The week's menu in review 10/9/11

Here's a recap of this week's dinner menu.  It's been kind of interesting for me to look back at what I planned to do and what I actually did.  Eventually, I hope that I can learn more about how much to plan, how much effort I can expect myself to exert, and what our favorites are so that the plan and the reality end up closer together.

Monday: Last week I spent a lot of Monday running to various grocery stores trying to get everything I needed for the week.  Mondays are already pretty busy around here so by the time dinner rolled around, I was in no mood to cook it.  So this week I decided to stick with something simple and easy and had all the ingredients on hand.  We had turkey tortilla roll-ups with roasted potatoes.  Potatoes cut into the shape of a french fry in an attempt to satisfy my fast food craving. Didn't work, but they were yummy anyway.

Tuesday:  Still in the throes of a fast food craving, I pulled a pound of ground beef out of the freezer and made patty melts.  Didn't help, but still yummy. 

Wednesday: My husband had mentioned earlier in the week that he was feeling like some pasta.  Since I was lucky enough to have both a third of a pound of bacon and a big ol' chunk of Parmesan cheese on hand, I decided to go with a simple favorite--pasta carbonara.  I more or less use Rachel Ray's recipe.

Thursday: The kids call this my very best soup ever.  Most people would probably call it vegetable beef soup. I call it pot roast soup because you start with a pot roast.  It comes from my friend Liz who is an amazing cook.  Since she is also an amazing sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics, one of the top in the country in fact, I doubt she will ever write a cookbook.  Therefore, I don't think she would mind if I shared the recipe with  you.  As long as you keep it between you and me.  Don't go telling the whole neighborhood.

It's made in the crock pot so of course I love it.  WARNING: You need a really big crock pot.  Mine was not big enough.  I ended up taking out part of the liquid to make room for all the vegetables.  I just added it back in the end, and it turned out beautifully.  I just wanted you to know.  You can always make half a batch if you don't have a large crock pot. 

Pot Roast Soup

Ingredients:
1 bunch of leeks, cleaned and sliced
1 large or 2 small onions, chopped
4-5 carrots, cleaned and sliced
3-4 ribs celery, cleaned and diced
chuck roast, 3-ish pounds
1 large can diced tomatoes
4-5 TBS Orrington Farms bouillon granules (not that cheap, gross stuff)
3-4 TBS A-1 sauce (Liz says "a big glug" so I'm kinda guessing here.  Whatever I did worked, and I think it was around 3 TBS)
3-4 potatoes, peeled and chopped into chunks or thick slices
1 can green beans
1 can corn

Directions: Sweat leeks, onions, carrots and celery in a skillet in a little olive oil until they begin to soften but not brown.  Add to crock pot.  Cut roast into large chunks.  Place on top of vegetables.  Add tomatoes, bouillon, A-1, and 3-4 cups of water.  Cook on low 4-5 hours.  Add potatoes, beans and corn.  Cook 4 hours more.

Really, really yummy served with some yeast rolls smothered in butter and honey.  Come to think of it, what isn't good served with  yeast rolls smothered in butter and honey?  Never mind.

Friday: Fridays are pizza and movie night at our house, and we usually order out.  Instead, I decided to make French bread pizza A)because I am getting really sick of the same old pizza week after week and B) to further reign in our restaurant spending.  The kids were less than thrilled about this, but I was really happy with how the pizza turned out.  I'll tell you how I made it sometime soon.

Saturday: We went out, our planned night out for the week.

Sunday: I ended up making some macaroni and cheese for the kids.  The boxed stuff even.  I'm so ashamed.  :) I heated up some leftover soup for hubby and me.

And that whole "cutting down on the cheese in our diet" plan I talked about last week?  Let's just forget I ever mentioned it, shall we? 

I've Got Issues

I have issues.  Really, I do.  Not that I didn't know I had issues before now, but once in a while something happens that makes me take a good look at myself and go, "Wow, I'm crazier than I thought."

I might have mentioned that we are having a little budget crisis in our household right now.  Nothing major, but even a small bump in the road in the financial department is enough to send me to the kitchen for a giant spoonful of hot fudge followed by a wine chaser--bottle size, please. I get a little more stressed out than is probably necessary.  When the end of the month arrived last month with $4.17 in my account and a transfer from savings required for my husband's account, I panicked and demanded we both take a good, hard look at the budget.

