February 28 - March 4

It's almost March! It's almost March! I'm so ready... I ran outside this afternoon, and was reminded how much thinking I'm able to do when I run outside instead of on the treadmill with DVDs of Dexter blaring on the TV. I planned this week's menu during the run!

Sunday

Grilled salmon on salad. I'm thinking sliced apples, toasted pine nuts, red pepper, and anything else yummy laying around the veggie drawers. Balsamic dressing, of course... I'm still loving my vinegar-Christmas gift!

Monday

Slow-cooker day: We'll do one of the little venison roasts in the slow cooker: Brown the roast, put in the cooker, add some water, a giant quartered onion, some carrots, mushrooms, salt and pepper, maybe a few potatoes. We'll serve it with something green and simple... maybe peas!

Tuesday

Ravioli with portobello mushrooms, spinach, and roasted red pepper: Cook the ravioli. Meanwhile, saute mushrooms in a pan, add some sliced peppers (I'm still using the ones I canned last fall). Maybe some garlic. When the ravioli's cooked, put it in the pan with the veggies, then add some spinach. Stir around for a minute, season, serve with parmesan cheese.

Wednesday

Basic veggie soup:

Saute an onion and some garlic. Add some chopped carrot and celery. Add some canned tomato, some water or stock, bring to a simmer. Add other veggies (I'm raiding the freezer for this soup, so anything I froze last summer or fall is fair game: corn, peas, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash). Add some beans -- garbanzo or cannellini -- and heat. Season as needed.

Thursday

Vegetable fried rice:

I must be in a veggie mood this week!

Saute an onion, sliced top to bottom, some mushrooms, red pepper, bok choy, broccoli. Add cold, pre-cooked brown rice. Add some soy sauce and chili paste with garlic, then stir it all up. Make a space in the middle of the pan, scramble two eggs in the space. When they're cooked, mix them in with the rest of the stuff. Chop some scallions and sprinkle on top.

Have a lovely week! Happy March!

February 14 - 18

Happy Valentine's Day! We had our big Valentine's dinner on Saturday... Holly Hotel. Yummmmm. Sunday we hung around the house, went for an unreasonably long snowshoe through the woods, and so then needed some comfort food to revive us.

Sunday

And so we made spaghetti. With meatballs, even... tiny little ones!

And salad with sunflower seeds and balsamic vinegar. I'm a little bit in love with sunflower seeds right now.

Monday

Venison chops -- just a very quick sear in a pan, maybe a bit of wine and garlic.

Asparagus

Salad

Tuesday

Manhattan clam chowder, from The Healthy Kitchen by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley:

Saute in a bit of olive oil: 1 cup chopped onion, 2 cloves chopped garlic

Add 1/2 c chopped celery, 1tsp dried thyme, stir for a few minutes.

Sprinkle 1/4 c flour. Pour 3 c water in slowly. Whisk to break up flour.

Add 1 1/2 c chopped potatoes, bring to a boil. Cook for 10 min. at med. high heat, then turn down.

Add 2 c chopped tomatoes. Simmer, covered, 20 minutes.

Now for the clams: if you have fresh (which, alas, I did not find on my trip to the store... but I didn't try too hard), scrub them, put them in a big pot with 1 1/2 c white wine and steam them for about 10 minutes. Discard any that didn't open. Remove the rest from their shells. Put 'em in the soup.

If you have canned, just drain them and add them to the soup. Either way, put the wine mixture (or just some wine, if you didn't steam them) in the soup, along with 1 tsp Worcestershire and 1/8 tsp Tabasco, a little bit of ground pepper.

I think we'll need some lovely whole-grain baguette to go with this.

Wednesday

I'm guessing more soup.

Thursday

Brothy Noodles

Have a beautiful week. Soon it will be spring!

February 7 - 11

Happy Super Bowl!

Kind of a basic, uninspired week, dinner-wise. We're falling back on easy favorites that require little thought. But if I get a snow day, my plans might change! With a whole day at home to putter around, I might come up with something more interesting.

Sunday

We made homemade pizza and salad. Yummmmmmmmm...

Monday

Pasta Fagioli soup -- great for leftovers

Tuesday

Salad with sauteed venison steak and mushrooms

Thursday

Halibut, roasted sweet potatoes, broccoli

January 31 - February 4

Oh, it's so cold. How could we make anything else but chili?

