fish countering.

last week, i did something a little out of the ordinary. i stretched myself ever so slightly out of my comfort zone to overcome an irrational fear of trying something new. i didnt set out with this particular goal in mind, and i was dangerously close to turning back and continuing on with my normal routine. but then suddenly there i was: buying fresh fish at the fish counter in the grocery store. fish countering, to use it as a verb.

 

it was for one of the new gluten-free recipes i decided to try last week, roast salmon with salsa. i probably could have just used my same old method of frozen fish in a bag, but the fish guy was so nice, and he didnt laugh at me for admitting that it was my first time fish-countering, and the whole experience was just so pleasant that before i knew it i was at home preparing fresh fish for dinner like it was no big thang.

this recipe was one of those sneaky ones that lures you in by only having three listed steps, but then hides extra steps in the ingredient list: things like 1 tomato, roughly chopped and 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped. i'm only assuming that using the handle of a spoon is an appropriate method for seeding a jalepeno pepper because that is how i did it because the recipe didn't tell me how.

so after the hidden prep steps was finally step 1: preheat the oven. thats it. a whole step just for that. so its not like they didnt have any extra room on this line to add - "chop all of the vegetables, and by the way this is how you seed a jalapeno." apparently that would be too helpful.

step 2: dump everything but the fish into the food processer and process.

their salsa looked way more appetizing than this. i'm no longer sure that my magic bullet is the same thing as a food processor. 

step 2.5 (disguised as a tip): skin the fish. the good thing about tips is that they are helpful, and they actually give information as to what exactly is the best way to skin a fish fillet.

so when they say to use a long sharp knife, they do not mean "eh, that medium sized knife with the broken handle should probably be sufficient." they mean "get the longest knife you own and even then you will wish you had a third hand to properly accomplish this task." it was messy and even a little ugly and my hands smelled like fish the rest of the night.

step 3: dump the salsa on the fish and bake in the preheated oven. btw, if you were planning on making any sides to go with this, you probably should have started them before now because the fish will be done in like 12 minutes and the asparagus will take twice that long. sorry we forgot to include that tip.

additional step 4: ENJOY! why recipe writers do not always include this as a final step is beyond me. its like a mandate to be happy with the results, and it has a subtle undertone of 'or else' which is just threatening enough to scare people into not saying anything bad about the food without being so terrifying as to make them run screaming from the room.

"but what if i dont find this food enjoyable? what is the alternative? i dont think i want to find out... the recipe clearly tells me to enjoy it, and it hasn't let me astray so far, so i must follow the recipe! mmm... delicious!"

since i was the one who added step 4, i dont have to be intimidated by it. so i can honestly say that the salmon was good. the salsa was kind of weird. and dinner as a whole, what with the triumph of the fresh fish procured by the fish countering, was kind of exhilarating and a little bit empowering, and everyone knows that the taste of victory is a sweet one. you should try it sometime. if you grocery store has a fish counter, that is. (sorry, mom. no fish countering for you)

meal plan monday: feb 25.

im on week 3 with my meal planning board and i have discovered its tragic flaw: as quick as it makes meal planning, it still doesnt just do it all for me. i had every intention yesterday of taking 15 or 20 minutes to throw together a plan and a grocery list, but instead i finished mark's quilt and washed dried and folded 4 loads of laundry and did 90 minutes of yoga and made dinner and watched three whole movies and parts of a fourth.

the chicken noodle soup that we survived on for most of last week.

on a normal week, this would make me feel like a failure. but i had the pleasure of having an extra unpleasant monday morning to give me a little bit of perspective about the whole thing. you see, in the 7 short minutes that i spent in the kitchen this morning to make coffee and pack my lunch, i somehow managed to fall off the stool and punch myself in the head with a bowl. so really its kind of impressive that i ever actually accomplish anything in the kitchen ever. so there. compared to the complete mess i am very capable of being, even this fail of a meal plan is still really a win.

Monday: lazy lasagna. (didnt eat it last week)
Tuesday: soup from a can.
Wednesday: crock pot chicken enchilada soup. (recipe)
Thursday: frozen raviolis. (also from last weeks plan)
Friday: burgers. (recipe)
Saturday: i declare a date night.
Sunday: fish, rice, and a veggie.

meal plan monday: jan 21.

thanks to Meg, i think i might have found my new favorite way to cook fish!

this whole "fish in a disposable packet" thing made for super easy prep and cleanup, and the fish and veggies were delicious. even Mark, who is not a huge veggie eater, said that he really liked these ones, and ate them all. (it might have helped that i seasoned then with old bay)

this week, i'm not trying anything new. just a string of tried-and-true favorites with a date night thrown into the mix just to keep life fresh and exciting!

