New Normal

"New normal" is the code word around our house these days. Our older children have left for college. I've started homeschooling again with our five year old. The summer garden and all of its lovely fresh produce are dwindling. (The fresh eggplant in the picture is now only a memory.) The temperatures have finally started dropping to a comfortable temperature. I have purchased my fall vegetable plants and need to plant them. As I mentioned last time, our menu choices are changing as well. Less red meat, more seafood, chicken and meatless meals. I am also having to relearn how to cook for a small family. Change is good, but change requires adjustment - a new normal.

With the new school year also comes the return of after school activities. It makes it very difficult to find time to cook. Planning is important, but flexibility is also critical. Some nights you may have to eat the leftovers that you had planned for another evening. Try to keep a few quick meals in the freezer for times when starting from scratch is not an option. I know it isn't glamorous, but frozen pizza is something quick that everyone likes. I try to keep salad fixings on hand so I can always add a salad. Making something "semi-homemade" is usually healthier and less expensive than making a quick trip to the drive through. When I don't have homemade spaghetti sauce in the freezer, I buy a jar at the grocery store. Just watch the sugar and sodium! Another trick I learned from a friend is to do as much prep work as possible early. I admit that I am still working on this one. If everything is chopped and ready to go, sometimes it doesn't take that long to throw it all together.

As you may know, I always love finding new recipes. As we are exploring this "new normal" of eating less meat, I needed some new vegetarian cookbooks to peruse. However, cookbooks are very expensive. I picked up one in the book store and its listed price was $55.00! There are lots of places online to find recipes, but sometimes I just want to thumb through the pages. The local library has shelves and shelves of cookbooks! Of course you can check them out for free and find some new ideas. You can try a few recipes and then return them. If you love the cookbook, you could then buy it after you have already tried it out.

I spent a lot of time on tips, so I am going to simply hit some highlight meals.

My favorite new vegetarian recipe

Pasta with Sunday Ragu' (This was on page 354 of the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics Cookbook I checked out from the library. I couldn't find the recipe online.)
Tossed green salad
French bread
This "meat" sauce used a meat alternative. I used something I found in the natural foods freezer section. It was a fungi. It was good though. Everyone liked it. (No one was fooled that it was meat though.)

Short on time idea

I had to grocery shop late. Steamed shrimp at our grocery store is no more expensive than fresh at the fish/meat section. So I bought shrimp and had them season and steam it. At home I made a quick cocktail sauce out of chili sauce (ketchup works fine,) horseradish and lemon juice. That evening I had some leftover slaw in the refrigerator so dinner was on the table in a flash!

Comfort foods

Baked chicken
Barley Risotto (this wasn't as good as I had hoped, but it did have the comfort feature.)
Frozen green beans steamed and seasoned with butter and lemon.

Well, now is the time for me to plan my menus for next week. Keep up the good work in the kitchen!

Preparation

The whole idea behind compiling menus each week is to have the planning complete and be prepared for each week. To make your week easier and less stressful, I recommend any advance planning that works for you. I have been out of town for a large portion of the month of August, so my reserves were very low. Last weekend I had a weekend of preparation.

Let's face it - cooking takes time. I love to cook and yet I still have other ways I like to spend my time. I am also very frugal and hate paying for foods I know I can make cheaper myself. (Although I do avail myself of the occasional pre-made item. You have to do what works - eating at home with convenience foods is still better than running through the ubiquitous drive thru!) I also like knowing what is in my food. I read a post from a mom whose advice to her kids was, "If God made it - eat it. If man made it - probably don't." I have always said I want foods as close to natural as possible - but let's not go crazy! Well, Saturday night we were going out to a church function so I did not have to cook dinner so I used the Saturday for preparation for the week.

