Pots and Pans

Ever have one of those moments when you realize you picked the wrong pot?

Of course, I don't actually have a "right" pot for this - my bigger stockpot is about 4 times the size of this one. I used to have a perfect pot, but it scorched, and now burns anything tomato based, and rather than risk people ruining dinner again, I retired it. It's ok, it cooks down as the leafy things cook.

There is a lot in tonight's dinner that I never ate as a kid - that we would never have been allowed to even buy or cook when I was growing up, because my dad is a very picky eater - he makes my kids look like great eaters :)

This has been my go-to for using up veggies before they went bad, but now that we're not getting a big box every week, I had to buy stuff specifically for this.

"Stuff in a Pot"

1 (or more) packages of smoked sausage. I like kielbasa for this.
Lots of random veggies
garlic - we have a jar of minced garlic, so for this pot I used a big spoonful, probably 1/4 cup. Use less if you don't like garlic, or more if you're making a bigger pot
pepper (1 T or more if you make a bigger pot)
basil (1 T or more if you make a bigger pot)

Tonight, we have a bundle of Swiss chard, a leek, most of an onion, most of a bell pepper, a half dozen small redskin potatoes, the leftovers of a bag of shredded cabbage, and 3 carrots. We've used eggplant, apples, grean beans, peapods, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, sweet potatoes, and probably some other things before too.

Chop into bite sized pieces, and cook for 30-60 minutes until everything seems cooked. Serve with warm crusty bread or garlic bread.

Meal Planning

For the last couple of years, we've had random boxes of fruits and veggies - first, a summer with a CSA, and then a local company that delivered a box of stuff to the door every week.

It was a beautiful thing - cut my shopping time dramatically, mostly saved us money (the CSA not so much, but the service had great prices and we split our box with a friend), and it encouraged eating things that weren't typical staples around here.

Unfortunately, the delivery service is going out of business, which means that I have to figure out what to buy again, and buy the things we're going to eat for the week, rather than planning what to eat based on what shows up on the doorstep.

Which, given my limited shopping availability, means I really need to plan things out ahead of time.

And that's not a bad thing - we're debating kindergarten or a young 5's program for my son next year, and kindergarten here is an all day event. Since he is a really picky eater, I'll be packing his lunches daily I suspect, so getting on the planning bandwagon now is good practice.

One of our plans last year was a bigger freezer. It didn't happen (too much to do, not enough time), but it will have to be done soon to make this manageable in any reasonable sense.

So...every weekend I'll be writing up our meal plan for the week. I'm subscribed to a meal planning service, 5 Dinners in 1 Hour, and I'm going to be looking at how to use her system, which is sort of a once-a-week prep setup. I got the "clean eating" version, which is ideal for us, but not everything on her meal plans each week is something we'll eat, so I'm thinking I'll take some meals from a couple different weeks. Also, she depends a lot on frozen veggies, and that's going to be a hard switch for us, given our history recently of eating almost exclusively fresh veggies (not all - we got overloaded on corn on the cob, so we threw those in the freezer, and can now have lovely roasted corn year round).

So...here's to a new future of better planning (I hope).

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First Dinner Post!

Welcome to my new blog. I'm planning on talking a lot about how real people eat, because that's how it is here - this blog is not my main source of income, I don't have hours to spend in the kitchen each day, and yet we still manage to do ok on the food front. I have no desire to keep chickens, and all attempts at gardening here have been dismal failures. We have our challenges in this house, and I'm sure you have you own at your house...and yet my kids get fed. Expect some reviews and some recipes and some lunches (and my stupidly large stash of lunchbox stuff) and some dinners and anything else food related that comes to mind.

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Lovely post title, right?  I'm doing most of this post by phone in the middle of bedtime. I figure creativity can come later. Or not - I'm months behind on sleep as it is.

Tonight's dinner was a tossed salad (leaf lettuce, spinach, tomato, cheese,  croutons,  pecans,  plus a few cucumber slices for the husband - I think cukes are just gross) and quiche.

It started out as quiche lorraine, but QL doesn't have garlic. Or cheddar. Or parmesan. Or nearly as much bacon as I added, because this was a, "huh. I have leftover bacon. That's unheard of..." kind of a meal. And really, cooking didn't go too badly, once my spouse realized that keeping an eye on the kids was a full contact sport.

I've gotten good at handling grandma's pie crust recipe, and had quite a bit of dough left over, so I made this turnover type thing, stuffed with cherry preserves. Of course, the cherries bubbled out all over the pan, which will be a huge pain to clean....but that's why I have a housekeeper, because we can't keep up with the dishes as it is. (Elaine, if you're reading this, we love you, and we love having you back!)

It turns out that I forgot that I don't really like quiche. Every time I make it I think, "with that list of ingredients it has to be tasty" and then I'm disappointed. Oh well. The husband can have it for his lunch this week.

Meanwhile, I took the other half of the onion that went into the quiche (it was a *big* onion), and put that and some chicken breasts and about 4 heads of garlic (3 fresh that needed to be used up, peeled and sliced, and some pre-chopped-ina-jar) in the crock pot for tomorrow. Tonight I'll chop some root veggies, and tomorrow during my 40 minutes for lunch between appointments I'll throw them in the crockpot with the garlic chicken so that dinner will be ready when we get back from speech therapy. Multi-tasking is a wonderful thing.