Monday: turkey burgers. (recipe)
Tuesday: pasta in vodka sauce.
Wednesday: crock pot chili. (recipe)
Thursday: tilapia with rice and a veggie.
Friday: date night!
Saturday: taco night.
Sunday: soup from a can.

just a dash.

my sister didnt believe that it was possible to buy fresh cilantro by the quarter-ounce. before tuesday, i didnt know this was possible either. i thought it only came by the bunch and i was doomed to either plan tons of recipes in a row that all used cilantro, or end up throwing away the majority of the fresh herbs i bought because i couldnt use them all in time.

well, overabundant herbs beware! you are no match for my grocery store skillz and single-serving cilantro! you doubt? a demonstration!

more convenient? yes. more expensive? also yes. i'm thinking that the ultimate solution to my fresh-herb conundrum might involve trying my hand again at growing an herb garden and praying that my black thumb doesnt doom it to being a pile of dead sticks like the oregano...

meal plan monday: july 30.

so... honesty time: last week's meal plan was kind of a bust. i mean, it was a great plan, but i kind of failed HARD when it came to actually following through with said plan. i think the only meals from the plan that we actually ate were the quesadillas and the frozen raviolis, because they were quick and easy, and because i was super lazy. the rest of the week, we managed to survive on leftovers, chick-fil-a, and a family birthday party, which all made for some pretty good eating... but i'd have to say the low point of the week was definitely the night that i ate some grapes and a brownie for dinner.

but even though dinner last week was a flop, breakfast turned out to be a major win. i needed to use up some of the rotten bananas that were chilling on my counter attracting fruit flies, so i tried a pinterest recipe for banana oatmeal muffins.

for being gluten free-ish (well, they dont use any flour, so if you use GF oats, then i guess they count) they were pretty delish. Mark and i have both been eating them for breakfast all week, even though Mark is not usually a fan of banana-bread-type-things. two thumbs up from each of us.

 

so since i could only get it together enough to cover breakfast and lunch last week (2 outta 3 meals aint bad, right?) this week's plan is basically a carbon copy of last week's, just slightly rearranged to make the best use of previously purchased perishable ingredients, which is thankfully going to make for a super-easy grocery trip today.

Monday: vegetable tian.
Tuesday: tilapia with cucumber salad.
Wednesday: cilantro lime chicken with rice.
Thursday: crock pot beef burgundy.
Friday: leftovers.
Saturday: frozen raviolis.
Sunday: tacos.

fresh from the garden.

so, our little turnip that we harvested before vacation never got eaten. we Mark followed all the suggestions for how to store it, but it still got mushy before we had a chance to eat it. it was so sad, since it was the first thing we Mark had picked from our Mark's first ever garden.

but now we can finally say that we have eaten something that we Mark grew - a cucumber!

and a giant one at that. the thing was about the size of my forearm! i'm not usually a big cucumber eater, but i figured since we Mark went to all the trouble to grow the thing, the least i could do would be to spend a few minutes on pinterest searching for a recipe that called for cucumbers. so that's what i did.

i used this recipe for tilapia with cucumber salad. and you should try it sometime. it was seriously good. and that's quite a compliment coming from me, who is historically not a cucumber fan.

as a bonus along the way, with the help of the internets i also learned how to chop green onions, and how to chop fresh cilantro. (neither of which came from our Mark's garden) i'm not linking to the videos i used because its a little bit embarrasing how simple they are. if i ever thought that i was even the littlest bit proficient in the kitchen, needing to watch those videos wiped away every last bit of pride i might have been holding onto. by far, the coolest thing i learned was how to store my extra cilantro in the fridge.

it seems like such a clever little trick, (i'm kind of surprised i havent seen it all over pinterest)(ok so i just searched 'store cilantro' on pinterest and came up with a zillion pins. nvm.) so far its working great, but now i think i might need to do some more research to find recipes that use cilantro!  

eatin' good.

sometimes i forget that cooking doesnt always necessitate hours of prep-work and stress and mess to create deliciousness. sometimes you just need to find the right recipe - one that understands your human limitations and allows you to throw together an impressive dinner in a half-hour or less because pretty much everyone has things they would like to do during their evenings that are kind of impossible if you are spending the entire evening in the kitchen.

this is one of those recipes. its a crock-pot recipe, which are the kind that i usually plan it out so that i can do all the prep work the night before, (i think i spent a grand total of 35 minutes of prep in the evening) and then all i have to do in the morning is remember to plug it in and turn it on.

Prep Step 1: gather ingredients. dont forget to snap the all-important stereotypically-obligatory-obviously-overstaged-food-blogger-ingredient shot. because without this, no one will ever take you seriously.

