Monday Meal Planning (Week 8)

Since weeks 6 and 7 were a total bust, I wanted to hop back on the wagon this week while I'm on Spring Break.  In discussions with The Husband, we both agreed that not planning the entire week out was probably a good idea, especially since he has plans with some fraternity brothers on Thursday.  I'm assuming that the plans will involve something like this.
Anyway, all toga party and goat sacrifice jokes aside, I'm trying to achieve two goals with this week's menu:

1. Remember that keeping it simple is perfectly fine and delicious.
2. Remember that the plan is fluid and subject to change.

And speaking of change, I know that I'll already have to modify Tuesday night's plan, as we ate all the primavera-appropriate veggies yesterday in the stir fry I made, so... oops.  This does detail the whole week, but I'm pretty sure that this week I can swing a pasta dish even if The Husband gets called into a late running meeting.

• Monday - vegan Swiss chard and collard green pie- I've never used the stems before, so it will be an interesting addition, and I'm looking forward to that much less "waste" (compost).  My thought for having this Monday, too, was that in the case of leftovers, I have a few lunches or even an addition to a salad at dinner later this week.
• Tuesday - pasta primavera - like I said, I already have to modify this plan, so I'm thinking of taking the spinach that we got with our CSA and pureeing some it with the tomato sauce and then adding the rest in, wilted.  The puree might sneak in a few more veggies into HRH's belly, too, since she is suspicious of all things leafy but loves spaghetti with tomato sauce (I also got her whole wheat angel hair - just because I'm a sneaky bizzle).
• Wednesday - fish tacos - this plan is really for the night that The Husband works late without planning it, which I know will happen.  So I'll use up the leftover lettuce sauce (my new favorite condiment - I use tofu in place of the egg in the recipe) instead of a traditional white sauce, and I need to use up the rest of the head of cabbage that I've been working through this last week.
• Thursday - Peas and Thank You's Hugh Jass Salad - with of course her lime-tahini dressing, because I am nothing if not predictable.
• Friday - TBD - The Husband will be smoking the pastrami all day, so he may not really want to do anything.  Thankfully, there are plenty of pizza places nearby, just in case.
• Saturday - The Day of Reckoning - homemade corned beef and cabbage, homemade Guinness mustard, brown soda bread, black and tan brownies, and perhaps some ice cream.  Because we will need dessert.  Oh, and beer.  I'm a sucker for a black and tan.  Just ask Zooey.

Of course, the black and tan coonhound is a more
positive use of the term than the black and tans of Irish history.

What are you eating this week?  Any big plans for St. Patrick's Day?  I hope no one is going to be drinking green beer or - even worse - Protestant whiskey (that's a reference from The Wire).  Anyone doing a St. Patty's Day dash?

You've Got Food on Your Face!

One of my biggest battles in the Philistine house is getting HRH to eat healthy food.  I've noted before that she would gladly live off nothing but chocolate and Goldfish crackers if she had her way, but if I can't do that, neither can she.
So it was with great interest that Food Network's Healthy Eats blog posted an entry about getting picky eaters to chow down (here is a bit more information, although it's not the full article, which I'm pretty sure is all science-y and stuff).  This information was far more valuable to me than the websites that say "Have your child help you in the kitchen," or "Be patient; be persistent."  First of all, I'm not patient.  Furthermore, while I can see that my kid is outgrowing all the clothes and shoes we buy her at a rate that will have us in the poorhouse in no time, I do always have that nagging voice in the back of my head, suggesting that HRH might be growing, but she's not entirely nourished.
Oh, and as for helping me in the kitchen - she's great with that.  But just don't ask her to EAT what we just made.  Unless it's a cookie.  With chocolate.  Then we're cool.
Instead of being patient, the study shows that kids like more colors and in a creative manner.  So instead of the basic My Plate design (which, like most government designs, still wants for some "oomph"), simply making the food smile back or be in  familiar shapes can make that food more palatable.
Who knew?
To say that kids are more inclined to eat something when it's presented in an artsy-fartsy way was pretty exciting to me.  I'm not extremely artistic in the slightest, but I can make little designs, and I know my way around the cookie cutter drawer, if you know what I mean.
So, I pulled out those cookie cutters (thank goodness for impulse buys in the baking aisle of the local craft store, right?), googled the heck out of "creative food presentation kids," and got to work.  The results have been paying off.

