This week in the kitchen

Monday/7-Dec-15: Worked on the meal plan and grocery list today.

One more night of fish pie. With a big salad tonight.

Tuesday/8-Dec-15: Out today for BookChatters. Ate lunch at new possibility for meeting place.

Dinner was a halfish recipe of Gratin de Pomme de Terre et Brocoli au Chorizo (web). I had just a bit since I ate out a lunch. This was really good, easy to do, and versatile. If you had the potatoes already boiled and maybe some leftover broccoli, it would be really quick. The gratin was potatoes, broccoli, and chorizo with a sauce of cream, cheese, and garlic. The recipe called for parmesan; I used gorgonzola since there was some to use up. I put parmesan on top rather than comté. Good stuff.

Yogurt on overnight.

Wednesday/9-Dec-15: Shopping late this afternoon after a slow start to the day with two sickies in house. In theory I'm on the upswing but still feeling tired and head full of crap. So late that I postponed tonight's planned dinner till tomorrow.

Late lunch before we left. I sautéed shrooms needing to be used with a bit of onion, some garlic, and some parsley. Made a open-faced sandwich, topped with some gruyère, also needing to be used, and popped under the broiler till the cheese was done. Quite tasty.

Instead there was Chicken Nuggets, an easy recipe I got from EAT-L and haven't found on the web. This is much like a recipe from one of the CL annuals, which uses crushed corn chips for the coating. This recipe called for bread crumbs. I used some crushed pretzels from the freezer, augmented by some crushed saltines. Easy peasy. Roll chunks of chicken breasts in a mixture of flour, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Dip in (butter)milk. Roll in crushed crumbs. Onto a sheet of waxed paper. Into a 400F oven for 20 minutes. Serve with sauces of choice. (We just used various hot sauces.) Served with corn and rice with red beans, made up and turned out really nice. Some yummy store-bought chocolate puddings for after. Later still we're having amaro with some provencal cookies that look and taste like cantuccini, which is why I bought them. First time I've seen these in the store, a nice discovery.

Thursday/10-Dec-15: For lunch I heated the leftover beans and rice and topped each serving with a fried egg. Pretty darn good.

Dinner was Jamie Oliver's Fantastic Fish Tikka Curry (web). Good, but not fantastic. Served over rice, with store-bought rice pudding for dessert.

Friday/11-Dec-15: Not a good day. Off for a haircut in the afternoon, so started a crockpot meal. Plugged it in but forgot to turn on the transformer. Ed thought it was odd not to be smelling it but never investigated. So when I got home, dumped all into a dutch oven and cooked it for an hour and a half.

Left a bit late for haircut and forgot to pack a sandwich. Tomtom and I fought all the way. Hungry when I got there and starving when I left. (Boulangers closed all through this time.) Ate some cookies we keep in the car, got jittery, stopped to pick up a croissant, bumped into another car when I parked. Not much damage to their car (left a note), but small dent in ours. Sigh. (Mystery is that our silver car and their red car left white swipe on both of us. Why?)

Arrived home to find dinner, Pork and Sausage Cazuela (R&WSlowCook, p102), not ready and waiting. Strange recipe. I don't mind crockpot dishes that take some cooking at the start, since the result is ofter better tasting. But this one wants work at the end too. It was good, but not really worth all the work. Lots of leftovers.

Saturday/12-Dec-15: Yogurt on overday.

No lunch and an early dinner, Creamy Sage Butternut White Bean Gnocchi (web). Made a more or less whole recipe of the sauce, but served only half and froze the rest. Used our home-grown winter squash. Used borlotti beans rather than canellini since I had more cans of those. Used almond milk instead of cashew milk, which isn't available; regular milk would do just fine, I'm sure. Didn't use sugar to caramelize the shallots. Pretty good. Then a bit salad. Some cookies for dessert.

Ed's worked on the Cube. No luck. Seems like when the power supply went, it zapped the motherboard. No more Mastercook. No more Framemaker. Sigh.

Sunday/13-Dec-15: More cazuela for dinner. Mini mags for after.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 BACKLOG: no; #2 UNUSED: no; #3 GRAINS: yes; #4 VEG/FISH: 3
This month: #5 PASTA: no; #6 BREAD: no; #7 FotW: no for November/December

This week in the kitchen

Monday/31-Oct-11: We forgot to get bread while we were out yesterday, so I made some Authentic French Bread (Magic, p22, but out of head) on Rapid this morning, so we'd have bread for lunch. Then I made sandwiches of the leftover Mediterranean chicken burgers, with mango chutney and slices of cucumber. Not too bad.

Dinner was a half dose of Pork Chops with Hot Garlic Sauce (MC), grilled on the stove. Tasty. With some polenta and some roasted broccoli with garlic and a few slow-roasted tomatoes.

Tuesday/1-Nov-11: Some replanning involved for today. Most restaurants are closed on Tuesday, so we had our anniversary lunch out on Sunday. I thought I'd make some lamb cutlets with quince jelly glaze for a special dinner, but remembered I've got crockpot lamb vindaloo on for tomorrow, so did a replan. Made an interesting menu I found on the web, but discovered this evening that I made the wrong main course, which explains why the menu was so unbalanced. Will have to repeat the sides with the recommended main course before too long.

So, dinner was Ancho Chile, Shrimp, and Pasta (SimplyRecipes), a very tasty and quick main course. I served it with a couscous pilaf (totally useless because of the pasta, but the leftovers will make a nice salad one of these nights) and North African Spiced Carrots (EatingWell), which were very tasty. Some tiramisu from the freezer for dessert.

Put the lamb for tomorrow's vindaloo on to marinate overnight.

Wednesday/2-Nov-11: Yogurt on overday in the yogurt maker. Lamb Vindaloo (R&WSlowCook, p112, cookbooker) on overday in the crockpot. When we got back from the zoo, I boiled off the extra liquid from the vindaloo while the rice cooked. Pretty good, although nowhere need as hot as vindaloo should be. For dessert there was toasted Belgian waffle topped with defrosted raspberries and some raspberry sherbet.

Thursday/3-Nov-11: Cupboard is getting bare. Shopped early last week and late this week.

Dinner was Spaghetti Carbonara with a Poached Egg (MC), followed by a salad. Simple and tasty.

Friday/4-Nov-11: Shopped this morning.Dinner at our local quiz tonight (where we wiped out the competition), so nothing happened in the kitchen.

Saturday/5-Nov-11: Nice dinner tonight. Started with a little salad made from the leftover couscous gussied up. Then Coquilles à la Florentine (MC 2BTried), which apparently came from Cooking Light a long time ago. Quite nice, although a bit of the instructions seems to have gotten lost at some point; all the online versions I've found have the same problem. Is the sauce under, over, or mixed with the spinach and scallops? Accompanied by some orzo, a trifle too lemony tonight. Then a big salad.

Ended up with Pear Clafoutis (H2CE, p642, cookbooker). Very nice this was. Comice pears.

Yogurt on overnight.

Sunday/6-Nov-11: Working on my preserved lemon stash, dinner was Chicken Tagine with Olives and Preserved Lemons (NAfrica, p61). Turns out that I made this before (in July), but didn't mark the book at all and managed to keep the page spotless. It was good again. Served with couscous and a repeat of the North African Spiced Carrots. Pear clafoutis for dessert.

Progress on goals
This week: #1 VEG/FISH: yes, #2 SOUP: no, #3 MIDDAY: no
This month: #4 PASTA: yes for October, no for November