Prep Step 2: form meatballs. i ended up with 22 out of a pound of turkey, but that number could vary wildly depending on how big you prefer your meatballs to be. i put mine on a waxpaper covered plate and left them in the freezer overnight. i had every intention of transferring them into a ziploc freezer bag before i went to bed, but i forgot. they survived.

Prep Step 3: mix up sauce.  this turned out at least 10x better than the last time i tried to make crockpot sauce... i think probably because this time i actually got the right kind of canned tomatoes. (note to self: diced is NOT an acceptable substitute for crushed) i mixed everything in a ziploc bag and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

Actual Step 1a: make any and all necessary alterations. you see, my wonderful crockpot is not one of the fancy ones with a built in timer. this is usually not an issue, except for when recipes call for any cooking time that is less than 10 hours. which is most of them. i used to just ignore these recommended cooking times, until the great overdone rubbery mac n cheese debacle of 2012, after which i realized that they put cooking times on these recipes for a reason. so, borrowing the sort of ingienuity previously only seen in my kitchen during episodes of 'cooking with men,' i added my own make-shift crock pot timer of sorts by making use of Mark's plant-light timer, so that the crockpot would theoretically turn on a few hours after i left, and turn off right around the time i got home.

Actual Step 1b: dump everything into the crockpot. it really is just that simple. as you head out the door to work, cross your fingers that the timer will actually turn everything on when its supposed to and you wont just come home to a pot full of cold defrosted tomatoey mush.

Actual Step 2: enjoy! the timer worked, which is a good thing because these really are quite delicious and it would have been a real shame to miss out on them. we chose to make our meatballs into subs. we also plan to eat the rest of the leftovers on pasta for dinner tonight.

and look at that! less than 3 steps for dinner prep! that is my kind of cooking right there.

Bonus Recipe:
this meal took me about an hour to make, which is pretty impressive since i was simultaneously baking cupcakes, all while working with even less counter space than i usually have in my teeny tiny kitchen because i was behind on the dishes. i used yellow squash instead of zuchinni, and i just chunked it up instead of shredding/julienne-ing it. (ps the only reason i knew what julienne meant was thanks to that crazy merchant guy in Aladdin. or was it Return of Jafar?)(it also makes julienne fries!) the only thing i would have done differently would be to take more time chopping the tomatoes, so i wouldnt have so many seeds in the final product. you should totally eat this. it was good.

so those are my latest kitchen adventures! i know i'm supposed to be cooking less and less now, but even though its summer, it was really nice to remind myself that i am in fact capable of greater culinary feats beyond what i sometimes let myself believe.

meal plan monday: march 12.

i discovered a few things last week: 1) modifying and hemming IKEA shears takes a lot longer than i thought it would. 2) mushrooms can actually be pretty tasty, even if they dont look very appetizing to me. and 3) if you dont plan any meals for the weekend, then  you probably will only shop for the meals you have planned, and then you may or may not find yourself on Sunday night with nothing in the house to eat or drink.

so this week, i'm going back to my full seven-day meal planning, but still keeping the meals themselves pretty simple because i really really want to finish up the super simple window treatments that i've been working on.

Monday: grilled chicken salad.
Tuesday: crock pot roast, potatoes, and veggies.
Wednesday: fish, rice, and a veggie.
Thursday: soup from a can.
Friday: quesadillas with salsa.
Saturday: taco night.
Sunday: citrus herb chicken, potatoes? veggie.

ps i had a FANTASTIC weekend with my BFITW and my sister and her family and i can't wait to tell you all about it and share some of the fun with you, but since i came home exhausted yesterday and pretty much went straight to bed to make up for the hour of sleep we lost, it'll have to wait until tomorrow-ish.

meal plan monday: feb 27.

this week is going to be an experiment. a fun one. a kind of crazy one. a hopefully very good one.

in an effort to get ourselves more motivated to be more active and more healthy, Mark and I are getting serious about eating better. he wants to get back into weight lifting and bulk up. i want to focus on toning and lose a few of the sneaky pounds i managed to gain over the winter that i just discovered this weekend. (seriously, i thought i was 10 pounds lighter than i am!)

Mark is the brains behind this operation, since he is the one that has actually done all sorts of research into health and nutrition and fitness, and because he can bench-press me when he's OUT of shape and he once went an entire year without eating a single piece of candy. this is serious bid-ness you guys. i might be way out of my league. my part in all of this is to ensure that what we're eating still tastes good.

the plan (as i understand it) will be to eat bigger breakfasts, healthy snacks, and smaller dinners. more fish and eggs, and TONS more veggies. desserts and sweets on special occasions. less carbs in the evening, which means no more pasta for dinner all the time. add on a more-regular exercise plan and there you have it: my best understanding of what it takes to be uber-healthy.

this week is going to act as kind of a trial run to see if we can logistically pull this off and still function as normal human beings who have painting and other projects to finish around the house, a garden to start and maintain, and friendships and family and our own relationship to keep up with. we're in this together. it should be fun.

