Menu Plan Monday 3/30/09

This week's menu:

Monday: Glazed Pork Chops, Mashed Butternut Squash (pressure cooker), & Salad, My second daughter's birthday cake for dessert
Tuesday: Tacos, Black Beans & Salad
Wednesday: Roast Turkey Breast, Risotto (pressure cooker), & Dilled Peas
Thursday: Turkey Tortilla Soup
Friday: "It's my birthday - I'm not cooking!"

Dilled Peas
I realize I plan dilled peas a lot as a side dish. This is what it takes to make this dish. I take one bag of frozen peas and cook in the microwave in a microwave safe container with a little bit of water. Drain the peas then stir in 1 1/2 Tbl of butter, then I add salt and lemon pepper to taste and about 1/2 tsp of dried dill. As soon as it starts growing in the garden, I'll use fresh dill. :) Very quick and tasty.

Menu Plan Monday 3/23/09

Here's this week's menu! I'm trying a couple new recipes. Although, I've made variations of them before. The first is the Sauteed Cabbage with Apples and Cinnamon. This is a Robin Miller recipe from her Quick Fix Meals - cookbook. I love her premise of making one meal and then transforming the left-overs into another meal. She also totes the advantages of something called "meal packets." Go to Barnes & Noble and check out her book in person so get more of a feel for it.

Also, I turned to my current favorite cookbook Pressure Perfect for a pressure cooker soup recipe. That's where the Potato Cheddar Soup comes from. I love that I'll have this soup made in about 10 minutes. :)

The Old World Pilaf is a mix that I found in the grocery store's bulk food/organic section. It has brown rice, white rice, wild rice, lentils, dried peas and carrots in it. I figured I would give it a shot and see how it turns out. I'm planning on adding onions and garlic and some herbs, cooking it in chicken broth in the pressure cooker. We'll see how it turns out!

Monday: Poppyseed Chicken & Balsamic Roasted Carrots
Tuesday: Chicken Fried Steak (going to use panko instead of my usual Ritz cracker breading), Sauteed Cabbage w/ apples and cinnamon, Dilled Peas
Wednesday: Chicken Pot Pie & Salad
Thursday: Potato Cheddar Soup & Salad
Friday: Grilled Salmon, Old World Rice Pilaf, & Garlicky Green Beans

New Use for Old Dressing

Here is a new use for that homemade poppy seed dressing. Mix one cup poppy seed dressing with a half a cup of mayo. Stir in with a bag of coleslaw mix (or do like me and shred your own cabbage and carrots). It is better than any cole slaw your are going to get at the deli!

Menu Plan Monday 3/16/09

Here's this week's menu! I have two meals that have cabbage in them. Can one beat 15 cents a pound? Well, actually, I could. One store had it for 1 cent a pound (maximum of 15 lbs) at this price but I didn't want to go there because the other store I commonly shop at had 3 pound bags of frozen chicken breasts for 4.99 a bag. And I always go to Aldi. I like to keep it to two stores on shopping day, especially when I have kids with me.

Monday: Teriyaki Chicken, Brown Rice, & Green Salad
Tuesday: Grilled Steaks, Easy Grilled Potatoes, & Coleslaw
Wednesday: Moo Shu Pork over Noodles, Egg Drop Soup
Thursday: Mini Meatloaves, Au Gratin Potatoes, Garlicky Green Beans
Friday: Homemade Supreme Pizza

Coconut Ice Cream

I've been having lots of fun dreaming up ice cream flavors to make in our new ice cream maker (recently purchased off of Craigslist). While eating a sundae of caramel ice cream topped with Girl Scout Caramel deLites, I decided that a coconut ice cream was the way to go. I looked on-line to find recipes but didn't find one that suited my pantry list. So, I decided to make up my own (boy, am I brave!) coconut ice cream recipe. Let me tell you, it was da bomb! Yea baby! I highly recommend using that chocolate magic shell topping - it would be like eating a frozen Mounds ice cream bar...mmmmmm.

Coconut Ice Cream

1 can coconut milk
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup half and half
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir these ingredients together and pour into your ice cream maker (per manufactur's instructions).

Toast 1 cup sweetened coconut flakes (you must toast them, it really brings out the nutty sweet flavor of them). Add to the ice cream mixture 10 minutes after it has begun.

When the ice cream maker is finished, spoon the ice cream into an air tight container and store in the freezer. It is good to let this set-up a little more, so try to give it at least 4 hours in the freezer before you dig in. Enjoy!

Menu Plan Monday 3/9/09

Hello everyone! I pray that all is well with you. My laptop is not "playing" well with any Google websites and I have no idea why. That's the main reason this post is late. Well, that and I had a gigantic Monday to do list. Thankfully, I actually usually menu plan on the weekend so I still had a plan for Monday night supper. And it was a winner! I very much suggest trying it. One of the must have ingredients is fish sauce - please don't be put off. The smell leaves something to be desired but the taste is great! And the whole bottle only cost me 1.99 at what I consider to be the most expensive grocery store in our town. So give the chicken satay with homemade peanut sauce a try!

Monday: Chicken Satay with Homemade Peanut Sauce, Rice, & Lettuce Salad
Tuesday: Pot Roast, Potatoes, & Carrots (making extra for a family who needs some help!)
Wednesday: Stuffed Pork Chops, Roasted Asparagus & Spinach Salad
Thursday: Ravioli with Butternut Sage Sauce & Salad
Friday: Fish Tacos, Rice and Beans

My Newest Apron

I had a good time sewing this apron and it cost me a dollar! And that was for the pattern (Simplicity). I can't sew very well so I still need a pattern to go off of but I think if you had some modicum of talent, you could do this without one. It was a pair of jeans from college - you know - one's that weren't straight legged but instead, slightly tapered? Yep, this is a much better look for them. :) I love aprons! Especially because I don't love laundry. So this, to me, is another helpful kitchen "gadget."

Menu Plan Monday 3/2/09

It has become painfully obvious to me that I have a hard time posting on this blog outside of Mondays! Sorry about that! I really do need to become better. I've started "gardening" for the season and I guess that's taking up some of my mental facilities that normally would go towards writing posts and what not. I did sew myself an apron so I'll try to post about that sometime this week - after all - a good apron is a good kitchen tool in my book! (and the whole project only cost me a dollar).

Here's this week's menu!

Monday: Broccoli Beef Stir-fry, Rice & Egg Drop Soup (I also picked up some frozen egg rolls at Aldi).
Tuesday: Roast Chicken, Vegetable Orzo, & Strawberry Spinach Salad (w/ Poppyseed Dressing)
Wednesday: Shepherd's Pie & Green Salad
Thursday: Chicken Enchiladas (using leftover chicken from Tuesday), Homemade Refried Beans (of course, chips and salsa!)
Friday: Parmesan Tilapia, CousCous, & Green Beans

The vegetable orzo is a new item to our house. I went to the trusty bulk food section in our grocery store and saw that wild rice had doubled (yes, doubled) in price. That's going off the menu rotation for sure after what I finish up what I have left in the pantry. But they did have vegetable orzo so I though I'd give it a try. Orzo is technically just a pasta but it has a similar texture to rice. So if someone in your family can't have rice, try substituting orzo for it.