• Cheese slices - much tastier when those pesky edges are taken away to make the forms of a dog, a cat, a bunny, or a flower.
• Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches (which always comes back with the single pickle still uneaten, yet she always has to have it) - so much more fun to devour when it's crustless (more on this in a minute) and in the shape of a fish.
• Apple slices - no longer slices but cars when two toothpicks and four blueberries are utilized.
• Strawberries - slice them up and put them on toothpicks, and it's like they are made of chocolate.

I even found some great blogs that are dedicated to making creative lunches for kids, like Bent on Better Lunches (most of these blog use the bento box as their inspiration, which I just love).
Oh, and the best thing ever, when you are three and want to be a picky-pants?

Chopsticks.

Monday Meal Planning (Week 4) and a Plug for Cake Week

OK, let's just get one thing straight before I set forth my plans for our dinners this week: we shall NEVER speak of bok choy in coconut milk EVER again.  It has been a very long time since I could not bring myself to choke down food.  I'm sure there is someone who loves it.  That someone is just not me.  I'm seriously getting the dry heaves just thinking about it.
Additionally, since last week was rife with late meetings for The Husband and a Girls' Night In for me, we didn't have everything that I planned, but that's OK.  I'm making up for it this week.

• Monday - vegetarian slow cooker satay over brown rice - this way I have leftovers for lunch this week.  Please, dear gods of the slow cooker, make this turn out delicious and crave-worthy.
• Tuesday - vegetarian bibimbap - this is the recipe I had planned for last week, but it never came to fruition. I used some of the broccoli in a smoothie the other day, but I think this will a better use for it.  Yes, I know Tuesday is Valentine's Day, but I'm not really concerned about making something "special."  Besides, what better way to tell The Husband I love him than make something that uses fresh, healthy veggies and our favorite Asian seasonings?
• Wednesday - fennel and chickpea salad - I am thinking I might want something warm to go with this, too, but we'll see; the recipe sounds/looks pretty filling on its own.
• Thursday - Mark Bittman's seared cauliflower with lemon/olive quinoa cakes - I almost bought some quinoa cakes at Whole Foods on Saturday, but the salmon cake looked too tasty to pass up, so I'm glad to find this recipe at a site I love anyway.
• Friday - I have a long weekend this week, so I'm not planning anything for dinner should we be out and about.  If we are home, we'll have something simple that uses up any veggies we didn't use beforehand.  If not, well... c'est la vie.

My main hope for this week is that I don't end up throwing an entire dish out for it being unpalatable.  Seriously, I wouldn't even offer that stuff to Zooey, and she eats everything.

Oh - before I forget - it's CAKE WEEK!!!!  My girls and I are having another week of themed posts, but the most exciting part is the link party that Kirsten kicked off yesterday - you can participate in our fun by sharing with us!.  Just click here to add your favorite cake!  And make sure that you check out all the Cake Week posts from Kirsten, Jeanne, Kat, Mads, Megan, and me - I'm sure you'll be needing a slice before long.  Enjoy!

Monday Meal Planning (Week 3)

This week's meal plan is somewhat delayed.  I'm blaming our friends who are in town from DC and the Superbowl party at said friend's parents' house yesterday.  Because we were busily noshing, running after wee ones of various sizes, and watching the game with varying degrees of interest (I had to ask who won), I didn't get in my Sunday afternoon ritual of sitting in bed surrounded by cookbooks and the internet to scope out recipes that will make great use of our weekly allotment of delicious veggies.
So this week - I'll be honest with you - has been kind of thrown together with little consultation on The Husband's work week plans.  Bear with me - I found some fantastic sounding stuff, but I'm not sure it will all come to fruition the way I'm envisioning it.