Monday: tilapia filets with rice and salad.
Tuesday: grilled chicken salad.
Wednesday: vietnam chicken fried rice.
Thursday: chicken-pesto boboli, salad.
Friday: quesadillas with salsa, rice, and avocado.
Saturday: it is useless to try and plan this.
Sunday: we just make it up on the weekends.

are you eating anything interesting this week? trying anything new? do you know of any way to eat more veggies than just eating a lot of salad? cuz apparently i don't.

meal plan monday: feb 20.

i have so many things i want to share with you. but since none of them would give me a clear segue into my meals that i have planned for this week, i guess i'll just wait until tomorrow to start my  share-fest of all the things i did over the weekend. (which is NOT a long weekend for me, because my job hates the presidents. i stayed in bed an extra 45 minutes this morning in protest. and then i got up and rushed around like crazy so i could still make it to work on time.)

so here you have it: our segue-less plan for the week:

To Eat:
Monday: shrimp scampi with rice and a veggie. (we didnt eat it last week)
Tuesday: pasta with jar sauce and a side salad. (also  from last week)
Wednesday: chicken. with rice and a veggie?
Thursday: quesadillas and salsa.
Friday: fish. more rice and veggies?
Saturday: probably soup from a can. we're lazy on the weekends.
Sunday: eh, we'll figure something out.

To Do:
- finish my valentine's bench.
- work on quilt stuffs.
- prep kitchen for paint.

do these posts bore you? does anyone actually care what we're eating? sorry they're not more entertaining, but i mostly write these for my own sanity, to keep from losing my mind over dinnertime, and to have something to post on mondays. it works for me. i'll try and post something slightly more interesting tomorrow.

'explosive' chicken casserole.

for the first time in a few weeks, i tried a new recipe for dinner wednesday night. it was sent to me by a friend who i hadn't heard from in a while. she was a high school student in the youth group i volunteered with for a few years in college. (and if i can be totally honest she was one of my absolute favorites) thanks to facebook, we have kept in touch in the stalker-ish kind of way that only facebook allows, she read my blog and sent me a new, easy, and interesting recipe to try out.

i was intrigued by the concept of the adjective 'exploding' being used to describe any sort of edible meal, so this recipe gets double bonus points for coming with a great back-story that had me doubled-over in my cubicle at work laughing for a solid 5 minutes. and then i couldnt stop laughing. every time i almost calmed myself down, i just lost it and cracked up again. so of course i knew i had to share it.

'Explosive' Chicken Casserole

- 2 sleeves of Ritz crackers
- 1 can cream of chicken soup (or cream of mushroom)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup chicken broth
- 4 to 6 boneless chicken breasts, cooked
- 4 oz melted butter

*Preheat oven to 300 degrees

1. Crumble one sleeve of Ritz crackers in bottom of a casserole dish. Drizzle with half of the melted butter.
2. Mix soup, sour cream, broth, & chicken.
3. Pour over crackers.
4. Crumble remaining sleeve of crackers over chicken mixture. Drizzle with remaining butter.
5. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until hot & bubbly.

*serves 6 (great reheated!)
*crumble crackers inside of sleeve
*chicken is cooked when metal fork comes out clean, but may be placed into casserole before so, as long as it is NOT pink.

"Here's why I've called it the 'explosive' chicken casserole. My BFF was teaching me how to cook and so I wanted to make a recipe that we didn't make together that would be amazing. So, I got this one off of a friend and got down to business. I made it completely without her help and put it in the oven. Meanwhile, we were getting ready for a business holiday party. Well, it was smelling fantastic and so i snuck a peek inside about ten minutes before it was to come out. Not even two minutes later we hear this odd crushing sound. I looked at my roommate and I looked at my bestie, and we all then looked at the oven. Here, I used a faulty glass dish that had been recalled that I did not know about and my wonderful dinner had exploded inside the oven. I cried, we ate cocoa puffs and I spent five hours cleaning broken glass and chicken casserole remains from the oven (after the party of course). Ha, I went out and bought a nonglass bakeware dish, just to be safe... "

this stuff was delicious. after his first bite, Mark declared that he was definitely getting seconds. the only deviations i made from the recipe were that i cut my chicken into cubes, and i dont think i baked it long enough. it was hot, but it was not bubbly when i took it out. (but at least it didnt explode... whew!)  if and when i try this recipe again, i will probably add more chicken, make sure i have more time to let it get good and bubbly, and maybe throw in some broccoli instead of serving it on the side.