No big surprises there, really.  We've been eating out too much.  Back-to-school season is freaking expensive, and getting more so every minute. (FREE public education? Bahhh!  I'll save that for another time.) We have an extra house payment with one of our rental houses sitting empty.  Nothing we didn't know and nothing we can't solve given a little time and focused effort.

Nonetheless, to calm my racing pulse, I've called a self-imposed temporary hiatus to any unnecessary spending and a once a week limit to eating out.  Sounds simple enough.  To anyone not quite as crazy as I am, I suppose.  It actually sounded totally fine to me too.  Until about the fifth day of no shopping and no eating out.

Now, let's be clear. I am not a shopaholic. I am a committed bargain shopper. I rarely buy anything that I don't have a coupon for or that isn't on sale or that we don't need.  We can debate needs and wants later, but with three children, three houses, and a business, there are lots of things we need.  I try very hard to never pay full price for all of those things so when I am out and discover a great deal on something, I buy it.  This happens quite frequently.  At least a couple of times a week.  It might be mouse traps that we will inevitably need that are in the clearance bin for mere pennies, an unadvertised sale at the Goodwill on housewares so I can get the cloth napkins I've been eyeing at half-price (carbon footprint, you know), or just the right size container I find at a garage sale for the kids' gazillion stuffed animals.

I've been walking past all of that this week, and it's starting to make me twitch.

I went to Target last night just to get milk. This was completely unnecessary since I drove by two groceries and four convenience stores to get to Target, but I really was just dying to touch all the stuff.  Stuff I am not letting myself buy right now.  Even though a bunch of it was on clearance.  Even though we need it or will soon.  Do alcoholics go to bars just to have a Diet Coke?  Oh boy, do I have issues.

Another thing I think you probably already know: I like to cook.  I really do.  And I'm not bad at it.  So, what's the deal with restaurants?  By Day #8 of no eating in restaurants (it ended up we had one whole week of no eating out planned, and then the second week where we planned a night out at the end, so in whole it was like two weeks with no restaurant), I was having daydreams of french fries.  I made oven baked fries at home one night in an attempt to curb the craving. No relief.  The next night I pulled a pound of ground beef out of the freezer and made patty melts in an attempt to quench the craving.  No relief.

Ends up a friend was feeling the need to get out of the house with her four-year-old one day and invited me out to lunch on Day #10.  Who could say no to a friend in need?  I'm a giver, you know.  Even though I was prepared to give up my first born for a plate of bacon-cheese fries, we went to a place that has a fancy BBQ chicken salad I love.  I ended up getting that.  And water.  No Diet Coke, which I usually only allow myself at restaurants.  And I still felt a little better.  The twitching subsided for a while.

I think I am a bit (maybe a lot) addicted to restaurant food.  I used to believe that I enjoyed restaurants so much because someone else was taking care of everything.  I don't have to plan it, prepare it, cook it, get up in the middle of it to refill anyone's milk, clean it up or find the right size plastic container and matching lid to store the leftovers in.  All of that is really nice.

Yet, I am starting to think that there is a kind of addiction that goes along with the overly-salted, overly-fatty, overly-sugary food served in restaurants.  Not that I haven't heard this idea before. Thanks to Jamie Oliver, Michael Polan, and Food Inc., I know way more about the things that go on in processed and restaurant-prepared food than I would like to know.  It ain't pretty.  Even knowing that, I didn't really think that I was addicted.  Just that I enjoyed the experience of going out to eat. I know I don't NEED french fries or Cincinnati chili with a mountain of cheese on top or cheddar garlic biscuits drenched in butter.  Even more importantly, I can make all of that at home if I really do want it.  So what is causing this ridiculously overwhelming desire to run out and get it?  Clearly, I have serious issues.

In a lot of ways I feel like I do a good job making sure my family eats healthy, but we've got miles to go still.  In a lot of ways, I know we do a good job managing our money, but we could do a much better job if we were more intentional about it. Despite the budget crunch that prompted these changes, I'm pretty happy to be working on my "issues." Self-improvement is good for the soul. Sometimes a little crisis is just the push I need to move in the right direction. 

Small But Mighty

My six-year-old is a non-fiction kinda guy. On our most recent trip to the library, I told my three children they could each get two or three books since they each still had several (have you heard about my library book....ummm...issues? Maybe another time.) books at home. The 4-year-old came back with exactly three books, probably the first three she saw, thrilled just to be able to pick something of her own without having to make any compromises with the brothers. The 8-year-old came back with four books simply because it wasn't three like I'd told him. We're having some control issues at the moment. Again, another time. The 6-year-old returns with an armload of books about to tumble out of his little grasp. He has one audio CD with Halloween music, four books on dinosaurs and four on planets.

