Week 8

I'm still so far behind in my posts. I swear I have recipes and pics to post but I just can't seem to find the energy and time to do it among all this baby prep and nesting!

This Weeks Foodie Holidays:
* February 20: National Cherry Pie Day
* February 21: National Sticky Bun Day
* February 22: National Margarita Day
* February 23: National Banana Bread Day
* February 23: Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day
* February 24: National Tortilla Chip
Day
* February 25: National
Chocolate-Covered Nuts Day
* February 26: National Pistachio
Day
* February 27: National
Strawberry Day

Menu Plans for this week:
Southwest Avocado Salad with Grilled Steak and Baked Potatoes

Lemon Spinach Pasta with Roasted chicken Breasts

Mozzerella chicken Skillet

Beef Soft Tacos

Ranch bacon Macaroni and Cheese with Garden Salad

I'm also aiming to do extra Taco Meat to freeze for after the baby is born since Steve doesn't cook.

Week 5-One FLU Over the Cookoo's nest

That is what my life has been this past week. NUTS topped off with a healthy dose of manflu. Needless to say, blogging was not a priority in the many grocery store/medicine runs. Towards the end of the week I was doing good to have the energy to Lysol down the house and throw together a salad!

After a weekend of disinfecting and trying to get back to normal I think we have conquered the Flu and so far no signs of me getting sick. whoohhoooo So hopefully this week amidst all the appointments and preperations I have for my upcoming Babyshower and final Ultrasound etc. I can blog my backlog of recipes and add in a few more!

Let's begin with a quick look at a few standout National Foodie Holidays this week:
Sunday 30th: National Croissant Day (since its French shouldn't that be International?)
Wednesday 2nd: Heavenly Hash Day
Thursday 3rd: Carrot Cake Day (I'm totally going to try and take advantage of that one and a big bag of carrots in my fridge!)
Friday: Homemade Soup Day (Leaning towards my Cabbage Soup)
Saturday: Chocolate Fondue Day

For my Menu this week:
Sunday: Subway (it was a necessity, what can I say)

Monday: Green Onion Parmesan Mornay Sauce over Angel Hair Pasta served with Garlic Roasted Chicken and Salad

Tuesday: Lasagna

Wednesday: Ranch baked chicken and Black Bean and Avocado Salad

Thursday: Meatloaf, Greenbean Casserole and Macaroni and Cheese

Friday: Cabbage Soup (and Polish Sausage for Steve)

Saturday: Baked French Toast

Sunday (since its superbowl): Taco Dip, chicken Tender Sandwiches, Scones

2011 Week 4- Lesson in Budgeting

This past week was a very busy week as I knew it would be which is why I had the simple menu plan. I do have three recipes to post but I’m back logged due to limited computer time. I’ll get to them promise.

This week, I was inspired by helping a friend out with her budgeting and menu planning by doing an inventory of what’s on hand and planning around that to limit grocery expenditures. It was fun and something everyone should do periodically. This time of year, it’s typical to feel the need to clean out the stores of food as you prepare for Spring fever and want to get all the heavy holiday leftovers out.

It won’t be long before I’m preparing frozen meals to get us through the first few weeks of being new parents without requiring great effort from me in the kitchen as I just don’t know how well I will recover from the birth. So in order to make room, I need to clean out my freezer anyway. I was surprised at what all I had in there and will be eating out of it with limited purchasing for at least two weeks. This week I’m focusing on getting some of the main ingredients and bags of soups out. This helped reduce my budget since we went a little splurge happy on décor for the nursery anyway. Next week I will focus on supplementing main dishes with sides from the freezer as I have quite a bit of fruits and veggies frozen. I may do some baking too so you can look forward to that. Orange and blueberry scones anyone?

National Foodie Holidays This Week:
National Meat Week as well as National Irish Coffee Week

Sunday: Rhubarb Pie day
Monday: Peanut Butter Day
Tuesday: Irish Coffee Day
Wednesday: Pistachio Day
Thursday: Chocolate Cake Day
Friday: Blueberry Pancake Day
Saturday: Corn Chip Day

Menu:
Beef Stroganoff with a side salad (Uses sour cream, leftover diced tomatoes and salad fixings from Fridge, Egg noodles from pantry, Green Peas from Freezer)

Chicken Mozzarella Skillet (Uses Boneless Skinless chicken from freezer, Rice from Pantry)

Spaghetti (Uses hamburger from freezer, cheese from fridge, noodles from pantry)

Chicken Soup (uses chicken Quarters from the freezer)

Leftovers (as these dishes all make a LOT)

Chili/Bean stuffed baked Potatoes (Uses leftover chili and Bean soup to top fresh baked potatoes)

Purchased ($40.00):
Can of Cream of chicken Soup
1 Bag of Mozzarella
1 Bag of Frozen Broccoli
1 lb beef stew meat
1 lb Macaroni Noodles
Celery
Carrots
Potatoes
Onions
And odd and ends like apples, milk, soft drinks etc.