• Monday - mac-and-cheese style cauliflower, courtesy Vegetarian Times magazine (it was this month's cover model) - since dinner is already over, I'll let you know that since our head of cauliflower was smaller than what the recipe likely called for, I also threw in a head of broccoli that we had leftover from last week (how I missed it, I have NO idea).  I loved the nutritional yeast in this recipe, and I think I might start adding that to my original recipe to make up for everything else that gets added.
• Tuesday - I'll be honest - The Husband has a late meeting, and I have an all-day meeting, so HRH and I might just have a Momma-Daughter dinner out.  By dinner I mean ice cream.  But whatever.  I'm not planning anything on this night, as we have plenty of items in the fridge that can be eaten instead (like the leftover mac-and-cheese style cauliflower; yeah, I planned that).
• Wednesday (or Thursday) - baby bok choy in coconut milk with slow cooker rice and lentils - doesn't that just sound GREAT??????  I love bok choy, but I've been getting a little tired of just finding stir fry recipes, so I'm anxious to see how these combos - marked with cumin, turmeric, and other Indian flavors - turns out.
• Thursday (or Wednesday) - baked tilapia with lettuce sauce and turnip greens - we have some red leaf lettuce that I'll use for the sauce, which will go over, I admit, pre-packaged, pre-breaded tilapia.  I know that if I look at the ingredient list again I might have a panic attack, but it needs to be eaten, and the addition of a fresh sauce and some nicely sauteed greens will definitely boost the nutritional value.
• Friday - vegetarian bibimbap with broccoli, turnips, and mushrooms - Autumn at Food Wise Nutrition  (she's in Seattle, my friends - look her up!) mentioned this via Instagram when both of us dined on Korean food in the same evening, and I happened to stumble across this recipe, for which we have nearly all the ingredients (or appropriate substitutes).  I've never had bibimbap (its literal translation is mixed meal), but it's certainly intriguing enough for me to want to try it!

Of course, with friends in town and possible "surprise" late meeting nights on the table, this is a "I have my fingers crossed that we can at least get three of these in" menu.

Now, the only issue with this menu is that it does not take into account the spinach, kale, carrots, or cilantro that we also received this week (OK, OK - I bought the kale extra, as I'm still loving the smoothies).  My thoughts on those are that the kale and spinach will be good additions to smoothies throughout this week, and HRH usually eats carrots (the one veggie she will allow to cross her lips), so I don't want to waste them on silly little things like a salad.  The cilantro, as many herbs will, poses the biggest problem.  Thankfully, Vlad, my dehydrator, is still sitting out on the counter, so Wednesday I'll set out to dehydrate both the dill and cilantro that are hiding in the crisper.
So... what's on your menu this week?

Thirsty Thursday - Taste of the Tropics

I've been on kind of a smoothie kick this week, thanks to my pre-race breakfast beverage on Saturday and my realization that I just just enough kale left to make a green smoothie and a subsequent bag of spinach from our CSA to get me through the remainder of the week.
For most of the week, I've been keeping my blender working on something similar to this smoothie recipe, although the measuring of things has, of course, gone completely out the window.
But last night, as I made Thai Fried Quinoa, I realized that I was going to have both leftover coconut milk AND leftover pineapple.  Well, clearly that was A Sign.

Behold!  I give you The Best Smoothie I Have Ever Had!

Totally simple, not totally creative - I blended the leftover coconut milk, pineapple (including the juice), and a banana together before inhaling its tropical deliciousness.
What I liked about this was that the sugars were countered by the fats in the coconut milk, although I did also have leftover scrambled tofu in a breakfast burrito (with some chipotle salsa, the only way to go in my book), so I had plenty of protein to go with that liquid lusciousness.  Together, they were a wonderful post-first-run-post-half-marathon breakfast
I'm kind of sad that I used all my leftover ingredients in that one smoothie, but at the same time, it really is so delicious that it should be a rare-ish treat.
I'll wait until this weekend.