Last Saturday I made yogurt for the week. I think I have given you the yogurt recipe before, but it is so easy and so much better than store bought. It does have to sit awhile so you need to make it in advance of when you want to eat it. I also made cranberry orange bagels. I packed these in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer for future breakfasts. Sourdough biscuits are really more like rolls so I baked a batch of them to also keep in the freezer for adding to meals later in the week.

On Sunday our oldest left for his final semester of college. We decided to have breakfast for lunch so he could leave on time. It worked out well because we could put it all together after church and it is about the time he usually eats breakfast anyway. My husband is the breakfast cook so he made scrambled cheese eggs and pan fried apple chicken sausage. I cut up cantaloupe and sliced tomato. We heated up some of the sourdough biscuits and served them with honey and jam. We made hot tea. Yum!

After he left, I continued my preparation for the week and made another batch of granola.

Our middle son leaves for his first year of college later this week. I am beginning to prepare for another school year of home schooling our first grader. (Two in college - one in first grade - quite a gap, huh?) My menus will be changing because I have decided to significantly reduce the meat in our diets. I will include more meatless, seafood, and chicken meals. Cholesterol runs high in my family and I have seen mine creep upward the past few years so I am trying to make dietary changes while I can. I read this week that former President Bill Clinton has become vegan for his health. I'm not quite ready to go that far, I love ice cream and cheese too much.

Hopefully with our return to a regular schedule, I will return to regular blogging. Thank you for reading. Don't forget you can follow me on twitter: @momsweeklymenus

Until next time...

Summertime

My faithful readers, I apologize for the long lapses in blogging this summer. I love the song from "Porgy and Bess" that says, "Summertime and the living is easy." I find the lack of schedule difficult during the summer months.

I love cooking during the summer. I have regularly visited the local CSAs in our area. (CSA stands for community supported agriculture.) I have enjoyed stopping at farm stands and farmer's markets. The fresh fruits and vegetables have been outstanding. My own garden is starting to produce peppers, tomatoes and I just finished the last of the eggplant (much to the delight of my son.) The extremely hot temperatures of this summer have caused me to water more than I would like but I love eating something that I had the privilege of growing.

Now, the blog has suffered because the days are so filled with activity. Several times I have sat down at the computer to work on my blog only to look at more recipes. The great news about all of the great fruits and vegetables is that they need so little preparation. A slice of fresh watermelon or a slice of a garden tomato with fresh basil are hard to beat. I will be heading off once again this weekend, so the blog remains incomplete. I did have an idea though.

Working on the blog once each week takes several hours. (I try to find links for most of the recipes or type them.) I am going to try another medium to supplement the blog. I have started a twitter account for Mom's Weekly Menus. The twitter handle is @momsweeklymenus. Follow me and I will post any great recipes I run across or any fabulous menus. I value each person who takes the time to read the blog, so I want to make it more accessible for all.

I look forward to being back on a regular schedule this fall.

The Best of...

Wow! April and May were incredibly busy! I have not blogged in many weeks, but now it is summertime and the living is easy! I wondered how I could ever catch up blogging the many weeks of menus I have missed and then I had an epiphany - I will make the week a "best of week" - the best daily menus from the time I have been absent from cyberspace. You and I will then be caught up and I will do my best not to allow such a lapse again!

Monday

Salmon en Papillote

Salad

Rolls

My family loves this method of cooking salmon. It is from a Pampered Chef cookbook called Doris Christopher's Main Dishes. I could not find a replica anywhere on the web so here is the recipe:

Ingredients

2/3 c uncooked orzo pasta

2 plum tomatoes, chopped

1/4 c green onions with tops, sliced

1/3 c pitted ripe olives, sliced

3 T prepared basil pesto, divided

1/2 t lemon zest

1/4 t salt

4 (4-6 oz) skinless salmon fillets

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut four 15 inch squares of Parchment Paper. Fold in half and cut to make large heart shapes when unfolded.

2. Cook pasta according to package directions; drain. Place pasta in a large bowl. Add tomatoes, green onions, olives and 1 T of the pesto to the pasta. Stir lemon zest and salt into pasta mixture.