Sunday

Chili -- this recipe, but I think we'll try buffalo in it instead of beef.

corn bread

jalapeno poppers -- haven't tried to make them before, but Phil's thinking he'll hunt down a recipe and give 'em a go.

Monday

Roasted sole, with olive oil, salt, pepper and capers, and then a bit of lemon juice at the end

Roasted potatoes

Broccoli

Tuesday

Quesadillas with black beans and shredded chicken

Shredded cabbage, diced tomato, diced avocado, lime juice, salt for a nice little salad to go with

Wednesday

Halibut

salad (balsamic dressing, red bell pepper, sunflower seeds)

asparagus

Thursday

Pork Chops Oreganata -- we got this giant chop in a CSA share a while back, and haven't been sure what to do with it. This recipe has us marinate and broil, and make a lovely bulgur, tomato, spinach and feta salad to go with.

In addition...

A co-worker just had a baby a couple weeks ago, and we're making a whole bunch of food for her and her family so they don't have to think about cooking. I'm making lasagne -- easy to freeze if they don't need it right away. This is based on my sister in law Sharon's recipe. Thanks, Sharon!

1 chopped onion

1 pound ground beef

28 oz diced canned tomatoes

16 oz spaghetti sauce

spices & herbs -- garlic, oregano, basil

3c shredded mozzarella

24 oz ricotta cheese

1/4 c shredded Parmesan cheese

lasagne noodles

1. Brown beef and onion. Remove from heat.

2. Add sauce, tomatoes and spices.

3. In greased 13 x 9 glass dish layer:

noodles, then

1/3 of the ricotta, then

1/3 of the sauce, then

1/3 of the mozzarella & Parmesan, then

repeat two more times.

4. Cover and refrigerate.

5. Put in cold oven uncovered at 35o degrees for 45 - 50 minutes.

January 24 - 28

I wish I could eat more dinners. I realize it would be unnecessary, as well as expensive, as well as make me fat. But I was a little struck this morning by the cookbooks on my shelf that I haven't looked at in a long, long time, and so I stacked about 8 of them and brought them to the couch. And I found about seventy-three dinners I'd really like to try sometime soon.

If only I was adventurous enough (and had enough time) to make pad thai for breakfast... or carmelized butternut squash for lunch... then I'd be able to squeeze in more yummy experiments. Alas, I'm an apple-and-peanut-butter-for-breakfast kind of girl (quick, juicy, and you can eat it on the run!) and lunch is often leftovers from the previous night's dinner. So I'm stuck to once a day, not counting weekends (because we have to allow for take out, or even a restaurant, at some point). There are worse problems, I guess.

Anyway, here's what made the cut for this week:

Sunday

Roasted chicken

Roasted veggies -- onion, tomato, mushrooms, red pepper, garlic

Roasted sweet potato

I'm trying a new chicken recipe on my endless search for the perfect roasted chicken. And in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, there's a recipe for... Perfect Roast Chicken! How could I not try it?

Monday

Beer and cabbage soup

Tuesday

Leftovers... soup, chicken, salad...

Wednesday

Huevos rancheros:

Saute an onion, add some garlic, some black beans, some spicy spices. Spread on a tortilla, sprinkle a bit of cheese, put in the oven (400 degrees) for about 10 minutes. Fry an egg. Pull the tortilla and beans out of the oven, pop the egg on top. Maybe salsa.

Thursday

Fried rice, from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

I'll make half this recipe, because if I make all 4 servings, I'll just eat 3 of them right then and there.

Mix: 1 T grated ginger, 4 minced garlic cloves, 1/4 c soy sauce, 2 T rice vinegar, 2 tsp molasses, 2 T dark sesame oil, 1/2 tsp chili paste.

Slice 1 cake tofu into strips, marinate in the above mixture for 10 minutes.

In oil, saute:

2 bell peppers

6 oz snow peas

Add the marinated tofu.

Add rice, scallions, pour on marinade, mix and heat.

I might also add a few other veggies when I saute the bell peppers and snow peas -- maybe mushrooms, celery, or an onion. Depends on what's still around on Thursday.

Have a good week!

January 17 - 21

I'm in the midst of the weekly menu planning, and it's a bit of a mess here at my table. Recipes, food magazines, cookbooks, three different lists and rapidly cooling coffee are strewn all around. See, I'm trying to find some balance.