(PS - I literally loved this so much that I had to add it to Tidy Mom's "I'm Lovin' It'" linky party.  It's just that good.)

Meal Planning - Week 2

Last week's meal plan was a success!  I had to switch Monday and Tuesday's plan, but everything else fell into place almost perfectly - I say almost because I didn't really love the caldo verde that I made, but I'm willing to try another recipe for it sometime - and the result was a veggie drawer that only had a bit of kale and broccoli leftover.  Both of those have found their way into this week's plan, so there isn't worry there.
Thus, I am really going to push myself to keep this planning up; I want to make sure that we are eating those wonderful vegetables that come to us so, so fresh, and of course I want to waste less overall (veggies and other staples).  It really was kind of fun looking at my favorite blogs and websites and in my favorite cookbooks to find recipes that will help me use what I have in the crisper (and pantry).

Four Pounds Round-Up

The week that has required me to record all of my food waste for everyone who may read this post has passed, so now it's time to 'fess up and show off how much I actually threw away.

But first, a few words.  I'd like to thank the Academy... wait - wrong speech.

Multiply by 5

This wasn't a completely unbiased experiment  In true Hawthorne Effect fashion, I made conscious efforts to NOT throw things out.  Sometimes it was because I was truly mortified and even ashamed that I would normally do so; a couple of times it was because I wasn't sure where the camera was and didn't want to hunt around, leaving said food scraps unattended, which would actually result in no food scraps, if Zooey was at this same time left to her own devices.  But I knew that I was documenting what was getting tossed, and I didn't want to look bad.  So please note that what I am posting here is most certainly not the norm in our house, although after this week it is my objective that it should be.

Who Moved My (Four Pounds of) Cheese?

This week (August 1-7), I'm participating in the Four Pounds of Cheese experiment.  In this week, participants are asked to keep a photo log of the food waste that is produced in their kitchens.  This doesn't include bones and other "inedibles" but instead focuses on the food that could have been used somehow.  The objective is, of course, to note how we all are (each differently) wasteful, which will hopefully help those of us joining in to modify our kitchen practices to reduce that food waste.
Now, here's the rub - compost.  No, I'm not asking you to rub it into your skin (see my earlier posts about honey if you want to rub something into your skin).  Technically, it's waste.  Not everyone does - or even has the ability to - compost.  I guess we don't truly compost, either - like I mentioned before, we just save ours to give to my mother-in-law, who actually takes the items we have saved and composts them for her garden.  We're more like vegetable scrap hoarders (are you reading this, TLC?  New series idea?).
But I digress.
While our compost is certainly utilized for another reason, it's the same stuff that's thrown out with the trash in other households.  So is it something I need to take a picture of, or since I find another use for it, does it count like the bones, peels, and eggshells (I throw the peels and eggshells into the compost bin, actually)?  I kind of want to not take pictures of it, but I also don't want to feel like I'm "cheating" (there's the Hermione Granger in me, coming out).
The good news is that while driving home yesterday from my field trip to the bookstore, I had an epiphany - I save my shrimp shells and other bits in the freezer to make a stock.  Why the heck haven't I done that with my veggies?  I've been tossing onion bits and carrot ends in the compost bin when I could be saving them to make a nice stock.  SHEESH!  So I'm going to start doing that - starting yesterday with my zucchini ends and a little bit of onion that didn't make it into the pot.
I'm also hoping that this will help bring us to the tipping point at which we run out of room in our two freezers (we have a fridge in the garage, which is called "the beer fridge") and HAVE to get a new upright freezer.  But that's another blog post.
Check back in a week (I mean, just about this post - I'll be posting between now and then... I hope!) to see what I've learned about food waste in my own kitchen!