Not Enough Time for Anything

Between work, house stuff, jewerly class, and, since I've failed miserably with FaceBook, Twittering haiku (look to the menu on the right for updates), there's just not enough time to blog. But I still try.

Today I made granola again. It is almost too delicious. I did have one problem though: I bought pre-roasted and salted sunflower seeds. I prefer to use completely raw seeds. I must admit though, that the salt added quite a nice counterpoint to all the sweet (honey, figs, aprill cots, raisins). Next time, I'll buy raw, but I'll be sure to add salt.

We also had some lovely yogurt parfaits for breakfast this morning. Later, I picked apart another roast chicken carcase and "Bob" made a lovely stock from its bones (plus those of another roast chicken). You know what that means: There will be pot pies before too long (and I'll finally get to use all those baking dishes I bought from Fishs Eddy for this sole purpose). The winter is over and we've still got butternut squash ravioli in the freezer, plus a bunch of roast chicken meat, some turkey meatloaf, homemade breadcrumbs, frozen vegetalbes, frozen ginger, and, thankfully, pizza from my birthday earlier this month.

Tomorrow I'll post another menu. There will be soup, chicken stir fry, and (hopefully) some delicious recipes to follow.

E-Co$t Debut

Nope, I didn't forget about the new E-Co$t feature of this site. Last week we spent $131 on groceries. We bought a lot of stuff and mostly it was food related. But amazingly enough, only a total of $74.44 was for food for dinner prep—and that includes the $14.99 for a 44-fluid ounce bottle of extra virgin olive oil. The organic baby spinach at $3.79 per 6-ounce "box" (evil plastic) was also a big chunk of the bill since we bought three of them (the spinach and the olive oil totaled $26.36). The other expensive items were non-dinner related (sparkling water, organic cereal bars, yogurt, and coffee beans). I have several ideas for cutting down those costs, which I'll post about eventually.

Here's the totals (approximate) for the meals for the Menu 5/31/08 to 6/6/08:

• Turkey meatloaf: $10.81 for loaf ($1.08 for each serving)
• Smashed potatoes: $3.15 ($0.52 for each serving)
• Lemon-herb roasted chicken: $10.55 for entire roast ($2.63 per serving; however, the carcass meat does get recycled into stock and other meals)
• Fri-ta-toe: $1.68 ($0.42 per serving)
• Chicken-Spinach Faux Casserole: $12.46 ($2.49 per serving)
• Prosciutto Pasta: $6.65 ($3.33 per serving)

I'll have to probably refine this feature of the blog as some of the costs can be misleading. For example, the chicken-spinach faux casserole: the total includes the costs associated with the first chicken meal (lemon-herb roasted chicken) from which the faux casserole is derived. So, it can be argued that the costs are more accurate this way, but for a true idea of how much we are actually spending, the cost for that initial chicken meal would have to be excluded (because I didn't really go out and buy more food). In other words, all the ingredients for the casserole (including those for making 2 servings of the lemon-herb chicken) totaled $12.46. But because I already paid for those 2 servings of lemon-herb roasted chicken ($2.63 x 2 = $5.27), the outlay for the second "left-over" meal was really $7.19 ($1.44 per serving). The same is true of the fri-ta-toe; the only new ingredients were red pepper, onion, olive oil, egg, and salt and pepper.

Don't Feed Them After Midnight

Like a pair of hungry gremlins, my husband and I ate a very late supper last night (Tuesday) because of work. He heated up some asparagus soup (straight from the freezer) and popped some bread into the toaster.

Meanwhile, I worked on disassembling the chicken. One of the half-breasts is in the fridge for a meal later this week. The other half, along with the bits of white and dark meat and the bones (separate bags!), is now crammed into the freezer. It's getting awfully full in there.

Lemon-Herb Roasted Chicken
Serves 4

1 roaster chicken (about 4 lbs)
1 large onion (sliced)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper freshly ground (or more)
4 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1.5 teaspoons minced fresh dill
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh oregano leaves
1.5 teaspoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 to 3 lemons washed and cut into quarters

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400-degrees
2. Remove organs from chicken and rinse and pat dry.
3. Toss onions (first cut in half, then in slices, to form half-round slices) with olive oil in bottom of roasting pan (I use a Le Creuset French oven).
4. Mix the herbs, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of pepper into softened butter.
5. With your clean hands take a portion of the herbed butter and spread it in the cavity of the chicken. Then separate the skin (gently) covering the breasts and smear herbed butter between the skin and meat. Be careful not to rip the skin or remove it entirely. You just want enough space to slide your fingers in to coat the breast meat with the butter mixture.
6. Spread the herbed butter over the entire outside of the chicken, covering all areas, including wings, drumsticks, etc.
7. Stuff the chicken with the lemon slices.
8. Sprinkle the top of the chicken with some Kosher salt and pepper.
9. Tuck the wings under the bird and tie the legs together with kitchen twine.
10. Roast for 1.25 to 1.75 hours, until the internal temperature of the breast meat reaches 180 degrees F.

Nutrition Information per Serving
Calories: ; Carbohydrates: ; Protein: ; Fat: ; Cals./g:
*Points:

Menu a la Week: 5/31/08 - 6/6/08

Menu planning has got to be the hardest part of this whole enterprise. Okay, it's the menu planning and calculating the nutrition information (which, I know, I still haven't done for a good number of this past week's recipes) that stretch my brain a bit. Anyhow, here's the menu for the cooking week starting today, Saturday 5/31/08 and ending Friday 6/6/08. I reserve the right to switch around the appearance of any of the meals based on the week's activities and our mood (so just try and hold me to it!).

Dinner for tonight, Saturday, was just a bunch of snacks. Normally I would cook dinner (it should've been turkey meatloaf on Saturday and roast chicken on Sunday), but a lot's been going on, so considering my mindset, toast and tea seemed like a good dinner to me (neither of us was very hungry). I made the meatloaf, we just didn't eat it. So it's ready to go for dinner later this week.

Menu 5/31/08 - 6/6/08
Saturday May 31, 2008
Turkey meatloaf [prepared]

Sunday June 1, 2008
Roast chicken
Smashed potatoes
Asparagus

Monday, June 2, 2008
Turkey meatloaf
Brown rice
Spinach

Tuesday June 3, 2008
Asparagus Soup
Salad

Wednesday June 4, 2008
Chicken-Spinach-Rice "Casserole"

Thursday June 5, 2008
Turkey meatloaf sandwich
Fried potato cake (aka "fri-ta-toe")

Friday June 6, 2008
Prosciutto pasta (or some other quickie meal)