It's Been a Month...

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've posted on this. Which means it's been over a month since we've lived with a weekly dinner menu. Which means it's been over a month since we've been planful or careful or choosy about our dinners. Our lives have been a bit of a cooking desert in the last month, but I think we've crossed to the other side. I need for us to have crossed to the other side of that food desert, because I can't face many more evenings of scrounging around for something sort of edible or just ordering pizza.

We all have those months, right?

So I'm baby-stepping back into this. We got back from the holiday weekend at about 7:00 tonight, only to find that the Thai food we wanted to order was unavailable... they took Memorial day off? What?

So we ended up with chicken quesadillas (Phil's had Monterey Jack, and mine had goat cheese) with whole wheat tortillas. We also made a warm salad-type thing: sauteed red onion, red bell pepper, black beans and corn, seasoned with chili powder, cayenne, cumin, salt, pepper, and lime juice. Amazingly, we had one usable onion left in the house, and one chicken breast in the freezer, and bits of random cheeses, and chopped peppers and corn in the freezer. So it sort of worked.

With that under the belt, I'm ready to try a mini-plan for the rest of the week:

Tuesday

Pasta with morels, bacon, peas and goat cheese: We had LOTS of luck hunting morels up north this weekend, so plan to use our share like this:

1. Chop and saute bacon pieces. Remove from pan to drain, wipe bacon drippings from pan.

2. Cook pasta (linguine?).

3. Saute morels in olive oil, a bit of butter, and some chopped garlic.

4. After they're well-cooked, add the bacon and the pasta with a little bit of pasta water to make it all stick. Add a handful of peas and some goat cheese and swirl it all together.

Salad on the side.

Wednesday

Grilled pork chops

Grilled potatoes (dice some redskins, put in foil with some olive oil and onions, put on the top rack of the grill for about 30 minutes)

Might attempt a rhubarb sauce -- we have tons of it in the garden -- for the chops.

Salad

Thursday

Scallops with spinach and paprika syrup

Roasted sweet potatoes

If we can make it through this, we might be back on a dinner track that I'll be happy about. Wish us luck!