Shortbread Cookies

Even though I missed National Shortbread Day last week, I still had plans to make these cookies and wanted to try them. I am determined that even if I miss the actual day, I'm still going to go forward with the plans. It's called Follow Through and this is like any other project I've undertaken!

With it being cold and icy yesterday, I decided a snow day home from work was the perfect time to get get caught up on the blog and on recipes. (Now if only I could have one of those days every week! Hear that? 4 day work week people, get on board!)

These cookies are deceptively simple but need a little finessing. (at least the way I did it). They are also more like like biscuits than a cookie but that's probably due to the European origination. We Americans, have distorted the lines between biscuits, tea biscuits, cookies, etc. What we think of as traditional probably isn't so traditional in the grand scheme of things.

As I type this I'm enjoying these little cookies dipped in homemade Applebutter (that I also made yesterday) with a hot cup of Breakfast Blend Coffee. It is a lovely little morning treat to get my juices flowing, I must admit.

Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients:
3/4 cup plus 2 tbs butter, softened but not melted
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 tbs cold water

Cream butter and sugar in mixer. Add flour and slowly mix until crumbly. Add water and twirl a few times just to mix in. Pour crumbly mixture onto floured surface and work into a ball. It will just barely stick together. You can roll out to cut for shapes or pinch off 1 inch balls and press out with your hands for simple round cookies like I did.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Quick Homemade Pizza

To celebrate National Pizza Week, I decided to treat us to a quick dinner. A simple homemade pizza. My husband accuses me of being obsessed with cheese. (I seriously am). So I had to control my urge to really cover this thing in too much cheese as my homemade pizza's tend to be TOO cheesy. I finally made a homemade pizza meeting his approval.
Quick Homemade Pizza
Ingredients:
Marinara Sauce Recipe1 small can of Tomato Paste

Meat topping of your choice:
Hamburger: browned and chopped

Toppings:1 cup Mozzerella
1 cup Colby Jack
1/4 cup Shredded Parm, Asiago, Blend

Black Olives
Sliced Red onion

1 Pillsbury Roll Out Pizza Crust

Directions:Lay out/prepare all of your topping choices. Make the marinara Sauce recipe while your brown your meat. Take Half of the Marinara Sauce and add it to a food processor (or blender) along with the can of tomato paste. Blend until smooth and thick.

Roll out your crust to desired thickness on a lightly greased cookie sheet or stone. Spread 1 1/2 cups of sauce over (more or less if desired) crust. Add meat topping followed by cheeses. Lastly, top with veggie toppings of your choice. Bake in a 425 degree oven for 12-15 minutes until cheese is melted and crust is browned and risen.

Serve hot!

Week 2-Menu

After last week's failure to complete the menu, I am pleased that this week has fewer National Foodie Days that I am compelled to attempt. I may even catch up on recipes to try from last week.

I did try to simplify the menu a tad this week as I overestimated my time to not only be able to cook the menu but then have time to blog about it daily. Hopefully this week will prove a little less stressful in that area, a little more organized and I won't have to wish for a snow day to catch up with!

National Foodie Week: PIZZA WEEK!

National Foodie Holidays:
Sunday: apricot day
Monday: Bittersweet Chocolate Day
Tuesday: Milk Day!
Saturday: Strawberry Icecream Day (WTF, it's the middle of winter people!)


Sunday: Healthy Shepherd's Pie

Monday: Homemade Pizza

Tuesday: Chicken Mozzerella Skillet (Kraft Family Recipes) with Spinach Salad

Wednesday: Steak, Baked Potatoes, Salad

Thursday: Spinach and Chicken Calzones

Friday: Leftovers or Eat Out

I have not planned all the way through as I need to clean out the freezer of leftovers etc. So I'm leaving one or two options open. The weekends tend to be the time when we blow the menu the most because we are out running errands or working on projects and are too tired to cook. So this week I'm going to play that portion by ear.

I also left plenty of room open to catch up on recipe posting, try some new things for the Foodie Holidays I missed. So I hope, you are getting into the New year with pizzazz, your routines are taking shape and you are sticking to those New year's Resolutions! Bon Apetit!

January Week One

Last year, I tried to keep up with Menu Monday posts but towards the end of the year, I noticed that they were just space fillers. Yes, I continued to PLAN my meals for the week and post them, but I was in a rut and they became repetitive and un-interesting. So really, what was the point of you reading them as I highly doubt they were giving you any inspiration for your own menus?

To mix it up a little bit, I ‘m going to work harder at more descriptive menus, with at least a few new recipes per week which should be pretty easy since I’m following the National Foodie Holidays to help plan. The Holidays for the week will be posted each Monday so that you can participate on those days or just look forward to the recipes. I hope this will not only keep me motivated, inspire you but also add new favorite recipes (and even days!) to my repertoire!

National Foodie Holidays:

Month of January:
National Bread Machine Baking Month
National Candy Month
National Egg Month
National Hot Tea Month
National Meat Month
National Oatmeal Month
National Soup Month
National Wheat Bread Month
(I'm pretty sure there are more but I gave up). LOL


This Week:
Jan 2nd- National Cream Puff Day
Jan 3rd- Chocolate Filled Cherry Day (that must take talent!)
Jan 4th- Spaghetti Day
Jan 5th-Whipped Cream Day
Jan 6th- Bean Day
Shortbread Day
Jan. 8th-English Toffee Day

Meal Plan:
Sunday: I tried out my new Deep Fryer and made a hodgepodge of Finger foods: Buttermilk Fried Chicken Tenders, Homemade Mozzarella Sticks, served up with Deviled Eggs, Sour cream Bread (fresh baked in the Bread Machine!), and Profiteroles with Chocolate Cream Sauce. (totally not the best for you, but I promise I limited my quantity –except for the Profiteroles which I think I had 4 or 5 they were so good).


Monday: Mustard Parmesan Chicken with an Avocado and Black Bean Salad (both recipes courtesy of Paula Deen.

Tuesday: Chicken Parmesan with Garlic Bread (Courtesy of the current issue of Martha Stewart Living)

Wednesday: Parmigiana Sliders on fresh Brioche bread (Courtesy of the current issue of Martha Stewart Living and the Breadlover’s BreadMachine Cookbook).

Thursday: Bean Sliders (Courtesy of the current issue of Martha Stewart Living) and Shortbread Cookies dipped in Chocolate.

Friday: Tomato Macaroni and Cheese (Courtesy of Paula Deen) with Turkey Meatloaf

Saturday: Chicken Salad Panini with Cole Slaw and English Toffee

In addition to the above Menu, I have a bushel of apples on my counter, with the intent of making Apple Butter and Apple Pumpkin Butter. I need to find the time and energy to take care of that before they go bad. I would love to use my Deep Fryer and Perogie Press (both Christmas presents) to try some Apple Dumplings as well but they may have to wait till next week as it is apparent I will be pretty busy this week!

Profiteroles with Dark Chocolate Sauce

January 2nd is National Cream Puff Day. So to honor that, I decided to try a recipe I've had marked in a cookbook for quite some time. Profiteroles with Dark Chocolate Sauce adapted from Kitchen Library Desserts.

Cream Puffs have been in the US since 1880 but were actually invented in the 1540's by Catherine de Medici's pastry chef for Henry II.



The one issue I have with the recipe I used was that it did not tell you to cut them or pipe them immediately. It said to let them cool in the oven for 5 minutes so when I took them out they had deflated. BOO. However, deflated or not, these little bad boys are not only phenomenal but addictive. I am officially a Profiteroles fan. These remind me of my favorite Krispy Kreme doughnut: Custard filled, chocolate glazed. It's like little delicate bites of heaven.

Profiteroles (Cream Puffs) with Dark Chocolate Sauce
1/4 cup chopped butter
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup flour
3 eggs, room temp, lightly beaten

White Chocolate Filling
1/4 cup instant vanilla pudding mix
1 tbs sugar
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup white chocolate chips

Dark Chocolate Sauce
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425. Spray a baking sheet liberally with cooking spray. Put butter and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil then remove from heat and add flour. Return to heat and stir to form a smooth ball. Set aside and let cool slightly. Add eggs to flour ball with an electric mixer until dough is smooth and glossy (thick paste like consistency). Using a cookie scoop place balls evenly on cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes until golden and puffed. Turn off Oven and skewer a hole in the side/base of each puff and let dry in oven for 5 minutes. (When I took mine out they deflated immediately so I'm not sure how apt that direction is.)


For Filling:
Combine pudding mix and sugar in saucepan. Whisk in milk slowly until smooth. Heat slowly until boiling and thickening (mine thickened but I never quite let it boil, my fault). Remove from heat and add white chocolate. Stire until melted and let cool. Using a piping bag, filling each pastry with custard.

Combine dark chocolate and cream in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until chocolate is melted and drizzle over filled pastry.