've planted some seeds and we'll see how things develop. I am using this handy site here to plan a square foot garden. For now it's recreational, but I am looking forward to having a prolific supply of vegetables.

8. After many years of studying the room arrangements in The Washington Post's House Calls, I'm finally rearranging the furniture in my living room. This was the room that finally convinced me that I had enough information to improve the layout. This room was also an inspiration. We just need to paint and have the new couch delivered...

9. A friend of mine has convinced me to try growing potatoes in a garbage bag. Apparently potatoes can be easily damaged when you go to dig them up, so if you grow them in a bag, you can carefull empty the bag open at the end of the growing season (or slit your garbage bag open, which is what I'm planning1), dump the soil in a wheel barrow or container, and pull out the potatoes without using a shovel.

10. I did some freezer cooking last week! And I got around to posting about it. Hopefully I will be able to post updates on these other projects, too.

Menu Plan Monday: April 18th

Rosemary, Pear, and, Asiago Savory Scones

A friend of mine and I decided to try our hand at some savory scones last week.We also made Ham-and Swiss Scones (another variation of the same recipe) with some delicious mustard butter (mix softened butter and gourmet mustard to taste).

When I put my Freezer Cooking Day results in the freezer last week, I identified a few additional freezer meals that I need to use up, so that is my main goal this week. I'll also be making a Lemon Curd Mousse Cake for Easter Dinner, sans fancy toppings.

Here's the plan:

• Monday: Mom's Turkey Chili (from the freezer) with homemade cornbread, salad, and cantelope
• Tuesday: Bacon wrapped Pork Chops (from the freezer) with rice pilaf and roasted asparagus
• Wednesday: Make Your Own Pizza (with homemade pizza dough) and steamed vegetables
• Thursday: Chicken Casserole (filling from the freezer)
• Friday: Minestrone Soup (from the freezer) and grilled cheese on whole wheat
• Saturday: At grandparents' house for Easter Dinner prep
• Sunday: Easter Dinner--bringing Lemon Curd Mousse Cake
• Monday: Mini Hamburgers (from the freezer) with salt and pepper potatoes and steamed broccoli

Find more meal planning inspiration at orgjunkie.com!