February 13-19

 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 . . .


Back home. Fridge empty. What to eat? 


Dinners We'd Like
Cinnamon Beef Stew
Meatza Pie (with ground turkey this week)
Italian Sausage (turkey) and Eggplant Strata 
Indian, Chinese, Moroccan Hot Plates (chicken)
Friday:  omelettes with veggies (zucchini "noodles" would be good if I can find zucchini -- it's not exactly in season right now . . . )

Sides 
spaghetti squash
diced butternut squash
stewed frozen peaches 
spinach salad
sweet potatoes in various forms (roasted, home-fried, julienned)
cauliflower "rice"
cocoa-toasted cauliflower
cumin-roasted carrots

Lunches
leftovers
Hot Plates
tuna
egg salad

Breakfasts
oatmeal (kids)
eggs (adults)
sausage-egg scramble for weekend

Snacks
hardboiled eggs
kale chips (thanks, Melanie!)
seaweed crisps
fruit

Shopping List
9 lbs ground turkey
4 packs boneless skinless chicky thighs
beef stew meat
2 spaghetti squash
6 large sweet potatoes
1 bag fresh spinach
2 heads cauliflower
1 large eggplant
1 bag carrots
2 little packs pre-diced butternut squash for the lazy
1 bunch kale
4 zucchini? 
2 bunches bananas
1 bag apples
2 packs frozen peaches
5 dozen eggs
1 pack seaweed wraps
2 cans diced tomatoes
4 cans tomato paste
6 cans tuna
1 bottle olive oil
1 bottle sesame oil
milk
1 jar refined coconut oil

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE:  Went to Aldi, for budgetary reasons. Bought about 7 lbs ground turkey;  the only skinless, boneless chicken thighs were frozen, so I bought four large packs of those, plus two equally large packs of frozen skinless boneless breasts. Found stew meat for what didn't seem that fantastic a price, but went ahead and bought it. Cauliflower didn't look good. No spaghetti squash, zucchini or eggplant, so I bought two heads of green cabbage instead. Otherwise, aside from oils, kale, and seaweed, I found everything on my list there. Will hit the regular grocery later in the week.


Came home and baked and put away all the chicken thighs, made ground-turkey meatzas (these are "pizzas" with a meat crust;  really you need beef, though. Turkey fell apart too much), and browned the rest of the ground turkey with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and diced onion. Put half away in the fridge for later in the week, and with the other half, I made the following for dinner: 

Greek Cabbage Rolls

I guess I was thinking, you know, dolmates or something. I had a couple of pounds of ground turkey already browned and flavored with salt, pepper, onion, and garlic;  to that I added a generous dose of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, plus one can of tomato paste. I also added in some leftover garlicky cooked spinach from last night's dinner.

While this meat mixture was keeping warm, I de-stemmed one of the heads of cabbage and pulled away the toughest outer leaves. Then I carefully removed about ten thinner inside leaves, filled each one with some of the meat mixture, rolled/folded it up into as neat a package as I could manage, and nestled the packages into a baking dish. When I'd used up all the meat and filled two not-so-large bakers, I covered them with foil and put them in to bake for 30-45 minutes, just enough for the cabbage to be tender. 

These were delicious. The younger kids peeled off their cabbage leaves and just ate the meat inside, but really, the cabbage with the meat worked very well. It was a filling dish, so unless the bottomless teenager on dish duty has finished it all off, there will be some leftovers for tomorrow.  


For a side dish I julienned two sweet potatoes and made shoestrings/noodles by sauteeing in coconut oil, with a little salt and cinnamon. This may be my new favorite side dish in all the world. We also had Italian-cut green beans (from a bag of frozen) sauteed in coconut oil with salt and pepper. 


Tuesday
breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch: tuna salad (made it sans mayo:  just tuna, hard-boiled egg, & pickle relish)
dinner:  some kind of chicken hot plate;  probably Chinese with chopped stir-fried cabbage, or else Eastern European with cabbage and apples. 

