January 30-February 3

 Should anyone outside my immediate family happen to drop by here, you'll want to know that I'm referencing Melissa Joulwan's cookbook Well Fed in all my meal plans. My aim is to cook my way through all the recipes in this book this semseter, to make this way of cooking and eating a way of life. Not a Rule, mind you. That's St. Benedict, and can't nobody improve on St. Benedict. But a lower-case little way . . .

Dinners we might want

Hot plates: 

Moroccan (just made Ras el Hanout! Mmmm):  chicken, red pepper, roasted spaghetti squash
Italian (with sausage seasoning? maybe as a sausage-egg scramble)
"Diner Blue Plate" meat & veg combo (potentially several nights)
Greek (along the lines of pastichio)
Basic saute of chicken, peppers, onions

Other: 

Saturday night hamburgers (buns for kids) w/peppers & onions, salad
meatza pie
Rogan Josh (with chicken)
Friday:  In the doctor's office yesterday, while waiting for my husband, I heard on the health tv that plays eternally in the waiting room a lady demonstrating how to make cioppina. I need to look up a real recipe, but I think I've got the gist of it already, and I'm adding that to our list for Friday.


Lunches: 

pre-grilled chicken/beef/etc. w/vegetables &/or fruit
dinner leftovers
salmon muffins for Friday

Breakfasts: 
oatmeal (kids)
scrambled eggs (adults & kids who want eggs)
for weekends, sausage-egg scrambles

Side Dishes/Snacks: 
hardboiled eggs (people like them better if they're halved and sprinkled w/pepper or paprika)
almonds
bananas
clementines
spinach salad


If the Pampered Chef manual food processor I ordered last week gets here, I can try making almond butter/almond milk/almond flour. Funzies! 
 

 Daily Meal Breakdown

Sunday

brunch:  sausage-egg scramble
supper:  Meatza Pie. Many thumbs up. For a family of 5 healthy eaters, though, you need a lot of meat;  my meatzas took about a pound of beef per person. I made a topping of pureed fresh tomato with basil, two cloves of garlic and olive oil. I spread this on the meat "crust," then spread sauteed onions and peppers over that. The family stood and cheered.

Monday 

breakfast: oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  meat muffins with turkey Italian sausage (homemade) and peppers and onions
dinner: chicken rogan josh with sweet potato "shoestrings," green beans, and halved hardboiled eggs sprinkled with curry powder and paprika. Rogan Josh also a Hit.

Tuesday

breakfast: oatmeal/eggs
lunch: leftover rogan josh/plain chicken thighs, green beans chick thighs chopped, stir-fried in coconut oil with green beans and sliced onions and sprinkled with ginger. Insta-Chinese! (the guys who went to work/college got the rogan josh for lunch)
dinner:  Greek hot plate with ground beef/lamb mixture seasoned with garlic, cinnamon, & nutmeg, with roasted spaghetti squash and cherry tomatoes. Spinach salad on the side. (I also chopped a little spinach into the meat itself, in case anyone didn't eat salad)

Wednesday

breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  leftovers*, hardboiled eggs, almonds
dinner:  omelettes not cooked by me, because I will be at choir, plus diced roasted sweet potatoes and onions, plus green beans

Thursday

breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  chicken salad, leftover veggies, almonds
dinner:  Italian sausage meat muffins, spinach salad

Friday

breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  salmon muffins
dinner:  cioppina, spinach salad

Saturday

breakfast: oatmeal/eggs (maybe a sausage scramble)
lunch:  whatever
dinner:  kids cook

Recipe Adaptations and Ideas This Week
 
Salmon Muffins: 

Easy-peasy carmeleasy! I adapted the Meat and Spinach Muffins from Well Fed for Friday consumption, with great success. Here's how:

2 cans wild Alaskan salmon, drained, but with skin & bones
1 medium onion, sliced and diced very thin and small
dill weed to taste -- I use a lot, but no idea how much
salt & pepper, also to taste
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 400. Mash the drained salmon with its skin and bones in a large bowl until all the big clumps are broken up. Mix in the onion and seasonings. Beat the eggs and add them, mixing everything thoroughly.

Pour the salmon-egg mixture evenly into paper muffin cups in a conventional muffin tin or, if you have one, a silicone muffin baker. I have one and adore it -- that way I don't have to remember to buy muffin cups. Fill each cup to the brim, as the muffins tend to shrink a bit as they cool. Bake on 400 for 20-30 minutes, until gently browned on top. Let muffins cool, then tumble them out of the muffin tin to make room for the next round.

Makes about a dozen salmon muffins. My 3 kids at home ate 3 each for lunch, and I divided the remaining three in half and arranged them artistically on a plate as a little nibbly side dish at dinner the same night.



Shoestring Sweet Potatoes

 Also could  not be easier. Julienne several sweet potatoes (I find that once they reach a certain concavity, I can't julienne them any more, so I save the pieces to dice for a sweet-potato-onion roast), till you have the size pile you desire. Melt a couple tablespoons of coconut oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat, and saute the sweet potatoes until their orange fades to yellow, and some of them at least begin to be crispy. You can salt them and/or sprinkle with your favorite spice mix. They go wonderfully with curry, but would be good any time you want something sort of like French fries.

*Leftover Greek Stew

I had made a Greek Hot Plate dinner, with a mix of ground beef and lamb, seasoned with garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice and sauteed with diced onions and a can of tomato paste. To make leftover stew I sauteed yet more onions in some beef fat and stock left over from browning the original meat, added a can of diced tomatoes with their juice, some more of the spices I'd used in the Hot Plate saute, and the leftover meat (a coconut-oil jar full). We chopped in some extra spinach, added a bay leaf, and let it simmer for about half an hour while we finished up school.  

P.S. Found a cioppina recipe! 

This week's grocery list (food only):

roughly 5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs
10 lbs ground beef
2 lbs ground pork if available;  if not, ground turkey for sausage
scallops, shrimp, and other fish for cioppina
fish broth? 
2.5 dozen eggs (bought 5 dozen last week, but didn't eat them all)
bell peppers (2 mixed packs)
spaghetti squash (1)
sweet onions
bunch bananas
clementines
bag baby spinach
tomato paste
diced tomatoes
spice-shelf replenishers:
allspice
basil
cumin
fennel (if I can find it)
ginger
paprika
thyme
refined coconut oil (1 jar)
whole milk (2)
almonds (2 bags:  pref plain unroasted)