3. For each serving, open paper heart and spoon about 3/4 cup pasta mixture on right side; top with salmon fillet. Spread salmon with 1 1/2 t of the remaining pesto. Fold left side of heart over salmon. Starting at top, tightly seal packet by making a series of short, narrow, overlapping folds along the open edge. At bottom of heart twist tip and turn up.

4. Arrange packets on a baking sheet. Bake 13-15 minutes. (Carefully open one packet to test that salmon flakes easily with fork.) To serve, cut an "X" through top layer of paper and fold back points. (We just unroll paper.)

4 servings.

Tuesday

Pasta Pomodoro

Salad

Fruit

Bread

The May 2011 issue of Bon Appetit was devoted to pasta. I have always loved pasta. I enjoyed this dish and I learned a lot about making pasta but I admit that I really like my usual sauce simply poured over pasta better. As far as salad goes, I don't usually follow any recipe. Spring has so many great ingredients to put in a salad. I just clean some lettuce then open my refrigerator and start adding. Speaking of lettuce, we have a wonderful community supported farm here and I have been buying some amazing organic lettuces (including arugula.) Good lettuce makes a good salad. I also try to buy and serve fruit as often as I can. Fresh fruits and vegetables are very important in our house. I admit that the cookies often call my name, but adding extra fruits and vegetables to your menus will greatly improve the quality of your meals.

Wednesday

Black and Blue Salad

Roll

Speaking of salad, the warmer days of summer lend themselves to more main dish salads. This salad is one that I created. I had some leftover beef chuck steak (a meal I didn't report) and decided to slice that very thin and add it to some mixed greens. I then added green onions, candied pecans, dried sweetened cranberries and blue cheese. I tossed it with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and some herbs, but any vinaigrette would do. I think an orange vinaigrette would be spectacular. You can really impress people with your salads simply by adding some candied nuts. They are simple to make. I heat my trusty cast iron skillet, add a little butter and sugar and stir it until the sugar melts, stir the nuts in the butter/sugar mixture for a few minutes and then let them cool on wax paper. Yum!

Thursday

Honey-Glazed Grilled Chicken

Black Rice with Scallions and Sweet Potato

Sauteed Bok Choy

Frozen Rolls

Southern Living puts together cookbooks for each year of recipes from their magazines. I have all of the annual cookbooks from 1986 - 2001. For some reason I stopped after 2001. My four favorite years are 1989, 1991, 1999, and 2000. The Honey-Glazed Grilled Chicken recipe I found in the 1999 cookbook. Fortunately, that year is recent enough to be posted on the internet. The chicken was very good. With warmer weather I fire up my grill pretty often. Last year for Mother's Day I asked for my own gas grill. My husband has a large charcoal grill but it was too much trouble for weeknight grilling. I love my little grill. It definitely receives more use than the other. I am still a beginner griller, but I love that time outside while grilling. Of course I am usually making trips back and forth to the kitchen to continue making the rest of the meal.

I have seen in several magazines the health benefits of black rice. I think even Dr. Oz has sung its praises. Black rice is a whole grain rice like brown rice but is much less glutinous. The only problem with it is finding it. I have only found it in Asian grocery stores, but Asian grocery stores make a great field trip. I have found many unusual ingredients to try in the Asian stores. This recipe combines black rice with scallions, sweet potatoes and ginger. The rice is actually purple so everything it touches eventually darkens so the sweet potatoes don't stay orange very long, but the recipe is very tasty and very healthy.

I had some beautiful Bok Choy from our local farm stand. I decided to saute' it in some sesame oil and then add a little chili garlic sauce. The whole meal took on an Asian flavor.

I usually make all of my own bread products but with our busy April and May I bought some frozen rolls which I admit were very tasty.

