Catch Up and Ketchup

I'll have to make this recap of the past few days quick: Wednesday night we had cole slaw and hot dogs (I had mine with the best hot dog mustard ever: Kosciusko spicy brown), "Bob" had his with Dijon mustard and ketchup.

More cole slaw and ketchup was had last night. I had just the cole slaw and Bob had the last bit o' turkey meatloaf with a smattering of ketchup. Bob's cole slaw recipe was excellent. And with the red onion and carrots, quite colorful too. Though we finished the first batch, there's still sliced onions and cabbage, and shredded carrots in the fridge ready to go for a second batch. We're debating dressing it differently. Perhaps with a mainly vinegar-based dressing.

Colorful Cole Slaw
Serves 6

1/2 head cabbage
2 carrots
1 red onion sliced
1/4 c. white wine vinegar
1/2 C. Hellman's low-fat (or is it reduced?) mayonnaise
2 pinches of Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons sugar

Directions
Slice as thin as possible the head of cabbage and red onion. Grate the two carrots. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Season to taste.

Menu a la Week: 7/26/08 -7/31/08

Here's the menu for the week. There's a few blanks to be filled in, but I'll do that by Monday. There's also no "real" dinner for tonight. We had take-out (Wendy's) because we were busy with chores and I was rushing to get a jewelry project done too. I hope to post the dill potato salad recipe by tomorrow (hint, hint "Bob").

While working on the jewelry project in my basement, I was listening to NPR (WNYC). I heard a story on Marketplace Money about a California family that has suddenly found itself in dire straits (house foreclosing, no income, savings gone, going to the food pantry). The husband and wife were both in the real estate lending industry when the market there went south. What struck me as odd is that making soups and freezing leftovers were such a new way of cooking for the wife (her mom is instructing her on how to cook frugally). I guess, for me, I've always frozen some things, perhaps not as compulsively as now, and soups and stews just seem like a good idea for winter cooking (not just for when you're poor). She also mentioned canned vegetables. Honestly, I'm not a fan of most canned veg, but tomatoes and beans (kidney, etc.) and sometimes even corn often hold up pretty well. I guess I see it as sad that exercising commonsense is seen as something to only do when you've fallen on hard times; otherwise, when money's flush, waste away!

Menu 7/26/08 - 7/31/08
Saturday July 26, 2008
Grilled chicken and dill potato salad and salad with Caesar dressing

Sunday July 27, 2008
Wendy's :-)

Monday July 28, 2008
Chicken panini and potato salad

Tuesday July 29, 2008
Meatloaf and Bob's summer squash

Wednesday July 30, 2008
Cole slaw and hot dogs

Thursday July 31, 2008
Beets and ?

Menu a la Week 6/28/08 - 7/4/08

Yes, the menu's a bit late, but ever since half the vegetables got destroyed I've been winging it. Sunday night we had the last of the scape pesto. Instead of pasta we served it with brown rice because we didn't have enough pasta for three and we had a surprise dinner guest (Iz!). Quite honestly, though tasty, the rice wasn't delicate enough to let the pesto's bright taste truly shine. To round out the meal, we had a crudite of carrots, celery, and scallions along with the Universal Salad Dressing.

Tonight: turkey meatloaf (from the freezer, still tastes outstanding!) and another crudite, plus some cucumbers that have been marinating along with red onions in balsamic vinegar.

No dinners are planned after Wednesday. Thursday night we're going to see a play (Sam Shepard's "Kicking a Dead Horse" at The Public Theater) and Friday is the 4th so something somewhere will be grilled. Since we're down a bunch of vegetables, we're going to be making do with some leftovers (chicken) and some surprises (sour cherries from Iz's backyard).

One more important note: I'm still trying to figure out how to calcuate the E-Co$t of meals since we're now using our CSA vegetables. Since they're not priced by the vegetable, do I go with the going price at the supermarket? Do I just divide the CSA cost per week by the number of vegetable types? When I decide on a method, I'll start posting the E-Co$t again. I plan to start posting the dollar figure along with the recipe...just like the nutrition information (yes, I haven't posted that in awhile either).