UPDATE:   Chinese hot plate for Tuesday night dinner: 


shredded cabbage (about 1/3 head)
thin-sliced onion
2 large carrots julienned
a couple handfuls frozen green beans
garlic powder
grated fresh ginger
coconut oil
about six medium-sized boneless skinless chicken thighs, pre-cooked with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika, and diced into 1-inch cuboids


I melted the coco oil in the skillet, sauteed the onions till they were soft, added the frozen green beans to give them time to thaw, then the cabbage and carrots, then the chicken. Dash of garlic powder and grated fresh ginger to taste. One-dish meal. Very filling for five people. I had enough left over for a single-serving take-to-work microwave lunch tomorrow.


Wednesday
breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  chicken salad or some other chicken thing
dinner:  cinnamon beef stew w/cumin-roasted carrots


Thursday
breakfast: oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  stew leftovers
dinner:  Indian-themed chicken hot plate


Friday
breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  tuna salad
dinner:  omelettes? vegetable blue-plate special? 


Saturday
breakfast:  oatmeal/eggs
lunch:  leftovers
dinner:  going to the Cub Scout Blue-and-Gold Banquet. Must take food.


Sunday
 brunch after Mass:  sausage-egg scramble
dinner: whatever . . . 

UPDATE:  How the week played out

Dinners: We had cinnamon beef stew on Wednesday, with leftovers for Thursday lunch. Chicken Rogan Josh on Thursday, using already-cooked boneless breasts, a can of coconut milk from the cupboard, and spice mix I'd made up last time we had Rogan Josh. Carrots and green beans on the side. 

Friday dinner was ginger-lime shrimp -- I'd had to go back to the store, and they had pre-cooked frozen shrimp on sale, so dinner was a matter of marinating the shrimp as they thawed in garlic, ginger, and lime juice, then searing them in the cast-iron skillet. With them we had sweet potatoes. 

Saturday night dinner we had various Latin American food at the Cub Scout Blue-and-Gold Banquet. 

Tonight (Sunday) we had the remainder of the ground turkey I'd pre-cooked on Monday sauteed with cabbage, carrots, and onion chopped to coleslaw texture, plus two Gala apples, peeled and chopped. The vegetables were a good way to stretch the leftover meat without overpowering it -- I can see cabbage standing in in lots of recipes where I need something to provide either a noodle or a soft rice texture. At any rate, chopped finely it was a very good "filler" to extend my limited amount of meat. Seasonings were ground mustard and caraway seeds -- I was going for sort of an Eastern European flavor. Sweet potatoes and roasted sweet onions on the side (I did buy a lot of sweet potatoes last week . . . ). Anyway, this was a good "hot plate," and we have enough leftovers for my husband to take to work for lunch tomorrow. 

Lunches:  leftovers, omelettes, tuna salad, hardboiled eggs, scrambled eggs -- we eat a lot of eggs. Plus apples and bananas, toasted seaweed sheets, whatever veggies are left over, etc. 

Sunday Brunch:  I had had to go to the store for coconut oil, which Aldi didn't have, and there, in addition to the frozen shrimp, I bought some jicama. A jicama. A jicama root. One of however you designate a unit of jicama. 

Anyway, jicama. You can slice or julienne it raw for use in salads, which I've done, but you can also cook it. If you're going to use it in place of potatoes, in for instance a recipe for home fries or potato salad, you have to pre-cook it for a long time -- 12 to 24 hours, according to the cookbook -- to tenderize it enough for it to stand in for a cooked potato. I bought my jicama on Friday, peeled and diced it, and put it to cook in the crockpot covered with water for what turned out to be slightly more than 24 hours. It cooked all Friday evening, all day Saturday, and all morning Sunday, until I was ready to use it in a ground-turkey hash. 

I drained the jicama in a colander, then fried it in some coconut oil in my cast-iron skillet.  To the fried jicama I added about half a bag of frozen peppers and onions, which I'd thawed in the fridge and pressed the water out of. As all this was cooking, I seasoned it with salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and chili powder, and when the vegetables were looking done, I added . . .  half a pound, maybe? . . . of pre-cooked ground turkey. More chili powder to spice it up, and scrambled eggs on the side, and that was brunch after Mass. 


As always, I'm indebted to Well Fed for the bones of this meal.