oh, and this recipe even came with an extra bonus of a good idea of something to do with the leftover chicken stock:
Also, if you have extra chicken broth, you can make a really scrumptious tortellini & spinach soup for later that week. (Boil the broth, add the tortellini until cooked, take off of stove and throw in a handful of raw spinach; stir and enjoy!)
 
so i tried it for dinner last night. and it was good too! Mark was impressed that i made soup by doing more actual cooking than just opening a can of Progresso.

we have leftovers from both meals, which should make for some easy and tasty meals this weekend, which should hopefully mean we can make some progress on our numerous projects!

TGIF, ammirite? hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

our low-key valentines day.

im pretty certain that i have mentioned here before that i have not always been a huge valentine's day fan. as in i have been known to wear all black and be an outspoken advocate for singles-awareness-day. but for some reason, my attitude has been shifting over the past few years. it may or may not have something to do with having the kind of friends that helped me to understand that Valentine's day is about celebrating ALL the love in our lives, even if its not of the romantic variety. oh, and finding the love of my life, too. that was pretty cool.

so i kind of went a little overboard this year. well, overboard for ME that is, which means that our celebration would probably be considered low-key by anyone who considers the kind of romantic overkill found only in rom-coms to be normal or the standard by which all romantic gestures must be measured. but for us, it was pretty close to perfect.

we exchanged our gifts over the weekend. we didn't really plan to, but it just kind of happened. you see, i went a little crazy and decided that in addition to the meaningful little crafty things i was working on that i really loved and i knew would look really cute hung on the walls of our front room, i needed to also get the hubs something that he would actually really like. so i bought him a miter saw. i was really sneaky about buying it and i was going to make him wait until tuesday... aand then i just gave it to him. i didn't wrap it. i didnt sneak it into the house and set it up for him. i didnt send him on an elaborate scavenger hunt. i didnt even put a bow on it. it was just like "hey, i have this thing in the trunk of my car that you said you wanted and i cant come up with any sort of believable lie to keep you from buying one for yourself in the next 3 days. its really heavy so you're going to have to heft it into the house yourself. happy valentines day."

he does really like it. and he proved that by immediately building me this giant awesome bench.

and then he even put a coat of stain on it over the weekend. isn't it fantastic?!? it still needs another coat of stain and a few coats of polyurethane, and a cushion for the top, and some baskets for underneath, but i'm really excited about it and i cant wait until it can move upstairs for good.

so with all the big gift-giving all out of the way we were all set up for a relaxing tuesday evening. we made an uber-romantic grilled chicken salad for dinner, which was made uber-romantic by working on it together while chatting about our days at work and not getting in a fight over having to share our teeny-tiny kitchen.

i gave mark one of the two crafty gifts i had been working on, the one that was mostly finished. the only thing missing is the dry erase marker so we would actually be able to write our love notes. (this morning i just yelled down the hall, 'because you take out the trash! that's why i love you today!' so at least its not a complete waste without the marker) i'm still waiting on my free map of Maine to come in the mail so that i can finish my other project, but i'll be sure to share it when i get it done.

and do you see that rose? that right there is the first flower that mark has ever bought me that has not come wrapped in dirt. its simple and perfect and i hope i can keep it alive for at least a few days.

we spent the rest of our evening snuggled on the couch for a rom-com double feature of Friends with Benefits and Crazy Stupid Love, courtesy of our local redbox because we dont actually own any good rom-coms.

it was a perfectly low-key-but-still-super-special valentine's day, and a great way to celebrate our three-year dating anniversary. (a day early) hope you all had a wonderful day, too!

meal plan monday: feb 13.

this past week was kind of a break from this whole 'meal-planning' thing that i've been doing. i just could not wrap my head around planning anything ahead of time, or motivate myself to make anything that required real cooking. i didnt even make a real shopping list. the hubs finally decided on Tuesday that we no longer had enough real food in the house, so he made his own mental list and just shopped for the basics to get us through the week. he's great.

PS have i mentioned that Mark has been doing ALL of our grocery shopping this year? as in i have not done any grocery shopping since december? it's awesome. usually i make him a list, and he stops at the store on his way home on Monday night. but he has other things planned for tonight, so i'll probably have to be the one doing tonight's grocery run.

so i'm back this week, with a list of (admittedly simple) meals, one of which is new, all of which should be tasty, and some of which might (hopefully) be (not the exact opposite of) healthy(ish).