Tonight as we sat down to read at bedtime, he handed me a book on Uranus. Little did I know I was in for an education. When I studied the planets, there were nine of them. And what the heck is a dwarf planet? Boy, how things have changed. Did you know that it would take about 10 years traveling in a spaceship to get to Uranus from here? Probably from where you are too, wherever that is. Did you know that it takes 48 years for the northern hemisphere of Uranus to experience sunrise since the planet is tipped on its side for who-knows-what reason? Did you know that Saturn produces more heat than it gets from the Sun because of its immense size and the heat generated from all that pressure? Nope, me neither.

All this reminded me of a shirt this same six-year-old likes to wear. It proclaims him "Small but mighty." Yes, I am certainly feeling how small I am. Not only is our solar system down a planet, but no one bothered to tell me. Our immense solar system is only a tiny speck in the unfathomable universe beyond. Despite movie makers' imagination, we will likely never know what's really out there, at least not for many generations to come. Many people don't know what the lives of people in other continents, countries, regions and cities are really like, much less what lies beyond our atmosphere.

It makes me feel small. Reminds me that in many ways I am small. More importantly, it reminds me that so many of the things that I allow to worry me, to sap my energy, to stress me out, to anger me, to keep me busy, to hold me back are so very small.

What a small thing that the grocery store is out of newspapers when I finally get to go pick one up at 9:30 at night. Yes, it will throw off my coupon strategy and grocery budget for the next month, but still-small.

What a small thing that some unnamed child left a green marker between the couch cushions, marring both of them with ink that refuses to budge despite my best efforts. It will just have to stay there, annoying me, until we can get a new couch which will probably not happen until 2017. Yes, small in the scheme of things. Very small in comparison to the love I have for this child and my desire for them to know that I will never love him or her one iota less even if they scribbled green marker on every single couch cushion I own.

What a small thing that our budget is falling a little short this month for many reasons that I won't detail for you at the moment but is in no small part a result of a rental property that has remained unrented for several months now awaiting a roof that has been delayed by roofer and insurance adjusters alike who do not seem at all concerned about the shortfall in our budget their lolly gagging is creating.  Stressful but small when stacked up next to the blessings our little family can count.

What a small thing that I seem unable to stop myself from writing run-on sentences when many people who I don't even know will probably read them and judge me for it. Annoying but small.

What a small thing that a wayward lump of cells has decided to overgrow its welcome in the breast of a strong, beautiful, intelligent, inspiring mother of two small children who is also my friend and who I cannot imagine this vast, enormous world without.

And then I remember. We are small. But mighty. We are mighty and the stress of life, motherhood, traffic, grocery shopping, embarrassment, too small budgets, and too full schedules is no match for me. I might occasionally huddle on the couch for an afternoon feeling scared and overwhelmed until I remember. We are mighty.

We are small. And this cancer thing is minuscule when standing against the strength and power and love and light and faith and laughter and joy and energy of those of us surrounding my friend. We are small. But we are mighty. Way, way more mighty than this.

Weekly dinner menu Oct 3-9

Despite the chicken nugget debacle last week (exaggerate??? me??? never!), I feel like the menu planning worked out extremely well. I am not exactly a plan ahead kind of gal so actually cooking five of the seven meals I had planned is a huge success. Now, the trick will be doing it again. And again. And again. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

This week's menu is not quite as firm as last week's since I haven't scoured the weekly ads yet to see exactly what is on sale. I do know what I have in the refrigerator, freezer and pantry so we're going to start there and make modifications as necessary.

Last week was really heavy on the cheese. I think I bought three or four ponds for the week's meals. Tasty, yes. Budget-wise and waist-wise, not so much. So I am going to work on reducing that a bit.

I am feeling a little under the weather so it's simpler than last week.

Day #1: BLT Turkey Tortilla roll-ups, apple salad, baked potatoes (maybe twice baked if the Nyquil does its job tonight).

Day #2: Slow cooker pot roast soup. My very best soup ever, according to my children.

Day #3: Baked spaghetti.

Day 4: Homemade chicken nuggets for the kids, fried chicken salad for the adults.

Day #5: French bread pizza.

Day #6: Chicken, rice and green bean casserole.

We're planning to go out one night this week so that's all we'll need. If we end up needing a seventh meal, pasta carbonara has been on my mind. Happy cooking!

