We made it through the week without grocery shopping, so I was pretty proud of myself. I did place a spice order, but I am still waiting on that to arrive. But we had a pretty adventurous food week.
Thursday (4/9), we just had leftovers for dinner. My husband kept insisting I was making too much food, and we wouldn’t be able to eat it, so I took a night off. The lasagna was still very good! I did make the kid a peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch using the latest batch of rye bread I had made, so that’s cooking, right? I also gave away some of the food items the day before so I could justify more cooking later.
Friday (4/10), I made smoked pork fried rice. It was delcious, and you can read all about it in my post Smoked Pork Three Ways. I am continuing to grow my sourdough starter, though I admittedly know nothing about what I’m doing. I’ve read so many how-tos on this procedure, and they are all so different. Also, I have no idea what it is supposed to smell like. I’ve looked at pictures for what it should look like and maybe it’s getting there???
Saturday (4/11), we slept really late, so we ended up doing more of a late lunch than an actual dinner. I know if you eat around 11 am, it can be brunch. I don’t know what you call it when your main meal of the day is at 3:30 pm inthe afternoon. But I used more of the smoked pork to make a pork and potato hash and fried a couple of eggs to put on top. It was delicious. I have never once ordered a hash anywhere. I have never made a hash. I am now a really big fan of hash.
Sunday (4/12), we slept in again. We ate left overs for lunch. I put some chicken leg quarters in the Dutch oven and boiled them to make chicken broth. I didn’t have a lot of veggies to put in it, but I threw in a couple of onions, garlic cloves and some red bell pepper we had. I spiced it with salt, pepper and fenugreek. It actuall came out pretty well, but by the time the chicken was cooked, I was feeling really sick (not coronavirus sick, my stomach was just acting up). So, I deboned the chicken and set it to cool and tossed the bones back in and added more water to increase the broth. I did taste the broth prior to my wonderful husband putting it away, and the flavor was great.
Tuesday (4/14), I had mixed up some ground chicken with apples, onion and spices the night before for a chicken breakfast sausage. I cooked those with some canned crescent rolls and served with poached eggs for breakfast. The chicken sausage was dry. If I try that gain, I need to find a way to add some fat to that chicken. Our heat malfunctioned and our apartment was freezing. Of course, this happens the day it snows and there is no sun. So, I took to baking.
I made blueberry-lemon muffins. I made these with half garbanzo flour, both in an effort to conserve the AP flour and because then we can feel good about how much healthier they are than just plain flour muffins. I also made a lemon curd thing that I thought would be like lemon bars I have had from a bakery, but they didn’t exactly look like those lemon squares. I’m not sure if that was the cook or the recipe. But they were delicious, and we ate them all!
I also made a double chocolate banana bread loaf. It was super rich. It was based off a recipe from The Stay at Home Chef. I did not add the frosting, and I replaced 1/2 the flour with garbanzo bean flour and added 1/4 cup of flax seed.
For dinner, I baked up a chicken pot pie using the chicken I had deboned from making the broth on Sunday. I used a very simple recipe using refrigerated pie crust, which I happen to have several of in my freezer, and I actually remembered to move to the refrigerator on Monday. My big debate came in how many and which cream of soups to use! I ended up going with 2 cream of mushroom and 1 cream of chicken. It was the right call. I added some ground fennel seasoning because I wanted the celery taste and did not have any celery.
Needless to say, Tuesday was a big cooking day!
Wednesday (4/15), I had decided that the little one needed to try beets. She has only ever tried pickled beet once, and this was very early in our “try something new” adventures, so it wasn’t even a fair try. So, I decided we would have beets two ways with dinner. I roasted and pickled a few beats, and I just roasted a few more to slice and serve with dinner. I also roasted some brocolli, and I reheated our cauliflower mac n’ cheese from Monday in the oven with some extra cheese melted on top. We also had some boiled eggs from easter, so I made deviled eggs!
Wednesday night I caved and put in online orders for food delivery from Aldi and curbside pick up from Harvest Time for Thursday. But 10 days without shopping is super impressive for me. Also, I think I got enough and have learned enough about preserving it to make it longer this time!
Foodie's Delimma 