Monday: soup from a can.
Tuesday: uber romantic grilled chicken salad with fries.
Wednesday: 'Explosive' Chicken Casserole with a veggie.
Thursday: pasta with jar sauce and a side salad.
Friday: shrimp scampi with rice and a veggie.
Saturday: burgers and fries.
Sunday: breakfast for lunch.

i hope you all have a wonderful week!

cooking with men.

this post is brought to you by the man with whom i am blessed to share a kitchen.

Episode 2: Manly, Efficient Chocolate Milk 
(can making chocolate milk technically be called cooking?)

Prepwork: the key to this recipe is having a mostly-empty bottle of chocolate syrup. Mark prefers Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate variety. tips for emptying a bottle include but are not limited to: eating lots of ice cream sundaes, making chocolate milk the lame way (in a glass with a spoon), and just eating the syrup straight out of the container.

Step 1: remove cap from chocolate syrup container.

Step 2: add milk. amount may vary based on amount of syrup left in container.

Step 3: replace cap onto chocolate syrup container (this step is key)

Step 4: shake shake shake.

Step 5: (optional) get annoyed that wife makes you do everything twice in order to try and get a good picture. consider getting wife a new, nicer camera.

Step 6: allow container to 'rest' upside down for a minute or two ensure maximum syrup inclusion.

Step 7: enjoy!

Note: this method is manly because it is efficient. it is efficient because 1) it requires no extra dishes and B) it makes good use of every.last.drop. of chocolate syrup. and real men are efficient. obviously.

see the pilot episode here

meal plan monday: epic fail.

i'm starting to think that maybe i should switch up this whole meal-planning thing a little bit. because here it is, Monday afternoon, almost dinner time really, and all i have planned for this week is the leftover meals that we didnt make last week because we ate out all weekend. i'm thinking i have a few options as to where to go from here. 1. i give up on this whole meal planning thing. it requires way too much foresight and thinking and planning. 2. meal plan monday moves to tuesday (or any other day) so that i can use monday evenings to plan meals. 3. just buck up and stop being so lazy on the weekends and actually make a meal plan for the week before Monday morning rolls along.

i've got nothin this week. wait, is there anything less than nothing?

To Eat:
Monday: quesadillas. corn?
Tuesday: lasagna. salad.
Wednesday - Sunday: open to suggestions. really easy suggestions.

To Do:
use my new scissors to start cutting up tshirts for quilting.

it could be worse. right?

meal plan monday: wednesday edition.

or: flash-boiling is not quite what it sounds like.
or: i peeled an acorn squash and lived to tell about it.

since i have been doing this weekly meal-planning thing, not only have mealtimes and grocery shopping gotten less stressful, (because since i have a plan i can just make a list and send the hubs shopping!) but several people have sent me recipes for new things to try. i love this. keep 'em coming.

my friend Dana sent me this recipe for squash stew, and it seemed like a winner. the ingredient list wasn't three miles long, i had heard of almost everything on the ingredient list, and it seemed like it would be a do-able crockpot meal. score! well, except for that i didn't read the part of the recipe that said that my tomatoes should be peeled, seeded, and diced, and i kind of forgot the part where she mentioned that she used canned tomatoes for hers, so yeah. easy cooking fail.

although, now i get to share with you the nifty little trick that my sister taught me: how to peel tomatoes.

1. gather your supplies. you will need some tomatoes, a knife, a pot of water, a long handled spoon, and a bowl of ice. and possibly an extra bowl to put your peels in, in case your garbage can has been commandeered for squash-peeling purposes.

2. score an X into each of your tomatoes. just deep enough to break the skin, but not so deep that you actually cut into the tomato.

3. boil your pot of water.

4. put your tomatoes into the water. i did mine one at a time so they could be completely submerged in my little pot. also, so that i could watch them more closely.

5. leave them in the water until you see the edges of your X begin to get loose. this will not take very long at all. a few seconds should do it.

6. scoop your tomato out of the water and into the bowl of ice. roll it around a little if  you want, to make sure the whole tomato gets cooled down. this keeps it from becoming a boiled tomato.

