Menu Plan 11/3 - 11/9, 2014

We didn't have three-envelope pot roast as planned tonight because it turned out that I didn't have a roast in the freezer! Instead, we had my favorite beef stew. We doubled the recipe in order to have LOTS for dinner for us three who actually live here, Niece, and GolfDad PLUS have leftovers for lunches. SOOOOOOOO GOOD on a wet and chilly day! Niece and Mr. Mamie did all the work of peeling carrots and potatoes, and Niece chopped it all, which was really nice.

Also, I didn't make the beef enchiladas as planned on Saturday because (1) we had enchiladas when we went out on Friday night, and (2) we were just too busy to make them. Instead we had Italian shredded beef sandwiches using leftovers from the freezer (from the last time we made them - I froze half the beef/pepperoncini mixture).

It's another busy week ahead. Not sure if GolfDad will be having one IV therapy treatment a day or two, which impacts dinner time if there IS an evening appointment for him. I have Association meetings/activities on two nights. AND we're getting a shipment of meat from Omaha Beef (a present from ArizonaDad and Mom [I just re-named my father and stepmother - their old pseudonyms weren't that great, hahahaha]. I'm thinking we'll cook something from that on both weekend days. Or, we may need to eat up stuff from the freezer to make room... so things may change!

Monday: Grilled chicken (doing extra to use on Wednesday), Near East brand rice pilaf with almonds (from a box), and frozen veggies.

Tuesday: Fold-over cheese enchiladas, Mexican rice. I use homemade enchilada sauce that I have frozen in jars in the freezer.

Wednesday: Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta, green salad.

Thursday: Kielbasa/potatoes/carrots with onions and garlic roasted in the oven with a little olive oil and a sprinkle of italian seasoning.

Friday: Grilled things (beef/turkey burgers or sausages), sweet potato fries (frozen from Costco).

Saturday/Sunday: Up for grabs - we'll see what needs to be cleaned out of the freezer OR do something from our Omaha Beef box.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Menu Plan 10/27 - 11/2, 2014

This week is interesting. GolfDad has cellulitis (a staph infection of the skin) and has to spend 2+ hours every early morning and another 2+ hours every late afternoon getting IV antibiotics at the IV therapy lab at the hospital.  This has been going on for three - four weeks, but recently he's been having some extreme light sensitivity/blurry vision issues (probably a side effect of all the antibiotics), so one or both of us has been driving him back and forth to the hospital, which is a 30 mile round-trip.  The evening infusion really interferes with a "normal" dinner time. Also, he's pretty worn out from all the treatment, the pain from the infection, the travel to and from, etc., so I have also been basically performing a "meals-on-wheels" service for him and delivering a meal each day that he can heat up.

SO, I had to get creative for this week. I made the tortellini soup that was on last week's menu today, as planned, but we ate it for "linner" as about 2:30 in the afternoon. That soup makes a LOT, by the way! Mr. Mamie, GrandmaT, our friend PhotoKay (who was over for a couple of hours today) and I all had big helpings; I took enough for two meals over to GolfDad's house; and the three people who live here all have lunch for tomorrow!

Also today I made two other meals that we ALL (including GolfDad) can eat for the next couple days: White Chicken Taco Chili and Honey Sesame Chicken (along with a big pot of white rice) - both of those made enough for lunch/dinner for all four of use for Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday will be another CrockPot meal that can be delivered to GolfDad and which should provide dinner and then lunch the next day for everyone: CrockPot Cheesy Pasta and Beef (I'll brown the ground beef the night before, and then put it together Wednesday morning).

Thursday I have a teeth-cleaning appointment, so after that I'm planning to make turkey tacos because they got bumped last week (we had Costco pizza one night).  See last week's menu for details on those.

Friday is Halloween. Mr. Mamie and I traditionally have a "date night" on Halloween - I live within the attendance boundaries of my school, and in order to keep the number of kids who know exactly where my house is from growing exponentially, I prefer NOT to be home handing out candy!

Saturday I'm planning to make Three-Cheese Beef Enchiladas during the day. It will probably be a "linner" situation again. We really like homemade enchilada sauce from the same site that the enchilada recipe is from. It's soooooo easy to make and yummier than canned sauce. I have cream cheese to use up, which is one reason I'm going with this particular enchilada recipe.

Sunday it's going to be pot roast with carrots and potatoes in the CrockPot. I usually do the "three envelope roast" approach - it's kinda weird-seeming but it turns out great!

Have a good week... hopefully things are going to calm down around here!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Meal Plan October 20 - 26, 2014

Another week, back to the routine! My two-day (plus the weekend) "fall break" was nice, though.

Monday: Cowboy Spaghetti.

Tuesday: Chicken Enchilada Soup, which is already made and in the freezer. I have an Association meeting, so something easy is ideal.

Wednesday: Loaded baked potatoes, which for us means whatever toppings might be lurking around in the fridge (shredded cheese, maybe sour cream, frozen veggies). Sometimes we open a can of chili beans to go on top as well.

Thursday: Turkey tacos, using homemade seasoning, homemade taco sauce, and oven-baked tortilla shells.

Friday: Grilled sausages and oven fries.

Saturday: Chicken and Wild Rice Soup.

Sunday: Tortellini Soup.

Yes, soup is on there three times - we happen to really like soup for a meal, and it makes great school lunches!

Also, I plan to bake some Chewy Oatmeal M&M Cookies - thanks to my cousin Tasha for the recipe!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Menu Plan 10/11 - 10/19

Sunday 10/12: Stuffing Meatloaf... because I am lazy but I crave meatloaf! Adding a glaze of 1 cup ketchup + 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce + 1/4 cup brown sugar.

Monday 10/13: Ranch Chicken, Bacon, and Potatoes Casserole.

Tuesday 10/14: I get a yummy Durango's salad at an Association Executive Board meeting, Mr. Mamie gets Wendy's, and GrandmaT gets to fend for herself.

Wednesday 10/15: One Pot Chili Pasta. I'm think that this will make plenty of extra for lunches while I am off for Fall Break!

Thursday 10/16: Creamy Chicken and Black Bean Enchiladas with Mexican Rice.

Friday 10/17: Grilled burgers or sausages with sweet potato fries (frozen ones from Costco, sooooooo good!).

Saturday 10/18: Copycat Panera Baked Potato Soup.

Sunday 10/19: CrockPot Italian Beef Sandwiches.

And during Fall break I cannot WAIT to make Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins!!!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Meal Plan 8/4/14 - 8/10/14

It's a rainy Sunday in Southern Utah, and we're enjoying it!  We still went to the local dog park this morning, as is our routine.  Peanut chased the ball relentlessly, regardless of raindrops falling on her head.

Going home we took the "back," long way around Sand Hollow Reservoir.  Didn't see any boats out on the water yet, but I am sure that there will be some by this afternoon.

School starts in just a WEEK! Truly, this summer has flown by faster than ever.  This week I have Association "stuff" going on, we start contract time at school on Wednesday, and we have our back-to-school night on Thursday. SO MUCH still to do before the first day on the 11th!

But, we still have to eat dinner, so here's the plan:

Monday: Grilled London Broil, marinated [in 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 TBL ketchup]; baked potatoes; green salad. 

Tuesday: Very busy with Association stuff - contract ratification meeting and training event for our building reps, which will include dinner. Mr. Mamie will help me tote n' carry and then will probably go off and eat at Wendy's. Grandma will be on her own with leftovers or something from the freezer.

Wednesday: Grilled honey mustard oregano pork chops, never-mushy rice, green salad.

Thursday: Taco soup in the CrockPot, green salad.  I will freeze a bunch of portions of taco soup for school lunches. This is back-to-school night so it will be perfect to walk in the door and have dinner be  READY.

Friday: Grilled burgers (we got some pre-made patties for a good price at our local grocery store) and either frozen sweet potato fries OR ideally fresh corn on the cob if I can find some good ones.

Saturday: Grandma leaves for a week's trip to see her OTHER grandchildren in Kansas; Mr. Mamie is (re)scheduled for a sleep study at the pulmonary doctor's office. So I have no idea what dinner will be... maybe we'll go out before he has to be at the doctor's. Let's hope THIS time the technician doesn't fail to show up!

Sunday: TBA... this is the night before school starts! We'll have to see what kind of energy and enthusiasm I can muster up. Probably either breakfast for dinner or pizza from Costco, hahahaha!

Have a great week!

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Slow Cooker Taco Soup

Slow Cooker Taco Soup 

I modified this slightly from a recipe I found years ago somewhere on the Interwebz. Unfortunately I don't have the original source, but I thank whomever it was... we make this soup OFTEN! It freezes really well in either Ziploc bags or plastic bowls. It is a GREAT make-ahead meal for camping as well!

    * 1 lb ground beef 

    * 1 onion, roughly chopped  

    * 1 pkg ranch-style dressing mix  (or equivalent amount of homemade mix)

    * 1 pkg taco seasoning mix  (or equivalent amount of homemade mix)

    * 2 cans diced tomatoes w/ green chilies (undrained)

    * 1 can pinto beans 

    * 1 can black beans 

    * 1 can kidney beans - or another can of either pinto or black beans (I don't like kidney beans!)

    * 1 can corn (regular or cream style) OR 2 cups frozen corn 

    * 2 cans of water (use the bean cans; equal to 4 cups)

    * grated cheese, sour cream, and/or cilantro for garnish 

    * tortilla chips 

Brown the ground beef and drain as much fat as possible. Return it to the pan with the chopped onion over medium low heat. Stir in the two seasoning packets. Cook just a little longer until the onion is softened.

Transfer the beef mixture to a slow cooker and add the beans, corn, tomatoes/green chilies, and water. Cook on LOW for 4 - 6 hours (depending on your slow cooker).

Garnish as desired when serving.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Meal Plan 7/28 - 8/3, 2014

Monday: Grilled sticky coconut chicken, rice, green salad.  This is a new recipe. I am using Costco frozen boneless/skinless breasts and started marinating them Sunday morning. I am going to cook the rice with the leftover canned coconut milk (about 1 cup) along with my usual homemade chicken broth. There should be some leftovers to make a couple of school day lunches for the freezer.

Tuesday: Cream cheese chicken enchiladas, Mexican rice, green salad. Half of the enchiladas will go in the freezer for a later meal.

Wednesday: I have an Association board meeting (I'm now Vice President, ye gads) and we will have dinner at the meeting. Mr. Mamie and GrandmaT will have baked spaghetti that was portioned off from an earlier meal this summer, put in a  casserole dish, and frozen just for an evening like this!

Thursday: Either eat out or get a pizza from the Costco food court to bring home. We have a lot of errands and appointments on this day.

Friday: Vicki's turkey burgers (my stepmama's recipe, yum!) and oven fries. Just put all the burger  recipe ingredients in a bowl and mix together with your hands (Mr. Mamie does that for me). For the burgers, we use ground turkey from Costco, which is usually packaged in around 1.25 pound portions. We follow the recipe and just use whatever the amount of ground turkey is in one package, and we make SIX patties. Make sure to put a divot in the middle of the patty so it doesn't turn into a ball on the grill! Then FREEZE the patties on parchment paper, and once frozen completely put them into a gallon Ziploc.  We just take out the patties and grill from frozen - works GREAT.

Saturday: Goulash and green salad. Half of the goulash will be frozen as a casserole for a later meal.

Sunday: Breakfast for dinner, specifics yet to be determined. That is the usual procedure here on Sundays.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Meal Plan 7/21 - 7/27, 2014

More than one person has asked if I would ever blog again, especially meal plans.  I'll try to get back in the habit!

Here was last week's plan:

Monday: Refrigerated cheese tortellini and marinara sauce from Costco. Their jarred marinara sauce is GOOD! Green salad on the side.

Tuesday: Tacos using a "soft taco kit" I got as a present from a kid during Teacher Appreciation Week in May (my love of tacos is well-known in my classroom).

Wednesday: Frozen chicken patties (from Costco) as sandwiches on Kaiser rolls with Annie's Organic Shells and Cheese and green salad on the side.

Thursday: Spicy garlic lime chicken on the grill, lime rice, corn/black bean/Ro-tel [drain/rinse one can black beans, drain one can corn, dump into pan with one can Ro-tel tomatoes and heat], green salad. We used Costco frozen boneless/skinless chicken breasts. Mr. Mamie and I ate ours with the chicken chopped up and combined with the other stuff in corn tortillas as tacos.  I put several small containers of chopped chicken/rice/beans-corn-toms in the freezer to use on big green salads as school lunches.

