Made a spinach & onion quiche last night - mostly for breakfast/lunch for today & tmrrw but had a slice last night (to make sure it turned out OK, yanno) and despite the lack of bacon, it’s pretty good! I think this is the 1st quiche I’ve ever made that incorporated absolutely no bacon. However, I had some leftover pesto-from-a-Knorr-packet and drizzled that in. Thumbs up on that choice!
Prepped stuffing to bake tonight or tomorrow - cubes of toasted stale bread, plus lots of carrot/onion/celery sauteed in a whole lotta butter, plus some stock and garlic.
Chicken tonight. Thighs and drums, roasted in the oven for an hour, then rolled in chicken salt (a mysterious combination of chicken stock cubes, lo salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and any herbs I decide to throw in). To be serve with courgettes (that’s zucchini to you) and mushrooms, done in the pan with a bit of coconut oil and a bit of dill thrown in for good measure.
Sunday, we cooked steak, salmon, chicken, and hamburgers on our little charcoal grill under a blue sky and nippy wind. We are still picking away at that.
Tuesday evening, blue sky, sunshine, 55 degrees. We went to get a hot dog down by the lake.
Today: day two of over a foot of snow, 4 degrees, wind chill way below zero. Socked in! I knew it was coming, so I was prepared, and we are having good old fashioned mashed potatoes and meatloaf, with a round loaf of tuscan bread. I am planning to make bread pudding this afternoon.
Last time I made lasagna (it makes a 9 x 13 pan and an 8 x 8 pan) my husband cut up the leftovers, individually wrapped servings and froze them. I just pulled one of them out for dinner for me. I don’t know what he’s going to eat.
Mostaccioli with chunky sauce. Fresh frozen tomatoes and basil from last summer’s garden, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and Italian cheese mix.
Tossed salad with Italian dressing
Crusty bread
Strawberries and ice cream
We’ve got weather in the 60s this week, so I’m going to barbecue a marinated flank steak tonight. Tomorrow it will probably be scallops and quinoa on the stove.
Last night was a turkey & Provolone stromboli with green onion and bacon. Sides were fresh pineapple and a mixed salad (dressings chosen individually).
Tonight, who can say. I’d love to do baked ziti with the leftover (and perked up) salad as well as red seedless grapes, but I’m cooking for kids tonight. They’ll probably clamor for traditional mac & cheese.
Last night tried Pork steaks with a blueberry sauce, celeriac mash, and flower sprouts (which I’d never heard of…because apparently they were only invented a few years ago)
ETA:
Oh man… a recent trip back to Aus made me miss chicken salt pretty hard. Will have to try making my own.
Today I’m making vegetable beef soup, a kitchen-sink type thing good on this blustery day, with some cornbread sticks. Tomorrow will be fried cube steak, roasted broccoli & Brussels sprouts, and mac & cheese. For Saturday it’s thinly sliced chicken, onion, and green/yellow/red pepper strips in flatbread.
Tonight will be jerk chicken, rice and peas (more like red beans and rice actually), and fried plantains.
Tomorrow is Friday so I’ll find a fish fry to hit up.
Tonight will be pork chops pounded flat and breaded into cutlets, with a side of braised ginger sweet potatoes and spinach. And probably mashed potatoes, mostly for my husband’s sake. I’m already drooling at the thought of those sweet potatoes.
Tonight, a pot roast from the slow cooker, with some kind of veg and biscuits. No one seems to like it when I do the whole meal in the crock pot for some reason, but it’s fine if I cook the veg separately. Broccoli and carrots, I think.
On Saturday, we’ll be firing up the smoker. I wanted to do it on Sunday, which is my birthday. But, my husband, an OTR truck driver, will most likely have to leave that day. So, we won’t have the time to fiddle with it all. Plus, it’ll be a warm-ish day on Saturday.
We will be smoking a large turkey breast, Cornish hens, and what-I-hope-will-be pastrami. Sides will be baked beans, deviled eggs, roasted vegetables (Cauliflower, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and new potatoes), kraut, and homemade bread. I will be making a blackberry/raspberry cobbler for dessert.
Sure! I’m not a big fan of bread pudding, but I have half a loaf of pannetone in the freezer I wanted to move out, and its a good way to use it up. I use a standard recipe, cut down a bit as there are only two of us and I didn’t want to make enough for a football team.
I cut up the equivalent of 7 or 8 slices of bread, cubed
Mixed with half a stick of melted butter
a teaspoon of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg
4 large eggs
1/2 cup of sugar (because the pannetone is sweet)
a teaspoon of vanilla
a dash of salt
2-1/4 cups of hot milk
I mixed the bread, butter, spices and put in a casserole dish. Beat the eggs, sugar, vanilla and slowly wisked in the hot milk (temper it in, so the eggs don’t cook). Pour it on the bread, let it soak about 10 minutes, and then baked at 375 degrees (in a water bath, a pan filled with hot water, so it has a better chance of cooking through). I started checking after half an hour, if a knife inserted comes out clean, but it may take longer. I don’t know why, but sometimes it takes closer to an hour. If the top gets too brown, I put a piece of foil over it, loosely.
I searched for a little airline bottle of honey whiskey or rum in the back of the cupboard and made a sauce:
1/4 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, 1/4 cup of cream (had to thaw out a half pint that ws in the freezer) and 2 tablespoons of the whiskey. Stir over low heat till it comes to a gentle boil, and spooned over the warm bread pudding.