Menu 6/28/08 - 7/5/08
Saturday June 28, 2008
Ginger-garlic bok choy stir-fry and some cheese and crackers

Sunday June 29, 2008
Garlic scape pesto with brown rice and crudite with Universal Salad Dressing

Monday June 30, 2008
Turkey meatloaf, crudite with Universal Salad Dressing, and cucumbers and red onions with balsamic vinegar

Tuesday July 1, 2008
Chicken panini with kale (crispy, roasted, or sauteed)

Wednesday July 2, 2008
Meggyleves (sour cherry soup)

Thursday July 3, 2008
A night out at the theater

Friday July 4, 2008
Happy 4th of July!

Menu a la Week: 6/21/08 - 6/27/08

It's a day late, but what follows is this week's menu (and what happened last week).

Recap: Friday night we had nothing for dinner since we both had big lunches and Thursday night my husband had oatmeal and raisins since I went out drinking for the departure of a colleague to grad school (Bye Sarah! See you soon for cocktails).

Since the broccoli head from our first CSA share looked a bit wilty, we started with that first. ("Bob" passed on the offer of broccoli leaves since he couldn't think of anything to do with them; I've since learned you can use them like kale and as a base for broccoli soup). About a third of the broccoli florets was used for last night's salad. We also had one of the frozen chicken pot pies (and it was fine without the egg wash, just not as glistening and pretty).

Since we didn't get through all of our frozen foods last week, we'll have more things to choose from in our freezer this week. With all the planting we did yesterday, there wasn't much time to cook anyway.

This week, we'll have to get through the broccoli (easy) and the scapes. What are scapes, you ask? A green flower from the garlic bulb. These shoots emerge from the ground and are ripe for harvesting for about 2 to 3 weeks. Check out The New York Times article on scapes that was published last week.

There are so many English peas, that they'll be coming out of our ears by Friday. As for the spinach, I know what not to make with it. I also have some new ideas on how to prepare it. For lunch Friday, I had a great Indian spinach dish (I believe it is called palak paneer). Now I'm on the hunt for a good recipe for it. I already have a good semi-Italian spinach recipe, and, of course, spinach will be incorporated into our salads. Armed with four or more recipes/uses, we should be able to get through all the spinach they throw at us.

By the looks of this week's menu, we'll be needing plenty of ginger. In searching around for various pesto recipes (Gail needed some basil/pesto advice), I came across this blog: Kalyn's Kitchen. This post talks about freezing basil but I also noticed that she freezes ginger root. I didn't know that could be done.

My freezer is going to be jealous of hers. Hers is so much better looking.


Hers
vs.

Mine

Menu 6/21/08 - 6/27/08
Saturday June 21, 2008
Chicken pot pie and salad (with broccoli and red leaf lettuce and mustard vinaigrette)

Sunday June 22, 2008
Garlic scape pesto with pasta and salad

Monday June 23, 2008
Ginger chicken and broccoli stir fry with brown rice

Tuesday June 24, 2008
Chicken and palak/saag paneer

Wednesday June 25, 2008
Scape pesto and green salad

Thursday June 26, 2008
Turkey meatloaf and herbed English peas and carrots (with garlic scapes!)

Friday June 27, 2008
English pea Asian chicken soup (or some other English pea soup)

So Far, No Good

Geez, you'd think eating up a bunch of stuff from the freezer would be easy. Apparently not. So far, we didn't have a dinner on Monday. On Tuesday we had Chinese food (yes, again) with friends before heading out to see a play. And last night (Wednesday) we did have the turkey meatloaf and vegetables as planned. Tonight I will be heading home later than usual (a colleague is bidding us farewell), so who knows what will await me. Especially since today is Delivery 1 of our CSA veggies! "Bob" is picking them up after work. More to come later.

Menu a la Week: 6/14/08 - 6/20/08

Now for a very special menu. The freezer is overstuffed so it's time to clean it out. The best way to do that is to eat through as much of the frozen food as we can (including that ice cream in the upper right-hand corner). So, no new cooking for this week. To make this week even easier, we won't be home for dinner every night.

Our first CSA delivery is scheduled for this week. Rumor has it there will be lots of lettuce.

Menu 6/14/08 - 6/20/08
Saturday June 14, 2008
Turkey sausage with toast

Sunday June 15, 2008
Father's Day (eating out!)