We are beginning to learn the use-what-we've-got instinct, and have created a freezer inventory to keep track of our latest goodies from the CSA, our cuts of venison from Phil's deer, and all the other stuff. So when I plan our menus, I get out those lists and start from there.

But then, I also try to find some balance in what we eat on a weekly basis. I try (not always successfully) to vary the kinds of food -- at least one vegetarian meal, at least one fish, not too many different kinds of soup, not too much beef and pork. And making these two things mesh felt extra tricky this week.

For example: we got emu in our CSA delivery yesterday. It's dark red. Poultry or red meat? I know it doesn't really matter. But when I'm already feeling indecisive, little questions like this can be a big roadblock for me. Fortunately, my desire to clean off my table won, and I came up with a sort of workable menu for the week. But I might change my mind:

Sunday

Emu steak with wild mushroom sauce: based on a recipe from High Lonesome Ranch (see the recipe for Emu Fillets with Wild Mushroom Sauce)

Garlic mashed potatoes

Salad with vinaigrette

Monday

Grilled halibut with lemon-caper vinaigrette

Asparagus

Salad

Tuesday

Meatball Broccoli Spaghetti: This was my favorite thing to cook in high school, and I usually crave it about once a year. This is the lucky day. I'm revamping a little bit so my arteries don't shriek, but here's my latest variation:

Sliced mushrooms

olive oil

2 c. broth (I'll probably use chicken, as I just made a bunch last week)

1 lb (or a little less, if I can find a small enough package in the freezer)ground venison or buffalo

1 c broken whole wheat spaghetti

3 c chopped broccoli

salt, pepper

parmesan cheese

1. Saute mushrooms in a bit of oil.

2. Add broth, bring to a boil. (This is rhyming so far!)

3. Make little meatballs with burger, salt, pepper. Drop in broth, simmer about 10 minutes.

4. Add spaghetti. Simmer 10 more minutes.

5. Add broccoli. Simmer 10 minutes, or maybe less -- depending on how done you like your broccoli.

6. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle some cheese on top.

Wednesday

Lentil soup: Based on a recipe in Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home:

3/4 c lentils

3 c water

bay leaf

3 garlic cloves, chopped

Put in a pan on high heat, covered. While you're waiting for it to boil, do this:

1 c grated carrot

1 chopped tomato

1/2 c finely chopped bell pepper

Add them to the pot. When it boils, reduce the heat, and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes -- until the lentils are tender. While that's happening, do this:

Saute 3/4 c chopped onion. Add:

1 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. coriander

pinch of cayenne

Remove from heat. When the lentils are done, take out the bay leaf and ginger. Add the sauteed onions and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste.

Maybe some pita for dipping?

Thursday

Split pea soup:

Not entirely sure on the recipe for this yet, but here's what I'm thinking right now:

Trim a pork steak. Sear it in a pan. Remove.

Saute an onion in my big soup pot.

Add some diced carrot and celery and garlic.

Add about a cup of dried peas, some water, the pork steak, a jar of tomatoes.

Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for about an hour or so, keeping an eye on the liquid.

When the peas are done, pull out the pork steak and chop/shred it. If the consistency of the soup isn't right, mash it up a bit. Put the pork back in, season with salt and pepper.

I think toast for dipping.

Have a good week!

January 10 - 14

We went snowshoeing today! Now we're hungry, hungry, hungry, so we're inventing a stew recipe. Perfect for a mid-January Sunday (as long as it turns out)!

Sunday

Lamb stew

Good bread

The story on the stew: we have various lamb parts in the freezer we've been saving from different things... some bones, some oddly-shaped scraps left over from when we made kebabs a few weeks ago. Dusted it all with flour, salt and pepper, browned it in a bit of olive oil, then tossed it in the slow cooker. Added onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and some canned tomato. A little bit of beef stock, some water, salt and pepper. It's been bubbling away for about 5 hours now. Soon, I'll check the bones and remove any meat still clinging to them, and then simmer it for a while longer. It's an experiment, but I'm hopeful.

Monday

Oven roasting tonight!

Salmon, roasted in the oven

Brussels sprouts, also roasted

Cauliflower -- I'll probably steam this, just to mix things up a little.

Tuesday

Three-Bean Vegetarian Chili

Wednesday

I'm guessing it'll be more chili

Thursday

Tacos!

(Ground venison simmered in spices, then probably onion, tomato, cheese, salsa, sour cream, maybe lettuce or shredded cabbage)

Have a good week!