Menu.

Happy Halloween!

With out further ado, here is my menu for 10/31-11/06:

Beef & Veggie Stew

Primavera

Tamale Casserole

Tequila Lime Chicken

Meatloaf

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Kung Pao Chicken

Eat at mom's (hey mom...did you know? I assume you did...the Packer's have the night game)

So there you go. A wonderful week of meals. I've actually already made my menu for next week too and shopped for it. So that's a mini update on my goals post of how we're doing on our budget. Still not so great, but definitely getting better. I'm actually balancing my check book. I know some of you just died in shock, and I'll miss knowing that you read my blog. HA!! But seriously, I created a register in Excel and I update it, check it with the bank and I balance to the penny. It's really nice. My bills are all paid, groceries bought so all I have to do is try to not spend the "extra" that we have in the account until the 15th. And it sure would be nice if Nick's job would give him the money from the expense report he turned in over a month ago... just sayin...

And in relation to the picture above - Happy Halloween! Even though it's Ben's first, it's really not all that different yet. We attended Boo At the Zoo yesterday afternoon....meh. Did you know I hate crowds? I do. I hate large groups of people, ambling about in no particular direction (except the one that happens to be in my way) and stopping randomly, blocking the entire pathway and blocking it for those behind them that want to continue walking. Remind me why I went again? ha ha no, it was fun to see all the kiddos dressed up. We saw a lot of dragons, Transformers, Darth Vaders, doctors....I didn't see any pumpkins which surprised me. I figured every other baby would be in a pumpkin costume (Nick said he saw one but I must have gone to my happy place and blocked it out), so that was a nice treat.

Today we're going over to my parents for the Packer game and that's about it. I'm going to set out my bowl of candy with a sign that says something about a sleeping baby so please don't ring the bell. I'll have Nick keep an eye on things and hopefully our trick or treaters are honest and only take a few pieces each.

Hope your Halloween is a good one!

Skillet Lemon Chicken With Rosemary

So here is another new recipe that we tried last night. I'll post how it was written in the book and then I'll show what I did different and my plans for this in the future.

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup dry white wine (optional)

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard

3 cloves garlic

1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, pressed

6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

1 cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon olive oil

• In a blender or food processor, blend lemon juice, wine, mustard, garlic and rosemary until well combined. In a large zipper-topped plastic bag, throw the chicken in and add the lemon juice mixture. Keep in the fridge for at least an hour (or do this in the morning and have it well marinated that night).
• In a small bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons of the chicken broth and cornstarch until dissolved; set aside.
• In a skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook chicken (reserving marinade) on each side, about 4 minutes or until no longer pink. Remove chicken from skillet and cover to keep warm.
• Now add reserved marinade to the skillet and, using a wire whisk, stir in the cornstarch mixture and the remaining broth. Bring to a bowl, sirring constantly. Cook and stir for 2 minutes more. Return chicken to skillet, heat through and serve with sauce.

What I did different:

• I didn't use fresh lemon juice - just the kind from the little plastic squeezie bottle you buy at the grocery store.
• I didn't have dry white wine, but I did use a sweet dessert wine.
• I used the Gluden's spicy brown mustard for the dijon.
• I reduced the garlic from 3 cloves to 1 (I followed another recipe of hers where she called for 4 cloves of garlic and it was simply too much).
• I also didn't have rosemary so I subbed in thyme.
• I found that 4 minutes was not NEARLY enough time to cook the chicken and I only used 2 breasts.

Over all, this was good. It was tangy and had a good flavor. Here are my plans for next time:

• Follow all of the steps up through the marinade.
• At that point, I plan to add the cornstarch to the entire cup of chicken broth, combine with the chicken and marinade and bake in a 350 or 375 oven, covered with foil, about 30 or so minutes until the chicken is done.
• Then serve over egg or fettuccine noodles.

Baked Macaroni and Three Cheese*.

I've been trying out some new recipes this week and thought I'd pass on last nights dinner. Super yummy and way easy to make. I'll post the original recipe and then my alterations:

*disclaimer: The only ways this is a "macaroni and cheese" recipe is that there are noodles and cheese.

1/4 pound ziti pasta, cooked

1 jar spaghetti sauce

1 cup low-fat sour cream

6 ounces provolone cheese, thinly sliced

6 ounces low-fat mozzarella cheese, shredded

1/2 cup Romano cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9x13 baking pan.

In a large mixing bowl, toss together the pasta, spaghetti sauce and sour cream. Mix together the provolone, the mozzarella and the Romano cheese and set aside. Now layer half the pasta mixture into the baking dish and sprinkle half the cheese mixture on the pasta. Layer remaining pasta on top and then the rest of the cheese. Bake for 30 minutes or until bubbly. Don't let the cheese brown.