Friday

I don't always do much cooking on Fridays. We enjoy wine and appetizers on some Fridays. I have been curious about making sushi so I tried it recently. The picture at the top of the page is my experiment into sushi making. I used two recipes spicy tuna salad sushi roll and smoked salmon and mango sushi with citrus soya dipping sauce. Both were very good and I was proud of my first foray into sushi making. The tuna salad sushi roll uses canned (pouch) salmon and so it was a good first try. My son thought this one was the best. It was spicy even though I did not have chili oil. I have since purchased some at the Asian market so I can't wait to try it again. The smoked salmon and mango sushi was preferred by my husband because he loves mango. I did have a sushi making set but it is not absolutely necessary to make sushi.

Saturday

When I first started the blog, a friend of mine from high school sent me a recipe for chicken wings. We tried it and it was great. The only problem was it was so good my kids kept inviting friends and we ended up having small portions. Thanks Marcy for the recipe!

Chicken Wings

Salad

Oven fries

Slow-Cooker Sticky Wings
Serves 12
In step 3, the oven rack should be 10 to 12 inches from the broiler element. Don’t wander off while the wings are in the oven.
1 (3-inch) piece fresh ginger , peeled and chopped
4 garlic cloves , peeled ( I used 1 small clove)
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 pounds chicken wings , halved at joint and wingtips removed
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup tomato paste
1. MAKE RUB Pulse ginger, garlic, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and 1/4 teaspoon cayenne in food processor until finely ground. Add mixture to slow cooker insert. Add chicken and toss until combined.
2. COOK AND COOL Cover and cook on low until fat renders and chicken is tender, 3 to 4 hours. Using slotted spoon, remove wings from slow cooker and transfer to clean large bowl (discard liquid in slow cooker). Let wings cool 20 minutes (or cool briefly and refrigerate up to 24 hours).
3. SAUCE AND BROIL Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat broiler. Set wire rack inside rimmed baking sheet and spray rack with baking spray. Whisk water, tomato paste, remaining sugar, remaining soy sauce, and remaining cayenne in bowl. Add half of sauce to bowl with cooled wings and toss gently to coat. Arrange wings, skin side up, on prepared rack. Broil until wings are lightly charred and crisp around edges, 10 to 15 minutes. Flip wings, brush with remaining sauce, and continue to broil until well caramelized, about 3 minutes. Serve.

With teenagers, the recipe doesn't quite serve 12. The wings were good and not too spicy. I will definitely make them again!

Sunday

Lemon Rosemary Grilled Pork Tenderloin

Coconut Mango Rice

Salad

Bread

During warmer weather, I have a love affair with my grill and one of my favorite foods to grill is

pork tenderloin. As long as you don't grill it too hot or too long it is very tender. I love the combination of lemon and rosemary (from my garden) so this was a wonderful dish for us. It was a meal that I could make after church since pork tenderloin cooks quickly. My husband loves both coconut and mango so when I found the coconut mango rice recipe I knew it would be a winner. We finished up the meal with a salad and bread.

I hope you enjoyed this compilation post. I hope to be back on track for weekly posts for the summer. Thank you for reading. Become a follower!

Until next time,

Enjoy your food!

Food Glorious Food

The temperature is warming up and I am feeling a need to use my grill more and eat lighter fare. I'm also having more trouble finding time to update my blog at the computer. I am still two weeks behind, but hopefully this will be the week I catch up!

Someone recently asked me if she had to make everything from scratch. Absolutely not! I like to cook, so I like to make lots of food from scratch, but I also like to take a few quick shortcuts here and there. I like knowing what is in my food, but I usually do not have time to spend all day in the kitchen. I love my freezer because I often cook extra so I have something ready and waiting in the freezer. I do make my breads from scratch so the freezer saves me lots of time there. I have a big bread baking day every few weeks and then we have home made bread for the next few weeks. They point of this blog is to help you plan so cooking takes less energy - especially less mental energy. What was cooking this week?

Monday

I still had most of a quart of spaghetti sauce in the refrigerator. (I thawed it last week before we left town.) I simply bought some frozen cheese ravioli, boiled the water and cooked the ravioli. Warmed the sauce and poured it over the ravioli. Made a salad and, voila, a dinner everyone liked and it took very little time.

Tuesday

My grill beckoned this week. I grilled some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I didn't do anything too fancy. I simply put a little olive oil, lemon juice, and a few of my favorite spices on the chicken. Asparagus is also in season, so I roasted some asparagus. I placed the asparagus in a zipper top plastic bag and added olive oil, a little lemon juice, and some cayenne pepper and roasted it in a hot (425 degree) oven until they were crisp tender. I also used the oven for sweet potato fries. I peeled and cut two sweet potatoes into fries. I threw them in the zipper top bag and mixed olive oil, a little cinnamon and a little cumin on the potatoes. I then put them on a baking sheet and into the hot oven. The potatoes took about 30-40 minutes and the asparagus only 10-15 minutes. This was another relatively quick, easy and tasty meal.

Wednesday

Wednesday is the day of the week that I cook early so we can eat late. A small group meets at our house and I try to have everything ready so we can eat when the group leaves. This week I once again pulled out my trusty slow cooker and made Caribbean Style Black Bean Soup from my favorite slow cooker cookbook, Fix-It and Forget-It. Through the magic of the internet, I found that recipe posted here. I also made some brown rice because I like black beans over rice. I made a salad and it waited for us in the refrigerator. Everything was ready when our guests left. I really liked the black beans - I thought they had a great flavor. Everyone else in my family just thought they were okay.

Thursday

This particular Thursday was my birthday so my family took me out to dinner. It is always nice to have a break from cooking, even if you like to cook!

Friday

Everyone but my five year old daughter and I were out of pocket this night, so she and I simply ate leftovers from the refrigerator.

Saturday

Scrumptious is the word to describe this meal . I had originally planned it for Friday, but decided not to cook when it was just my daughter and I. Saturday's menu was Poached Salmon with Horseradish Sauce which is in the 1991 Southern Living Annual cookbook. I served the fish with couscous and Brussels sprouts that I cooked from frozen. I added some butter to the Brussels sprouts. We agreed the horseradish sauce worked very well on the Brussels sprouts. This salmon recipe has been a favorite of ours for years!

Saturday during the day was one of my days of cooking for the future. I made breakfast items. I made cranberry orange bagels, English muffins and granola. I am continuing on my quest to not buy breakfast breads.

Sunday

We normally eat Sunday dinner for our midday meal. This particular Sunday was a beautiful day and my younger son wanted to go golfing with his dad so we postponed dinner until our evening meal - supper. It also gave me the afternoon to make Sweet Buttery Rolls. These were some of the best home made yeast rolls that I have made. My daughter and I wanted to surprise the boys with some dessert so we made chocolate pudding. I overcooked it a little but it was still tasty. Okay, I started with dessert and rolls so you might want to know the main parts of the meal. I had a pork tenderloin in the freezer and some leftover bottled Caesar salad dressing in the refrigerator, so I thawed the tenderloin and marinated it in the dressing for most of the day. Then for supper, I grilled it. I made a mango salsa to accompany it. The recipe was in the 1991 Southern Living Annual Cookbook. I can't find one similar on-line but it was great! We love mangoes. Quick Artichoke Pasta Salad added a starchy element to the meal. Corn on the cob and fresh pineapple completed this Sunday meal.

Enjoy cooking! I'll be back soon!

How do you do?

Faithful readers, forgive my absence from the blogosphere. Sometimes life happens. I have two weeks of menus to post and hope to update both today or one today and one tomorrow.

The reason I started the blog was to help others begin to plan healthy menus each week. I usually simply share my menus and recipes to give you some new ideas. Some weeks my menus are fairly thin which happened recently because we were out of town for most of that week. When that happens I will still give you the limited menu, but I will also take the blog space to share how I plan my menus. There is an old proverb that says if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish he will eat for a lifetime. Today I will be a little more of a teacher.