Monday June 16, 2008
Turkey meatloaf and vegetables (or salad)

Tuesday June 17, 2008
Macbeth play (dinner out)

Wednesday June 18, 2008
Spinach pie and salad (dinner all by my lonesome)

Thursday June 19, 2008
Chicken pot pie and salad

Friday June 20, 2008
Asparagus soup and salad

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.

Meatloaf Sandwiches and Fri-ta-toe

Since the stars were aligned against us today (my husband was in a car accident this morning— he's okay, as is the driver who hit him), we didn't follow the menu and, instead, made something easier than the chicken rice "casserole" that was scheduled. And what could be easier than turkey meatloaf sandwiches? We finished up the last of the asparagus (blanched and topped with a bit of butter), and I also made a fried potato "pancake" with leftover smashed potatoes and some other ingredients. I don't know if the potato side dish I made can technically be called a frittata, so I'm calling it a fri-ta-toe (rhymes with po-ta-to). My only regret? That I hadn't added the asparagus to the fri-ta-toe.

Fri-Ta-Toe
Serves 4 to 6

Extra virgin olive oil
2 cups of smashed potatoes (from earlier in the week)
1/4 cup chopped onion (also in the refrigerator from the day the meatloaf was made)
1/2 red pepper, chopped small
1 egg, beaten
Kosher salt
Pepper

Directions
1. Heat olive oil up in a large frying pan (I use a Le Creuset pan on medium-low heat).
2. Mix all ingredients together in bowl.
3. With a large spoon form potato mixture into 4 to 6 "pancakes," placing each, one at a time into the heated oil.
4. Cook for about 5 to 6 minutes on one side and turn it over. Brown on the other side for another 5 to 6 minutes.
5. Remove pancakes from pan when mixture is golden brown on both sides and heated through.

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

Heads It's Chicken...Tails It's Turkey

Tonight was our first bite of turkey meatloaf. Though I cooked the meatloaf on Saturday and the roast chicken on Sunday, we hadn't feasted on either all weekend. We went to the SOFA exhibit yesterday, but ventured to Chelsea Market first and ate lunch at a deli. The corned beef sandwich my husband ordered was as big as his head, while I had a huge fried chicken breast sandwich. So it was no surprise that when I made the roast chicken last night, after it cooled it went straight into the refrigerator, uneaten.

Tonight, we're deviating from the menu (again). For dinner: 4 to 5 ounces each of turkey meatloaf, some smashed potatoes, and the ever-yummy asparagus.

The turkey meatloaf is straight from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten, except that we make it with only 3 lbs of ground turkey (she calls for 5 lbs) and halve all the other ingredients. (The ground turkey in our supermarket comes in prepackaged amounts: 1 lb and 3 lbs only.) According to my serving sizes (no more than 5 ounces each), the recipe (using 3 lbs of ground turkey) makes enough for 10 servings. Right now, the recipe is available from Food Network at http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_21615,00.html. I won't recreate it here since, except for making a smaller batch, I follow the recipe faithfully.

Turkey Meatloaf
10 servings, 2 slices each (4-5 oz.)

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

The turkey meatloaf slices were reheated in the microwave (about 2 minutes total time) after being moistened with some chicken stock (a few drops per slice). The asparagus spears were quickly blanched in boiling water (no more than 2 minutes) and served with a bit of butter. The smashed potatoes (one of my favorites) took the most time by far to prepare tonight (the fresh herbs were already on hand because of the chicken I made last night).

Smashed Potatoes
6 servings

4 very large potatoes washed (unpeeled)
2-3 medium to large scallions, chopped (white and large portion of green sections)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon fresh minced dill
1/4 teaspoon fresh minced flat-leaf parsley
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions
1. Cut potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces.
2. Boil potatoes for about 12 to 15 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Drain well.
4. Add chopped scallions, olive oil, herbs, salt, pepper, and olive oil to potatoes.
5. Mash all ingredients together well with a potato masher.

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

Note: Tonight I plan to take apart the chicken (and try to take pictures without getting the camera all greasy). Most of the breast meat will be eaten this week. I'll post a revised menu later to take into account all the changes for this week.

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)