Friday: Haunani's French bread pizza, green salad. I've known Haunani since I was 12 years old... I love that we can trade blog recipes in our 40s! ;)

Saturday: Swedish meatballs using frozen Costco meatballs and a sauce I have modified from a few different recipes, served over egg noodles; green salad on the side.

Sunday: Sausage biscuits and Mamie's skillet potatoes.  The leftover sausage biscuits are being put in the freezer for school day breakfasts.  We are out of both lettuce and most fruit, so there wasn't much of a "healthy" element to this dinner! Time to go grocery chopping, clearly.

 ~Mamie
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Swedish Meatballs

I hate the process of making meatballs - it's so gross, and then I never want to eat the meatballs after going through the ickiness of making them. So I buy the big bag of Italian seasoned frozen meatballs at Costco and use them for anything meatball-related. This seems to work fine, so I see no reason to change! ;)

I've tried a few different recipes for Swedish meatballs, and finally came up with this:

Meatballs: Just use the Costco ones! About 20 - 24 oz of meatballs by weight. Bake them in the oven as directed while you're making the sauce.

Noodles: 8 oz of dry egg noodles, cooked. Boil noodles once you have added the meatballs to the sauce. The meatball and sauce  flavors will "marry" while the noodles are cooking.

Sauce:

• 2 cups beef broth
• 1-1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 Tbl soy sauce
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground dried rosemary
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1-1/2 tsp basil

1. Whisk flour into milk, creating a slurry
2. Combine flour/milk mixture, soy sauce, and beef broth in a large saucepan, whisk together.
3. Add the sour cream to saucepan, whisk and cook on medium for a couple of minutes.
4. Add all spices to saucepan, whisk to combine.
5. Cook sauce on low-medium until thickened, whack/stir occasionally.
6. Add meatballs to sauce and let them simmer while noodles are boiling.
7. Drain noodles and return to pot; poor sauce/meatballs on noodles and stir gently to combine.

~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Mamie's Skillet Potatoes

Back in about 1991 I lived in an apartment located on the corner of Genesee Avenue and Fez Street in the "Golden Triangle" area near UC San Diego. My roommate was a delightful young man from my social group with whom I am still in touch with via Facebook. Since his ascension to membership in the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles he is now referred to jokingly as "Local Celebrity ___________ ___________ " which cracks me up every time.

ANYWAY, Local Celebrity as we'll call him, made delicious breakfast potatoes.  I have continued making the same basic style of potatoes for the last 20+ years. This is how I do it:

Scrub several potatoes russet potatoes and pierce with a fork a couple of times. bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes or so. Remove from oven and cut in half length-wise to cool.

Once cool, cut potatoes into largish chunks. Finely dice a small onion and a couple of cloves of garlic.

I use a large cast iron skillet (yes, on my glass cook top!) and some bacon grease (which I save in the fridge); you can use whatever skillet and oil you have/prefer. Sauté the onion and garlic lightly in the hot grease/oil.

Add potatoes; stir by "flipping" so you don't mash up the potatoes a whole bunch. Get the onion/garlic distributed through the potatoes.  Season with fresh-ground salt and pepper, then sprinkle  some ground cumin on the potatoes to taste.  Flip the potatoes around and season again.

Let cook on low for 10 minutes or so, then sprinkle with grated sharp cheddar cheese.  Let the cheese just melt down into the potatoes for a few minutes, and then devour the deliciousness!


~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)

Review - The Circle (Dave Eggars)

The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So glad I'm finished with this one, because it has invaded my dreams every night for over a week. In describing it to my husband when I was about 1/4 of the through I used the phrase "totalitarian utopia" - a phrase which is seemingly oxymoronic but in reality os totally accurate. Later in the book almost the very same combination of words is used to describe what will occur upon "completion" of The Circle, a time in which the "criminality of privacy" will become the norm. The book is neither subtle nor even terribly clever in presenting its views, and the writing itself isn't necessarily stellar (Eggars is certainly capable of better), but - BUT, the novel's reflection of the direction in which our society is moving, and its prescience in drawing a picture of the future should Google, I mean THE CIRCLE, achieve "completion" is terrifying.

View all my reviews ~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)