Quarantine Week 2

Week 2 of quarantine lock down has been pretty good from a food standpoint. I also am pretty proud of myself for being creative with the foods we have for the most part. We made one grocery trip on Sunday, which we will not be repeating as it was pretty scary. We’ll be doing curbside pick up or delivery from now on. But I think we are eating pretty well.

Thursday (3/26), enjoyed a couple of cooking adventures. For breakfast, I made a galette with apples and sharp cheddar. The eggs came out perfect! I got a “delicious” and several compliments on the eggs from the kid. The part she actually left was the part of the pie without the egg on it! This is kind of a victory with a kid who’d sell her entire toy bin for bread if it came to it.

For dinner, we didn’t have the kid, so I cooked cheesy bratwursts using the broiler on my oven. We ate them on bratwurst buns I made Wednesday while making hamburger buns. I put onions with them in the broiler, so we had some broiled onions to go on top. We also currently have at least 5 different mustards open in our fridge, so there were a variety of choices. I went with the horseradish mustard, but I think my husband went with a beer mustard. Full disclosure, we have made two trips to the National Mustard Museum in the last 3 months.

Friday (3/27), I made pizzas. I used a basic pizza dough recipe but made it using my Kitchenaid mixer rather than kneading by hand. I also incorporated a few herbs into the dough to add flavor. I made one pizza fairly thick crusted and a good size to make 5 pieces. It had mushrooms (from a can) and sliced tomatoes (the last one!). The second one was 14″ and I patted out the crust very thin. I topped it with my homemade Italian sausage, onions and sliced garlic. Luckily, I bought a large thing of peeled garlic last time I shopped, so we still have plenty. We also have jarred minced garlic, so we will survive if a vampire shows up. I had also made mini apple spice muffins earlier, so we had dessert!

Saturday (3/28) for lunch, the husband and I ate leftover fried chicken from last week and potatoes. The kid ate muffins and an apple. I’m going to just kind of let that go, as the muffins are made with mostly garbanzo flour and walnuts, so pretty healthy. I made some hummus in the afternoon and made a 1-cup batch of chocolate hummus just to see what it was like. It’s actually pretty damned good. Like, I almost cut up an apple to dip, and I don’t really eat apples raw. I now have too much hummus, so I’ll probably send some to our youngest’s mom tomorrow, but it’s good. The kid said the chocolate hummus is delicious!

For dinner, I made red beans and rice. I used kidney beans, but my research indicates dark or light red kidney beans or small red beans can be used. I made it in the Instapot and I didn’t put quite enough liquid in with beans, so I could definitely improve it, as some of the beans were not quite as done as I would like. But the flavor was very good, so I’ll definitely try that again. This was the first meal in weeks that the kid really didn’t like. She covered it up, which frustrates me a bit, as I want her to understand that she can say she doesn’t like something. I think she confuses my earlier frustrations with her unwillingness to try things with thinking she cannot say she doesn’t like them once she does. We’re going to work on this. I don’t want her to think she has to please everybody. Life lessons from food. Maybe when I try making it again, I’ll add some andoullie.

Sunday (3/29), I made eggs in a hole for breakfast. I used some artisan bread we have and sprinked it with paremesan. It was pretty good. We didn’t really do lunch, but just snacked because we had breakfast late. We broke down and stopped at a grocery store on our way back from taking the little one to her mother’s. This was a huge mistake, and I won’t do it again. It was so stressful, as there are always those couple of people who completely missed math or whatever class in school would give them the concept of what 6 feet looks like! Long story short, we got home and had a liquid dinner instead of making what I had planned. My husband did end up cooking some packaged bratwursts we had later in the evening.

Monday (3/30), I let the almost 10 year old cook! She’d picked out to recipe before leaving Sunday so I could make sure we had everything for it, which we did. I have a prior posted blog, Let Her Cook, if you want more details, but we made creamy tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s a simple meal. We’re now out of sliced cheese, so the next grilled cheeses are likely to be super healthy cause they’ll be made with Velveeta. But it was pretty tastey.

Tuesday (3/31), I got adventurish for lunch and made rotini pasta with alfredo sauce. I had heavy cream that was getting old and needed to be used. We then turned the remaining cream into butter as a “science” experiment and froze the butter so it will keep a little longer. Of course, I didn’t think about my dinner plan and used up all the cream! I also made some dinner rolls in the afternoon just for the hell of it! For dinner, I made Sweedish meatballs and mashed potatoes. I was slightly concerned because I had no heavy cream, but I used half and half and added some flour to help thicken, and it came out wonderful.

Wednesday (4/1), the kid had a big snack late in the afternoon, which is always a bit frustrating, but it allowed me to deviate from our normal vegetarian dinner plan on nights she’s with us. I went ahead and made stuffed pork chops and just reheated her leftover pizza from Friday, as it was nearing its toss date. I completed the meal with a side of steamed brussel sprouts, and everyone was happy. Okay, the kid is never happy with leftover anything. She has something weird about leftovers, but she ate enough of it.

I expect I’m going to need some basic grocery items by Monday, like eggs. And we have a birthday next week, so may need a couple of items for a special dinner, but again, planning to use curbside pickup from my local grocery store Harvest Time. But I haven’t reached the “make my own yeast” point, so feeling pretty good.