Here's how I changed it:

• I did not use sour cream. I didn't have any.
• I used my can of Parmesan cheese instead of the Romano (saved me moolah at the grocery store and I'm pretty sure there is zero taste difference - as far as the fakey stuff goes).
• I bought the provolone at the deli counter, pre-wrapped and pre-sliced.
• I didn't "mix" the cheese, it didn't make sense to me to do that, since the provolone is sliced.
• I cooked the noodles, drained the water and returned them to the pot and added the spaghetti sauce.
• Then I sprayed Pam on the baking dish and spread out half of the pasta with sauce.
• Then I shook the can of Parmesan over the top til it looked good, spread about half a bag of mozzarella cheese on top and laid out about 6 slices of the provolone.
• Repeat and bake.

This makes a LOT. The book says 6 servings.... I know Nick & I had seconds last night (and they were good sized portions, since I didn't make a side dish) and we have 4 containers of it left over plus I gave it to Ben for dinner and lunch (and he LOVES it).

Menu.

I saw on another blog I followed that this lady posts her weekly menu for the week every Sunday. So because I'm a copy cat and I adore lists (per my previous post), I thought I'd start doing that as well. Not so much because I think any of you that read my lil ol blog care about what I choose to feed my family for the week, but mostly to make sure I actually make my menu. I find that when I take the time to think of meals, look in my cupboards for what I have on hand and plan accordingly, we spend so much less money at the grocery store. Last week, I don't know what I did but I went to the store with the stupidest list ever and we've made 3 or 4 runs up to the Fred's on the corner to fill in what I didn't plan for.

So without further ado - my menu for the week. These aren't in any particular order, I'll make them as they sound good (although they are in beef, chicken & meatless order so I don't have 3 nights in a row of beef dishes, etc, so maybe I will make them in this order):

Beef & Bean Burritos

Chicken & Rice Chowder

Baked Macaroni & Three Cheese

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Skillet Lemon Chicken with Rosemary

Beef & Veggie Stew

Primavera

I'm also currently reading: Saving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table by Leanne Ely, which is chock full of recipes and all sorts of tips. She breaks her book out into seasons and gives you about 8 weeks of menus per season, she also creates a shopping list based on the ingredients needed for each week of meals and tips to save you time when planning ahead for tomorrow's dinner. Right now I'm just mostly using her book for dinner ideas but this could really be a time saver for some one that doesn't want to sit down and plan a menu.

Check.

I heart to-do lists. Even more, I heart checking things off my to-do list. On Saturday, we're having the awesome Carissa from ckg photography do some pictures for us. We had her do Ben's 6 months pictures, after we saw what a fantastic job she did on some friends pictures. At first I wanted to do them at a pumpkin patch but I guess Idaho does things a little different than what I'm used to from Washington as far as pumpkin patches go. I've never had to pay admission to a patch before and to be honest, after shelling out money for our outfits and props and the photos themselves, I'm not looking to spend any more money - just to gain entrance to the place where we're taking pictures. So we're going a slightly different route but I think the overall effect will still be super cute. Only two things left to do on my to-do list and we're done with that list!

Projects, however....well, finishing projects is something I apparently have a hard time with. If I can pretty much work a project start to finish non stop, I'll get it done - no problem. But if it's something I do that takes a few days or weeks (or months, in the case of a certain VERY overdue gift to my sister in law and her new baby), it seems like I never finish it. I'm working on that vaguely mentioned gift, refinishing a free desk, converting our front room into a crafting space and some other things. I feel like I'll never finish. I think this is why I can't really seem to get into scrapbooking. I love the idea of scrapbooking and I do like to sit down and create pages but it always feels like a work in progress. And going back as far as I want to go seems like an enormous task. Blah.

Making decisions is another thing that I both love and hate. Some times I'm really focused and can just plow through what to do, where to do, if I should do it, etc. Other times I agonize and worry and wonder what others will think....then I have to almost yell at myself and make myself do what's right for me, and try not to worry so much what others think. Let me tell ya, as soon as the decision is made and put into action, I almost always feel instantly better. I've been in a deep funk the last few months (getting steadily worse - feeling things about myself that I haven't felt in a very long time) and I finally decided that it just wasn't worth it any more.

I'm still working on my Operation Purge & Simplify. I haven't really made any changes since my last post but the guest room is next. I've sort of been shoving things in there that I don't want to throw away, in hopes that I have some sort of meager and sad garage sale next spring. I'm thinking that that'll probably be way too much work and I'm just gonna donate the whole shebang to the Youth Ranch.

I do have a new goal, though, that I need to update to my goals blog. I want to make sure I make at least one new dish a month. I feel like we eat the same ol' things, over and over again (spaghetti and burritos, spaghetti and burritos) and I need to change it up. Plus, Ben is eating more and more "people" food (as opposed to "baby" food) and I want to offer him a variety of tastes. My mom kind of pokes fun at me because I was hesitant to let her feed him ice cream. It's not that I don't ever want him to have sweets - I just want to make sure he gets an appreciation for all things that are good for him before I start adding in the bad stuff.

So there's my random blog post du jour. I might regale you all with some "before" and "after" pictures of a few projects I've done around the house recently. If you're lucky. ;)