The week's menu in review

So here's how this week's menu turned out:

Monday: Spice roast chicken with vegetables. The chicken was ok. The vegetables were phenomenal. I think next time I will stick to my tried and true roast chicken recipe (Yes, I am going to keep you in suspense. For now.) but make the vegetables this way. Basically, carrots and potatoes cut into sticks, wedges of onion, salt, pepper and olive oil, all roasted at about 400 degrees. Not rocket science but delish.

Tuesday: Crock pot Mongolian beef, braised baby bok choy, and rice. Again, the vegetables were my favoite part of the meal. Not so much for the children.

Wednesday: And here is where the plan starts to fall apart. I had a pretty busy day scheduled already with deliveries, phone calls, carpool, errands, babysitting for a friend, and an evening business appointment, with just enough time in between to brown some beef for nachos. Until the school called to say come and get the 3rd grader. Who needed a last minute doctor visit. I ended up throwing some chicken nuggets in the oven moments before the babysitter arrived and telling her to find some applesauce in the fridge to go alongside.

Thursday: Nachos. Since we ate most of the leftover chicken for lunches, instead of the quesadillas I had planned, I made a simple corn spoon bread. Yum.

Friday: White cheddar mac-n-cheese. No fried green tomatoes. I gave everyone some fruit of their choice instead.

Saturday: We decided to invite friends over for game night so I had to come up with something that would fit the tastes of all involved, not stress me out by being too complicated and still fit the budget. Riiiiiight. I finally decided on Mexican Lasagna which turned out to be a huge hit. We had chips and salsa, veggies and dip and various toppings for the lasagna on the side. And a friend brought amazing pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Sunday: Tonight I made the Spanish Tortilla with Salami. It was a hit on all accounts--super easy to make, very inexpensive, and tasty according to all. Yes, even the cranky 8-year-old.

French bread pizza got cut from this week's line-up. Maybe next time, pizza.

Next week, I'm thinking of Asian lettuce wraps, taco pizza, submarine sandwiches with oven sweet potato fries, some kind of soup, homemade chicken nuggets (for the kids) and fried chicken salad (for the adults). The official plan will have to wait until I've had a chance to browse the Sunday ads and see what's on sale. I am sure the recipes await the honor of my selction with bated breath.

And this is why it's called CONFUSED Mommyhood

My head is spinning with thoughts today. And by thoughts I mean anxieties, plans, desires, dreams, worries, recipes, to-do lists, choices, hurts, joys, questions, and several other things that I don't even know how to label.

So here's a little preview of what might be coming your way in the near future:

1. How this week's menu plan turned out.

2. What's on next week's menu.

3. Why a menu plan is just a little piece of the control freakishness that's keeping me calm enough to parent, work, keep house and appear reasonably normal (which even on a good day is a stretch). 'Cause right now I am kinda freaking out about the budget deficit, and I'm not talking about the federal one.

4. How food seems to be such a huge focus of my life right now. Not only meal planning and budgeting, but how the food culture in our country is so far off track. How I just can't look the other way, follow the crowd and not make a fuss about it.

5. How in the world I am ever going to get my to do list done. Ok, forget getting it done. How do I even choose where to start? What's most important? What has to get done right this very minute and what can wait until next week? Or never. Because that's exactly when some of it is going to happen. Yep, never.

6. If I've ruined my children's lives by starting them in school too early, starting them in school too late, teaching them to say vagina and penis instead of who-ha and wee wee, giving them Kool-Aid sweetened with artificial sweetener every Friday on pizza night, letting them watch entirely too much television and play a ridiculous amount of computer games, telling my daughter a gazillion times how beautiful she is (even though I try to say she's smart and funny at least twice as often) and therefore inbedding in her psyche the belief that her beauty is the most important thing about her, screaming at them that they made a very bad choice by putting a green marker under the couch cushion and leaving a giant stain without telling anyone about it for two and a half days, ....

Oh my goodness, I need a drink. Or four. At least it's well after 5PM, and I don't have feel guilty about that. Though I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Weekly dinner menu Sept 26-30

My BFF is an amazing woman who accomplishes more in a day than than most people accomplish in a week, maybe a month. She teaches a classroom of 27 first-graders, raises three children under the age of 8, runs a household in the country, helps her husband repair cars and split wood for their wood-burning stove, leads her daughter's Girl Scout Troupe, sings in the church choir, teaches Bible study, and manages to write random thank you notes to people to show her appreciation for their kindness. She's the kind of person who you annoys you because she's making you look bad, while at the same time you are in awe and admiration that she can do all that without the need to drink excessively or have a therapist on retainer.

There's just one thing I can confidently say I am better at than she is (probably because of the fact that she has way less time for it than me, but still...). That's cooking. She's been trying to come up with some new ideas for dinner and keeps asking me what I'm cooking. Of course, when she asks it's always something like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. Or PBJ sandwiches and cucumber slices. Glamorous indeed. AND, since I really, really, really, really need to be better about planning our meals ahead, I thought I'd put them here. Not only is it the easiest way to share them with my friend, but it will make me feel more committed to planning our meals. Hopefully, the information might be helpful to someone else too.

A few thoughts on my style of meal planning:

• I take a look at what's in my freezer and pantry so I can use what I have whenever possible.


• I like to use a mix of new recipes and old family favorites, as well as quick and easy recipes combined with more in-depth, from scratch, old-fashioned cooking.


• I take a look at the weekly ads before getting started so I can use what's on sale.


• I don't assign days to the menu. I like to cook based on what I am in the mood for (which is part of the reason I am so bad at planning meals ahead) so I try to get the ingredients I need for the week and then decide on a daily basis what we'll be having.


• Generally, I make the more complicated, longer-cooking dishes early in the week, so there are leftovers that I can then base other meals on later in the week. Plus, I have more time, patience and energy early in the week.


• The menus don't always include side dishes or vegetables. It's not that we don't have them. I just use whatever I happen to have on hand. Right now, that means cucumbers since they are currently plentiful in our garden, sliced apples or waldorf salad, grapes which are inexpensive and in season right now, or salad or carrot sticks which we pretty much always have on hand. If all else fails, unsweetened applesauce.

Here's what's on the menu this week:

Meal # 1: Spice roasted chicken (legs and thighs) with vegetables (carrots, onions and potatoes). I will make enough so that there is plenty of leftover chicken to use for lunches and quesadillas later in the week. This is one of the new recipes I'll be trying. The chicken is rubbed with a combination of salt, pepper, paprika and cinnamon. It calls for parsnips to be added to the vegetables. I've never had them. We'll see...

Meal #2: Nachos and Quesadillas. You can pretty much use whatever you have on hand for these. While I don't exactly consider nachos a healthy dinner, (1) I've had a craving and (2) I have a bag of tortilla chips in my pantry that I don't have a plan for. So, I'll brown a pound of ground beef, season half of it and use on the nachos. I will use a little leftover chicken from earlier in the week, plus whatever vegetables I have on hand, to make some quesadillas.

Meal #3: French bread pizza. I will use some of the ground beef from nacho night (the unseasoned half), combined with some chopped salami or pepperoni (or some Italian Sausage if I end up getting any to make soup later in the week), mixed with spaghetti sauce, spread it on the bread, sprinkle on some cheese and bake. Probably add a salad or some carrot sticks.

Meal #4: Crock pot Mongolian beef with rice and sauteed baby bok choy. This is one of my very favorite recipes ever. I love Chinese food, but find it challenging to make at home. This is so easy and delicious.

Meal #5: Spanish Tortilla with Salad. This will be another new recipe. Basically, it's eggs, potatoes and whatever else you want to put in there, started on the stovetop and finished in the oven. The recipe I have calls for red pepper and salami, and since I can use salami in the kids' lunches and in the French bread pizza, I'll probably stick with that. I might even have a pepper in the garden and can take that off my grocery list.

Meal #6: Mac-n-cheese and fried green tomatoes. The kids have been requesting my "very best mac-n-cheese ever" made with white cheddar so I am going to make that for them this week. It's rare I try three new recipes in a week, but I found a simple and delicious-sounding recipe for fried green tomatoes. Plus, I have a ton of them in the garden, and I've always wanted to try making them so why not? If that's not your thing, any fruit or vegetable could stand in.

Meal #7: I may or may not end up making this one, but I saw a yummy recipe sausage, white bean and spinach stew. If I cook 5 nights, we usually have plenty of leftovers for another night, and end up going out one night of the week. I still like to make a pot of soup to have on hand for lunches or an extra busy night. So if I have time, I might do this one too and just plan to freeze the leftovers.

I'll let you know how the week turns out--if anything is a huge hit or huge flop, if we resort to peanut butter and jelly any nights, if we have entirely too many leftovers by Wednesday, that kind of thing. Hope you find something useful here. And happy cooking!