What a(n) (ice) day

Snow and snow and snow and ice and sleet and ice and ice.

But I am wearing clean pajamas and I did do a lot of organizing and cleaning around the apartment today. I have a roast beef in the crockpot that needs about another hour or so. Roasted butternut squash and mashed potatoes. And the best part: sweet potato biscuits. I may never make regular biscuits again. Granted, I did grate an entire stick of frozen butter into these puppies, but I’d like to think that including an entire baked sweet potato into the biscuits counterbalances the butter. Right? Right. (right?)

Over 5300 people in Eugene are without power at the moment and out local electricity company said to expect outages even if we haven’t had any issues so far. So, yeah. Henry went to the store to get beer, candles, and hot cheetos. That’s all we need to be snowed and iced in–and without power.

Please make these biscuits. I didn’t change a thing about the recipe. Some reviewers said that grating frozen butter was difficult, but it was so easy and weird that it was almost a novelty.  Ooh! Grated butter!  Even Henry smiled at it.

Rosemary Mustard Beef Kabobs and Vegetable Tian

School starts tomorrow. PowerPuff Girls is on. Meat is in the fridge, marinating, and the oven is preheating. I still have homework to do for my Master’s before the night is over. But laundry is done, the five year old starts kindergarten tomorrow, and it’s so muggy in this apartment. Ugh. I’m all over the place. But dinner will be good.

This recipe is adapted from a grilled chicken recipe. I just slathered the marinade on some beef and I’ll grill that instead. 

Ingredients:

• some sort of protein
• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• juice from one large lemon
• two cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper
• 1 1/2 tablespoons minced, fresh rosemary

Grill the marinated meat. The end

Tian:

Ingredients:

• Some combination of veggies. I chose sweet potatoes, red potatoes, onion, summer squash, and zucchini.
• 2 T butter
• 1 T rosemary
• 2 cloves garlic, minced

Method: I caramelized the onion first. Then I sliced all of my veggies about a 1/4 inch thick. Then I layered them in a casserole dish. Then I dotted them with butter, salted and peppered them. Then layered the onions on top, with the rosemary and garlic sprinkled on top of that. Then, cover tightly with foil and bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Take the foil off, add some Parmesan cheese to the top, and bake another 30 minutes, uncovered.

 

 

Sunday Morning Menu Planning

Sunday: 

• Lunch:   Out.  I think we will take a long walk this afternoon and eat wherever we end up. 
• Dinner:  Tacos.  Market of Choice has some ground beef on sale right now.   It wasn’t on sale, but I bought some anyway. 

Monday: 

• Lunch: Soup and/or sandwich
• Dinner: Leftovers

Tuesday:

• Lunch: Trader Joe’s convenience lunch.  Something frozen.  We’ll see what looks appetizing today.         
•  Dinner: French Lentil Caviar Salad with a Poached Egg

Wednesday:

• Lunch: Hummus, crackers, veg
• Dinner: Breakfast

Thursday:

• Lunch: TJ’s convenience lunch
• Dinner: Out (payday!)

Friday:

• Lunch: Out
• Dinner: Wing it

I’ve decided to micromanage my week’s meals a bit more than usual.  What I usually do is make a list of a few dishes on the weekend, cook them, and divvy them up for lunches and dinners and call it good.  The problem I still run into, however, is the temptation to eat out, even when we cannot afford it–even when we have leftovers.  I am so tired when I get home–too tired to cook and leftovers just don’t sound good on some nights.  So, I’d like to start choosing some quick and easy meals that I can cook in minutes on weeknights so that I don’t have any excuses to eat out.

Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Curry

The dish I am making today is a combination of two recipes I found this morning.  The first one is from The CopyCat Cook.  The combination of creamy sweet potatoes and red lentils sounds like a good pair.

This curry seems to be (and I’m definitely not a curry expert) an Indian-inspired curry (cumin, turmeric, and lentils) and I’m in the mood for Thai, so I found this recipe, which calls for Thai curry paste, cilantro, and fish sauce:  Sweet Potato Thai Curry.

The final dish will use green curry paste, coconut milk, fish sauce, spinach, lentils, ginger, garlic, onion, cilantro, and of course,  sweet potato.

(Vegetarians should omit the fish sauce!)

Finals Notes:

I decided to partially cook the sweet potatoes and lentils in their own pots prior to adding all the ingredients together in the curry.  I wanted to make sure that all the ingredients were cooked through at the same time, spent the right amount of time in the curry sauce, and cooking those ingredients separately seemed the best way to do it.  It was a bit more work, but I felt I had more control over the final dish this way.  No crunchy lentils or potatoes for me!

As I added the potatoes and lentils to the curry sauce, I also added some veggie stock to thin out the coconut milk.  Green curry also tends to taste soapy to me (am I the only one?) and the veggie stock mellows out the curry paste.

I ended up leaving out the fish sauce and the spinach and adding a healthy dose of lime juice at the very end of cooking.

This is, by far, the best curry recipe I’ve ever made.  I highly recommend it!

Sunday Menu

I am really struggling with motivation to cook this weekend.  We really didn’t do much grocery shopping yesterday, either.  I was too intent on getting my middle aged man cat, Hector, from Green Hill Humane Society.

What I did manage to buy from the grocery store:

tempeh, mushrooms, fake sausage, sweet potatoes, bread, and butter

What I already have in the fridge:

bell peppers, carrots, jalapeños, onions, and garlic

So, without motivation, inspiration, or compatible ingredients, I’m getting a little worried that I won’t be able to cook meals for the week.  We may just have to wing it, which means eating out. Every. Single. Night.  Which we can’t afford.  Hmm…

Well, here is one recipe I will definitely make this week, as I have mashed sweet potatoes in the fridge left over from sweet potato yeast bread that the husband made last week:

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Tempeh: something I keep buying that I don’t exactly love, but hope to love one day.

With the tempeh, I may make:

Tempeh Bourgogne

or

Tempeh Fajitas?

Or I may just eat pizza, burritos, and Chinese food all week.

And cuddle with my new cat: