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)
Sunday, July 27, 2014
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)
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:
~Mamie "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" (Hunter S. Thompson)
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
- Whisk flour into milk, creating a slurry
- Combine flour/milk mixture, soy sauce, and beef broth in a large saucepan, whisk together.
- Add the sour cream to saucepan, whisk and cook on medium for a couple of minutes.
- Add all spices to saucepan, whisk to combine.
- Cook sauce on low-medium until thickened, whack/stir occasionally.
- Add meatballs to sauce and let them simmer while noodles are boiling.
- 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)
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)
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