7. peel your tomato. this part is kind of fun and awesome. sorry i have no pictures of it - both my hands were busy being covered in tomato-y awesomesauce.

congratulations! you now know how to flash-boil and peel a tomato! now all thats left to do is to smoosh all the seeds out and cut your tomatoes into little bits. or, you know, just skip all that mess and use canned tomatoes like a sane person.

the other fun part of this recipe involved peeling and cutting up an acorn squash. the hubs got this started for me while i was busy flash-boiling. according to the commentors on the recipe, a helpful hint is to cut the squash in half and then microwave it for a few minutes to soften the squash and make it easier to cut and peel. this seemed reasonable, but we only nuked ours for one minute, because i knew it was going to be cooking for a long time in the crock pot and i didnt want to risk over-cooking it in the microwave first.

you'll want to nuke yours for more than one minute, if you value your fingers and/or sanity.

the hubs managed to peel a few sections of it, but quickly got frustrated so we traded jobs and he took over tomato-seed-smooshing and dicing while i took a stab a the squash. it smelled just like a pumpkin and was kind of reminiscent of my adventures in rutabaga-peeling in that when i finished i was mostly just happy to have retained all of my fingers.

other than those two time-consuming tasks, every other part of this recipe was super simple, and we were able to just throw all the parts into the crock-pot, which worked great for us since it could stay in the fridge overnight and then cook while we were at work the next day.

it looked delicious. it smelled delicious. it tasted... alright. we're not the biggest fans. but we ate it. for dinner Friday, and dinner Monday, and lunch Tuesday. i probably won't make it again any time soon, but i'm glad it tried it. if nothing else, it was a great adventure.

ok, ok. i know this is already pushing limits on being the longest post about boring things like stew that people are actually willing to read, but just a quick note about spices: USE LESS CINNAMON. the flavor was absolutely overpowering and the scent combination of pumpkin and cinnamon made it hard for my brain and tongue to register that this was not nearly as sweet as my nose would have it believe. also, the hubs is not a cinnamon fan in general. wierd, i know. (also, i used about half of the suggested chili powder. 2Tbsp is a lot!)(also also, this recipe makes A LOT and doesnt re-heat particularly well. i mean it still tastes the same, but it takes quite a dive in the looks department.)

so there you have it folks, another successfully meal-planned week. thats an entire month that i have stuck with this. amazing. so here's what we've got planned for this week:

Monday: leftover squash stew.
Tuesday: boboli. and maybe french fries. (cuz potatoes are totes vegetables)
Wednesday: crock-pot chicken parmesan.
Thursday: soup from a can.
Friday: shrimp/pasta alfredo with broccoli
Saturday: quesadillas and/or lasagna.
Sunday: superbowl gluttony goodness.

weekly plan: Jan 23.

well, we made it through another week of meal planning. granted, i only tried one new recipe last week, and that one recipe managed to turn my kitchen into a disaster zone for a full day and a half, and it didnt turn out as well as it should have because i managed to overcook the noodles, and i made about twice as much as we needed, (we're finally finishing the last of it for lunch today) but overall i would definately have to call last week a success for meal planning!

as far as how we did on the other stuff we had planned, i might have been a tad bit ambitious. yes, we got the doors painted and re-hardwared and re-hung. yes, we cleaned out the fireplace. and as a bonus, we even finally took Harold down and out to the backyard.

but that stuff about the kitchen? yeah no. after a little discussion, our plans for the kitchen have expanded a little beyond what i had originally thought. instead of just painting the walls in there (which would take zero time because our kitchen is super-tiny) we are also going to fix a spot in the ceiling, paint the ceiling, paint the cabinets to match the trim, and hang a shelf. still relatively minor stuff to be sure, but it's not the kind of thing thats going to get done in a couple hours on a Monday night.

but since i'm on a roll with this whole having-a-plan thing, here's our plan for this week:

To Eat:
Monday: taco night! (carried over from last Friday)
Tuesday: squash stew - recipe from Dana (i'mma try it in the crockpot)
Wednesday: whatever Victoria brings over for dinner
Thursday: shrimp, rice, and a vegetable
Friday: orange citrus chicken (from this book), Mark's roasted potatoes
Saturday: leftovers, whatever i find at the mall food court
Sunday: eggplant parmesan, salad.

To Paint:
- coffee table.
- my toenails.

To Do:
- catch up on laundry.
- buy better scissors.
- shop with my BFITW on Saturday!

and as always, the plan is subject to change. and if it does, it's no big deal. after all, this is the year of non-resolutions and vague goals and no pressure to do anything perfectly, or really to do anything at all.

a plan.(ish)

last week's meal plan went surprisingly well. we only had to switch meals around once, and just skipped one meal. (we ate at the in-laws) we had plenty of leftovers for lunches, and the food was all delicious.

recipe for this found here on Pinterest

the only problem is that now i am having trouble coming up with a plan for this week. it's like i tapped out all my ideas last week. and as good as the food was, i don't know that i want to eat the same meals over and over every week. but every time i try to pick meals for the week, they wind up looking almost identical to what we ate last week. soup, pasta, chicken, fish, beef...

is that a bad thing? am i overthinking this? eh. so what if i am. we need to eat something and i need to come up with a grocery list. so here's what's on the menu for this week.

