It appears we have thrown out our carefully planned menu and now are eating willy-nilly. This morning I gave John a number of dinner choices and he said that he would really like to have the fried scallops dinner again. To that I said, yay! Voila!
Scallops, new potatoes, and collards and corn
I took about 4 oz. of ground beef out of the freezer just in case our neighbors decided not to fulfill their “c’mon over” invitation from last Sunday. We had not heard from them all week so I did not know what to expect. Of course, I had made snickerdoodles just in case.
As it turns out we were invited and had a nice time. So on Monday I awaken to defrosted ground beef in the fridge. I combined this with about 6 oz. of mushrooms and, using pre existing ingredients, made a pasta with beef/mushroom sauce for dinner.
Spaghetti with mushroom and ground beef tomato sauce
Today we just were not hungry for dinner. That includes the dinner we planned on our menu which was steak and the back-up dinner, spaghetti with mushroom and garlic sauce. So we ended up using our leftover brown rice and made rice with mushrooms and garlic. Meh. Probably the best thing to do when you are not hungry is not eat.
Brown rice with mushrooms and garlic
On Sunday we ate at our neighbors’ house. We had slow cooked chicken and ribs, a salad, heated up frozen mixed vegetables, and the snickerdoodle cookies I made.
I do not like sweet things and I really despise how sugar and flour get all over the kitchen when you bake things. I made snickerdoodle cookies today because we may be invited to some neighbor’s house tomorrow and I have to bring something. This being Utah I cannot simply bring a bottle of wine.
I think these sweet things that I try to make sense my fear and loathing of them. To spite me they never come out the way they are supposed to. In fact I have made cookies for my children when they were kids and they actually would not eat them.
I present my snickerdoodle cookies. They spread out too much so some ended up touching each other. They are too thin. After I adjusted for them coming out so large, they stopped doing it so I have different sized cookies. Some got a little dark even though I was cooking them the same amount of time. My daughter makes these cookies and they come out perfectly. My cookies definitely do not like me.
Variable snickerdoodle cookies
Wow, that makes two fancy dinners this week! This recipe comes from The Kenwood Restaurant up in Sonoma wine country via my friend, George. Sadly the Kenwood has gone out of business but John has just related to me that the site is back in business under new ownership as Salt and Stone. Looking forward to giving it a try.
Shrimp in saffron Pernod sauce
We served this with some brown rice (using the oven method) and collard greens with corn. This dinner takes a lot of fancy chopping up. All the vegetables for the shrimp dish need to be brunoise-ed and the collard greens have to be chiffonaded.
Some American food with a Mediterrean side made for a tasty dinner. John seasoned the burgers with salt and pepper and also added a little baking soda to help the meat stay juicy. Although they were a little more medium than medium rare when they came off the grill, the baking soda had done its job and they were juicy and delicious. I always eat any type of sandwich open faced and burgers are no exception. Also using a knife and fork slows you down.
Open-face hamburger with onion and lettuce, side of tabbouleh
I used a Lebanese tabbouleh recipe that I got from the NYT Cooking site. I like it a lot. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I was part way into it that I realized I did not have mint or enough lemon. We ate it but it was not as good as it usually is. I have half of it left so tomorrow I am going to run out to the store and pick up the missing ingredients.
What’s the occasion? No occasion! Sometimes it is just nice to treat yourself to an out of the ordinary dinner. Tonight’s dinner was fried scallops and tartar sauce with steamed new potatoes and broccoli salad. It was really good!
Fried scallops with new potatoes and broccoli salad
In lunchtime news I used our new Instant Pot to make celery soup. A head of celery, an onion, a potato, an herb, and some stock or water along with a little olive oil are the ingredients. After sauté-ing the onions, I added the rest of the ingredients and pressure cooked it for 10 minutes. I used a stick blender to purée the soup and then I adjusted the seasonings. Voila, a tasty lo-cal soup!
Since I slipped the schedule, Classic Chicken Monday dinner ended up on Tuesday. In preparation for cooking the dinner we went out and bought an Instant Pot for Utah so we could more easily make rutabagas. (We do enjoy our kitchen toys!) Everything turned out tasty although I am asking John to set the immersion circulator a few degrees higher for the chicken breasts next time. They came out a little spongy this time.
Chicken breast with broccoli and rutabagas
Pizza
Yes, after all my boasting yesterday that creating a menu saves me from ordering pizza we went ahead and ordered pizza. Not this exact one-this is a pizza we had in Rome. I was too embarrassed to actually take a picture of our actual Utah pizza. Anyway I forgive ourselves an now with an amended menu, we are back on track.
Amended menu
Now that we are here in Utah and we have taken care of the unpacking and the installation of our patriotic goose guard, it’s time to make a menu and shopping list.
Patriotic goose guard to keep the Canadian geese from pooping all over our patio
I like to make a menu for a couple of reasons. First of all it insures that I will buy what I need at the grocery store and secondly, it kind of makes sure that I actually make dinner and do not give in to “let’s call for pizza.” Also, if I know what we are eating tonight in the morning, I can get a jump on the prep early.
Weekly menu
I have to admit that this is a pretty tasty looking menu with lots of variety. Since many of these entrees could be on the high calorie side, I need to watch the portion sizes carefully.
On Sunday night we had chickpea stew with ditalini or salad macaroni and Lacinto kale. Usually I just go with a package of spinach but I am trying to be careful with the produce since there has been an e.coli outbreak recently. This is an easy omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan dish. It just depends on what type of stock you use and if you put parmesan cheese on top.
Chickpea stew with ditalini and Lacinato kale
There is nothing tricky about this stew-just chop up the vegetables, sauté them, add the stock, and put the greens in at the end. Once the chopping is done, it takes about 20 minutes. Colorful and delicious!
Omnivore 