The week of March 28 - April 3 was a short week because we traveled to our niece's wedding.

Monday

Spicy Thai Chicken Sausage

Baked Potato

Cole Slaw

I simply pan fried the sausage which I bought on a recent trip to Whole Foods. I fried it like you pan fry a dumpling - I added water to the pan and steamed it for the last few minutes. It was an experiment that seemed to work. The outer casing was a little softer.

I bake potatoes in the oven rather than the microwave. More energy involved, less green, I know, but my family likes the texture better from the oven.

My "secret" cole slaw recipe is packaged cole slaw mix and Marzetti cole slaw dressing. Quick, easy and always good.

Tuesday

My husband needed to work late, so only my five-year old and I would be eating. I decided to take the easy route and thaw some of the spaghetti sauce I had in the freezer (mentioned in blog from 3/20) and make us shells with sauce. I also made a salad for me.

Wednesday

Last day of cooking for the week. We have a small group at our house on Wednesday nights and I had a busy day since it was the day before we were leaving, so it was a good night for something from the crockpot. I went with Crockpot Barbecue, Terra Chips, and more easy cole slaw. I know barbecue purists are cringing, but I like the occasional crockpot barbecue. I used a pork roast on the bone for extra flavor. The recipe is from my favorite Crock Pot cookbook - Fix-it and Forget-it. I found this recipe which is nearly identical. I substituted a bottle of beer for the two cups of water. I'm not sure it added any significant flavor. The recipe made quite a bit and since we were going out of town, I froze the leftovers.

We love Terra Chips. They are chips made from many different types of root vegetables, not just potatoes. This week we had Sweets and Beets, which is all sweet potatoes and beets. Terra Chips are rather pricey so I only buy them when I find them on sale.

Thursday - Sunday

We were out of town at our niece's wedding. We had wonderful food the entire weekend, but I neither planned nor cooked any of it!

Planning a Menu

So let's talk a little about how to put together a weekly menu. The first thing I do is look at our schedule for the week. What days do I have time to cook? What days do I need something quick and easy? Who will be home for dinner on which nights? It doesn't make sense to plan a lasagna which takes at least 30 minutes to put together and another hour to cook when you won't get home from a long day of ballet lessons and piano lessons and soccer practice until after 5:00. You will head to the drive-through every time. If the calendar is crowded, that is a day to plan leftovers or something quick. There is also no reason to cook for a crowd if no one will be home to eat it, unless you are planning to cook for the freezer and eat again in the future.

After I figure out our schedule, then I look at what is on sale at my favorite grocery store. I always keep the weekly grocery store ad until I make my menu. It helps me narrow down my choices. I quickly review what I have in my refrigerator and freezer. Then I start looking for recipes. I usually pull a few of my favorite cookbooks and just start looking. I use the index heavily. If I know I have a pork tenderloin in the freezer, I look under pork tenderloin in the index. Since I keep all of my menus in spiral bound notebooks, I can also look back to what I have made before. Sometimes I will be looking for one thing and something else will catch my eye. This happened recently and will be on the next week's blog post. On an old menu, I saw a poached salmon recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks. I looked at the recipe in the cookbook and across the page was a recipe for mango salsa. I had a mango in the refrigerator and a pork tenderloin in the freezer. Voila! I can make a grilled pork tenderloin with mango salsa. I guess my creative style is similar to the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... Sometimes I go to my favorite recipe sites and see what others are cooking. I love food.com. Other times I will know that I want to cook a particular food and will just Google it. I also have several recipe apps on my phone. Then I just fill in the recipes on the day for which it is planned. I make sure I write down the name of the recipe and the cookbook and page number or website where I found it. That way I can find it when I want to cook that week and find it another time if I want to cook it again in the future. I also make a note if it needs something special, like a long marinating or chilling time so I don't try to start something an hour before dinner that needed eight hours of marinating. While the recipe is open, I write down what ingredients I need on my grocery list. When I finish the entire menu, I also add any other items I need on the list. Now for the overachievers there is one extra (optional) step. You can rewrite your list in store order. This makes the trip to the grocery store faster, but it does take a little more time. I often do this for my five year old who likes to help me shop. She can't read cursive so I have to print her list anyway, and while I am at it, I put her list in store order. Guess whose list I usually use? I have heard of people who keep a master list on the computer and then use it as a template, fill in the blanks and print. I still write my list out by hand.

I admit that planning a weekly menu takes some time. It usually takes me an hour or two depending on if I have anything in mind before I start. I am always looking at recipes so if I see something I want to try, I write it down on the current menu so I will remember when I start the next one. I think the investment of time once each week certainly saves me time over the course of the week. Plus, I only have to grocery shop once each week which saves time and money and we eat out far less often. As I have mentioned before, even with planning, I still have to be flexible because plans change, but overall I feel better prepared each week.

I will stop here for now. I have other topics I want to cover in the weeks ahead, but this is the basics of my weekly menu planning. Thanks for stopping by. Please come again soon!

Be Flexible!

"The best laid schemes of Mice and Men
oft go awry," poet Robert Burns once said. I use a weekly menu so that I have fewer trips to the grocery store each week and I don't have to ask (and answer) the question, "What should we have for dinner tonight?" I also have the ingredients I need on hand. That being said, the weekly menu is a friend, not a taskmaster, so sometimes the best laid plans have to be adjusted for changes in schedule. This past week was one of those weeks.

Monday

The original plan called for a new recipe for pork tenderloin. Well, Monday we added a new weekly kid event to our calendar so my Monday afternoons go like this: violin lessons followed by ballet, followed by small group violin lesson which happens... right at the dinner hour! The small group doesn't last long so from now on I will try to make something quick afterward. This past week, however, we just came home and ate leftovers.

Tuesday

Tuesday is usually my grocery shopping day. The new ad comes out on Wednesday, so often on Tuesday afternoon you can get the prices from this week's and next week's ads because the grocery store has already changed the prices to be ready for Wednesday. This doesn't always work for produce and meat but often does for everything else. I try to go in the early afternoon, but sometimes it is later which can mess up my dinner plans if I don't plan ahead. Since I didn't cook Monday, I really wanted to cook Tuesday so I made sure I went to the grocery store in time. I made the menu I had originally planned for Monday: Island Pork Tenderloin, Barley Risotto, and Ginger Braised Red Cabbage. This menu was a big hit. All of the foods went really well together. Ginger braised red cabbage sounds a little sketchy but it turned out to be the recipe that brought the other foods together. The Barley Risotto was okay. I included it because I am trying to include different grains in our meals. Of course real risotto uses Arborio or other Italian rice, not barley. The barley was hearty, a little different and very healthy. The Pork tenderloin was enjoyed by all. I will make all of these recipes again.

Wednesday

I cook early on Wednesday and eat late because we have a small group that meets at our house on Wednesday nights. With the weather warming, I thought a hearty salad would be nice. I found Asian Chicken Noodle Salad on an app on my phone. You can find it here. Compliments were buzzing all around the dinner table Wednesday night. This salad was fabulous! It had a lot of crunch with toasted Ramen noodles, sunflower seeds, and pine nuts. The recipe calls for Asian cabbage rather than lettuce making it a substantial salad. The recipe said Bok Choy but one reviewer mentioned she used Napa Cabbage instead. The Napa looked better than the Bok Choy the day I shopped, so I went with the Napa. Good choice! The salad also has green onions, water chestnuts and snow peas. The recipe calls for cooked chicken breast. I bought plain boneless, skinless chicken breasts on sale and marinated them in a spicy Asian marinade I found in a George Forman cookbook. I then cooked a couple on my gas grill early in the afternoon. The spicy chicken added to the intensity of the salad. The dressing was very good. I assembled the vegetables in my favorite salad bowl, put the toasted crunchies in a zippered plastic bag, and the dressing in a jar. I assembled the salad right before we ate so everything remained crispy. I served it with French bread.