To Eat
Monday: soup from a can (because i'm a procrastinator. also: lazy)
Tuesday: frozen raviolis, salad
Wednesday: chicken, pasta, corn (maybe this recipe?)
Thursday: fish, rice, broccoli
Friday: taco night

**edit: swap Monday and Thursday. even though i'm lazy today, i have more time tonight to make dinner than i will on Thursday.

To Paint
- closet and basement doors.
- kitchen?

To Do
- replace hardware and re-hang doors.
- organize kitchen.
- clean out the fireplace.

on the plus side, at least we've stayed away from the frozen pizza so far! but seriously, if you have any suggestions for what we should eat next week, please send them my way!

an idea for food network's newest show.

i have discovered something. a revelation of sorts. a realization that there is a sizeable hole in the repertoire of cooking shows. or at least i think there's a hole, whatever size it may be. and i guess the filler for such a hole could exist somewhere out there and i just don't watch enough Food Network to know about it, but it's a novel idea to me and so i'm going to just throw it out there because i heard it here first, even if you didn't.

Cooking with Men Who Don't Know How to Cook.

i'm thinking it would be a big hit, and i'm going to go ahead and tell you why.

1. you've already got plenty of cooking shows hosted by women because a woman's place is obviously in the kitchen and thats why we dont wear watches because there's a clock on the stove and i feel like the whole 'woman in the kitchen' thing is already way overdone.

2. while men cooking on tv is nothing new, all those men have some sort of a background in the culinary arts. whether they're a chef or a baker or a foodie, they are masters of their craft and they know their way around their kitchen stuffs way better than i ever will.

3. it would be exciting. there would be knives and fire and the never-ending suspense of whether or not all of the sweat and tears and hard work would ever yield anything edible. and really, the tears enough should be all it takes to get people to tune in.

4. it would be hilarious. i know that sometimes when i read a recipe i just have to laugh because i don't understand a word of what they're trying to tell me to do. so it only follows that it would be even funnier to watch someone else try to figure it out from the comfort of my own couch.

5. it would be educational. men and women alike would learn new things about food, cooking, kitchen gadgets, and recipes, and maybe even get a glimpse into how very different the inner workings of men and womens' brains are.

6. men have a certain tendency to be creative in their problem-solving methods and the tools they choose to use. anything goes. don't know what an immersion blender is? use your drill and grout stirrer instead. bring on the power tools, boys. the bigger the better.

so where did i get this fabulous idea? the hubs decided to help out with tonight's dinner. in fact, he did most of the work for our rice-beef-vegetable-soup concoction. and then when i told him that we should probably leave a little more room in the crock pot because we didn't know how much water would cook out of the meat and the veggies, he got a little concerned. and then he came up with a plan.

so one cutting board, one sink, and one 50 ft extension cord later, our soup setup was prepared for any overflow-type-mishaps that may or may not happen while we are at work today.

perhaps 'reasonably sized extension cord' should move up to the top of our shopping list.

hey Food Network! call me!

do you have a plan?

so. about this time last year, i decided that i needed to find a meal plan to use. something that would allow me to make new things, eat real food, and feel grown up. i found one that came with recipes AND a shopping list. it seemed perfect. it also required me to make at least three brand new recipes every day. most stuff was delicious. a few things were complete disasters.

i lasted about a week. and then i got overwhelmed at the thought of having to go through all that again the next week and i gave up and ran whimpering back to my frozen pizza every Tuesday night.

and yet, here i am again, with the first of my non-proritized un-resolutions for 2012 being to come up with a reasonable meal plan. so here's what i have for this week:

Monday: quesadillas.
Tuesday: homemade beef-rice-vegetable soup.
Wednesday: grilled chicken penne pesto pasta with roasted asparagus.
Thursday: fish, rice, and broccoli.
Friday: broccoli mac n cheese.
Saturday: leftover soup?
Sunday: chicken and potatoes.

the asparagus was one of our favorite things that i learned how to make during last year's meal planning extravaganza. other than that, none of these things have an actual recipe per-se. but they all sound good to me. they all seem simple enough to pull off on a weeknight without having to spend the whole evening in the kitchen. and best of all, none of them require me to wander my grocery store searching for the ever-elusive barley, gouda cheese, or green chiles. (i never managed to find any of them last year. i'm not entirely sure they actually exist. kind of like The Princess Bride.)

maybe in the weeks to come i'll get more adventurous with my meals. i might even blog about the new stuff that i try. or maybe i'll continue to stick with what i know. but either way, hopefully our Tuesday frozen pizza nights will no longer be a weekly ritual.

and if you let me know when to expect you for dinner, i'll have something special planned just for you!

(that last line sounded creepy and evil and stabby. that's not how i meant it. honest.)