HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Our daughter made lasagna to help us ring out the old year. She uses Ronzoni oven-ready noodles and follows the package instructions. I made my cornmeal and molasses pudding for dessert. It is actually hasty pudding adapted for new world ingredients. We served it warm with vanilla ice cream. Of course I was so excited to eat it that I forgot to take a picture. Here is one from the internet. It is not a pretty dessert but it is so yummy!
Chicken enchiladas are a real favorite at our house. Most of what needs to be done is prep and assembly. I shred rotisserie chicken and lay down a line in a tortilla that has been softened in the oven. To that I add a little cheese, onion, and salsa verde. I buy the salsa verde in a jar. It covers the bottom of a 9 x 13 dish, I put it in each enchilada, and top the whole dish of 12 enchiladas with a layer of salsa verde. The enchilada casserole goes into a 350F oven for about 20 minutes until all components are warmed through and the cheese melts.
As a side I made a slaw which has a dressing of light mayonnaise and spicy tomato salsa. Since I did not have quite enough cabbage, I also used some shredded kale (from Trader Joe’s) onions, and carrots. It is surprisingly good and goes well with the enchiladas.
For our usual Wednesday night meal we had fusilli with onions, garlic, mushrooms, oregano, and broccolini. We used salted water to cook the pasta and reserved about a cup of the water to make a sauce. While the pasta was cooking I sauteed the mushrooms, onions, garlic, and oregano in 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Shortly before the pasta was done I added the stems of the broccolini and then the florets when the pasta was ready to be added to the pan. I cooked the whole dish together for a couple of minutes over medium/high heat and added about a cup of the pasta water.
Our Wednesday night pasta always includes mushrooms, garlic, onions, and oregano. Sometimes we add a different green such as kale, chard, or collards. Sometimes we add tomatoes or when we make puttanesca the method includes capers, tomatoes, and olives. The variations make our dinners seem fresh and new even when they are only tweaks to our regular recipe.
Doesn’t that look good!? Our vegan dinner tonight consisted of lentils simmered with garlic and onions with a bay leaf. While the lentils were cooking I made up two sheet pans. One consisted of potatoes and butternut squash which I tossed with olive oil and salt and put in a 425F oven 15 minutes ahead of the other pan with the red onion, carrots, mushrooms, and cauliflower. Total time was about 40 minutes in the oven.
My giant bowl of goodness started with a layer of raw kale, then the lentils, and finally the roasted vegetables ringing the bowl. Our daughter ate the same dinner except added rice and some cut up pork ribs meat which we still have left over from Christmas Eve. It is a happy achievement to cook a meal that everyone can adapt to their own tastes.
It is rainy and chilly here in Northern California for which we say, YAY! Our water woes seem like daily news reports and we have been asked to cut back on usage. So we are happy to have rain but temperatures in the 40s are pretty cold for here.
I have leftover crudite from Christmas Eve and was thinking of making a big salad with some rotisserie chicken breast meat that I have but I am already cold and a big cold salad just was not speaking to me. So I changed my salad into soup!
Luckily I have chopped onion left from the tacos Monday night and I have some mushrooms that I can spare from my pasta on Wednesday. I start those in a pot with a little olive oil spray. The carrots, celery, and broccoli are any easy chop from my crudite. Along with some chicken stock they all head for the pot. Then I shred up some chicken and add an ounce of noodles, cook the whole thing for about 10 minutes and I have a delicious, warming bowl of soup.
I made enough to have seconds and even offered a small bowl to John who had already finished his sandwich of the day.
On Christmas Eve we served a platter of shrimp with cocktail sauce and ribs that John had made hors d’oeuvre-accessible by removing the meat that was on the bones so they could be held like lollipops. Not everything got eaten so I needed to craft a dinner out of leftover shrimp and pork. I turned it into shrimp tacos with a side of beans with pork.
Unsurprisingly it was a hit!
We have a lot of leftover food from Christmas Eve. John bought these ribs at our local grocery store and turned them into an hos d’oeuvre by frenching the bones. He scraped off any meat and cartilage so that people would be able to hold the rib like a lollipop.
Of course we bought too much so the ribs became an easy dinner last night. I thought we should eat something healthy so I prepared some broccoli. We almost never eat something like ribs so it was kind of a treat or guilty pleasure. Luckily our next dinner is shrimp tacos using the leftover shrimp cocktail we also had on Christmas Eve.
This week’s menu covers this week and the New Year’s Eve/Day weekend timespan. We are dealing with quite a few leftovers from the Christmas celebration which will be incorporated into the shrimp tacos and the lentils with roasted vegetables. Our daughter has set the menu for New Year’s Eve. When she was a kid we always used to have lasagna on Christmas. Now we have the delicious prime rib that our son makes. She has decided to resurrect the lasagna to serve on New Year’s Eve .
I have tried to fashion the week so it is back on track with our healthy eating but I am sure we will be eating, drinking and making merry for much of the week. There is always next year to repent!!
This is the first year since 2017 that the whole family has been together. I did not think to take much in the way of food pictures but here is a summary of what we had.
The baking of cookies started things off. This is our daughter’s realm. In addition to the chocolate chocolates cookies she made spice cookies, pretzel cookies, and lemon-anise cookies.
On Christmas Eve we have an hor d’oeuvres dinner at our house. This year along with the food pictured we had lollipop ribs, pigs in blankets, pimento dip, strawberry snowmen, and shrimp cocktail.
On Christmas Day our son made prime rib, dauphinois potatoes, broccoli casserole, and Brussels sprouts. I contributed Indian pudding and the other grandmother made pies. We also had a fun wine tasting as you can see from all the glasses!
Being together was the best part of the two days and all the special dishes created were wonderful.
What with all the Christmas hoopla I forgot to post dinner from Thursday night.
While John was busy brining and cooking the salmon in a dry pan with a light coating of sea salt over a low flame, I cooked a bunch of different vegetables on sheet pans in a 425F oven. First I dropped them in a plastic bag and added olive oil and salt and shook the veg around so that everything got coated. I started with the potatoes and cabbage since they were going to need longer in the oven. After 10 minutes I added another sheet pan of the remaining vegetables.
The dark char you see on the leek and cabbage is definitely intentional. The crispy bits are so tasty and crunchy! I accompanied the dish with a very mustard-y tartar sauce.
Omnivore 