Last week someone asked for my French bread recipe. It is incredibly easy. I have been reluctant to share it - people are so impressed with my bread - I have enjoyed people thinking I was such an amazing baker! However, I will share. I am going to post it on Food.com so you can have the nutrition information also. When I post it, I will let you know.

Thursday

Thursday was another wild day in our household. More violin, Chinese lessons, and a large group violin lesson so it was once again a leftover night, but wait - the craziness is about to begin! My son who is a senior asked if I could cook the dinner before his prom. This is Thursday - the prom is Saturday! I said, "Sure," and then set out to see what I could re purpose from the rest of my menu and what I would need to buy. That means an extra grocery trip on Friday, but it will be done! The mantra of the week is "Be flexible!"

Friday

I am currently in a half lotus position heading toward a full lotus - my flexibility is showing! Turns out the same senior son is a member of a band and that band is performing for another senior's senior project. There is not time to eat before he performs and then it is too late to start cooking after so we end up going out to a restaurant. The food was good. I did make it to the grocery store before the concert.

Saturday

The good news is I love to cook! The better news is that my husband has front of house experience and knows how to set a table. We make a great team - he readies the tables and I prepare the food. I started cleaning at 9:00 am and began cooking about noon. We had a lovely prom meal and the kids seemed to really enjoy it!

The beautifully dressed young people started arriving about 6:15 - 6:30. Some parents also appeared to photograph these incredibly handsome men and women. I made ham and cheese roll ups and citrus mint coolers to have when they arrived. I made the ham and cheese roll ups by placing deli ham and sliced swiss cheese and a little Dijon mustard on crescent roll dough. I then rolled the dough up jelly roll style and sliced. The little ham, cheese and dough rolls were placed on a cookie sheet and baked at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Quick, easy, teenager friendly appetizers and leftovers work well for breakfast!

The main course was baked shrimp in lemony garlic sauce. I wanted a shrimp recipe to go with Asiago cheese grits. I chose this one because I could cook all of the shrimp at one time in the oven. Made preparation easy. I also knew the flavor family I wanted. Of course, peeling six pounds of shrimp is a bit tiring, but I had good music playing so that helped pass the time. To accompany the shrimp and grits I made Caesar Salad. I cleaned and tore the lettuce early in the day and just added croutons, fresh grated Parmesan, and bottled salad dressing at the last minute. I usually make my own dressing but I decided purchased dressing was one shortcut I was willing to make. I also made some fresh rosemary garlic French bread. For dessert, I made brownies (recipe from a recipe shower over 24 years ago) topped with vanilla ice cream onto which I drizzled fudge sauce. My son gave me extra points for plating on that one. During dinner the kids had a choice of sweet tea, unsweet tea, or water. My husband was the very able waiter.

After the kids left for the dance, I put our young daughter to bed and my husband embarked on the dishes journey. We served 12 young men and women. We used my favorite china, real glasses and flatware (although we skipped my grandmother's silver since I only wash it by hand.) We had fun, but we did generate quite a few dishes. All the kids were delightful. Last minute or not, I am glad we had the opportunity to serve my son and his friends.

Sunday

Originally a big Sunday dinner was on the menu, but I borrowed the Asiago cheese grits from Sunday's menu for the prom dinner and had cooked all day Saturday. We had leftovers from Saturday night so ended up freezing the chuck roast for another Sunday.

Some weeks you just have to be flexible. Next week we will be out of town for our niece's wedding so it will be a very short menu week. I will be late posting again next week - either Monday or Tuesday.

Remember to be flexible and enjoy playing with your food!