Friday
Short version: Chili/rice skillet, toast
Long version: We had our All Saints Day Mass at 5:30 p.m. and we had to leave early and stay after since I'm Church Lady this month.
That's why we ate early, at around 3:30 p.m. I just heated up leftover rice and chili with cheese for our before-church meal. And then when we got home around 7:15, the kids all had some toast before bed.
Saturday
Short version: Christmas in November
Long version: In an attempt to make a meal that would result in leftovers, I pulled out a whole ham from the freezer and baked that, along with a pan of scalloped potatoes. This is typically what I make for Christmas dinner, but there's no law that says I can't make it other times, I guess.
The worst part of scalloped potatoes is cutting all the potatoes thin. There's really no easy way to do this, but I've decided I'd rather use my knife than the mandolin blade on my cheese grater. I hate that thing.
Anyway. It made a lot of food.
Monday
Short version: Ham and rice skillet
Long version: We actually got home two hours early from school thanks to a snowstorm, so I could have cooked something more involved than my planned leftovers in a skillet+cheese. But I stuck with my plan, which was just to dice leftover ham and fry it in lots of butter, then add leftover rice, frozen peas, some onion powder, and grated cheddar cheese.
This then gave me time to crawl into bed and hibernate for an hour or so while the wind blew snow and sleet against my window. Way better than sitting in my office listening to that and worrying about the state of the roads. Hooray for early release on a snowy afternoon.
Tuesday
Short version: Lamb ribs, baked potatoes, pickled carrots
Long version: We really have very little meat left in our freezer, which is why I'm now unearthing and using things like lamb ribs. I just marinated these in olive oil, vinegar, salt, and garlic powder, and the cooked them covered at a low heat for awhile.
I didn't even try to cut them into individual pieces, which is only possible with a cleaver and some aggression. A. had cut them into pieces of about four or five ribs each when we were butchering, and I figured that was small enough for everyone to gnaw the meat off.
The potatoes went right in the oven with the ribs. And the pickled carrots are popular with everyone. I guess I should've made a bunch more jars of them when I was dealing with the avalanche of carrots. Next time.
Wednesday
Short version: Sloppy joe sandwiches, potatoes, cucumbers with ranch dip
Long version: I went directly from work to the parish hall to set it up for a funeral reception, which meant I didn't get home until about 5 p.m. Thankfully, I already had some buns I had made when I was baking bread on Sunday, as well as ground beef in the refrigerator. So I made sloppy joe meat with the beef, already-cooked onions from the freezer, and ketchup, vinegar, molasses, and Worcestershire sauce (I don't have any ready-made barbecue sauce on hand at the moment).
There were a few servings of scalloped potatoes left, and one baked potato. So I chopped and fried the baked potato and apportioned out the various potato preparations to bulk up the sandwiches a bit.
The cucumber was the last Armenian cucumber from the garden. Well, except for the several jars of pickled cucumbers in the refrigerator.
Thursday
Short version: Leftover lamb ribs, hamburgers, baked beans, cornbread, pickles
Long version: There were quite a lot of lamb ribs left over, which I re-heated in the oven while I was baking the cornbread. This time I put some barbecue sauce on them, too, which A. tells me I should always do.
I had just enough ground beef left to make four small hamburgers, so those of us who are not enthused about lamb ribs had those.
I made the baked beans from pinto beans mostly because it was snowing and blowing all day. It seemed like an opportune time to simmer beans for a long time. And then I baked them while the oven was on to bake gingersnaps.
I'm leaning kinda heavily on the pickles-as-vegetable thing lately. These were cucumber pickles.
Refrigerator check:
Fri- traveling to out-of-state wedding, so car snacks. Pretzels, gummy bears, granola bars, etc. We only grabbed some drinks when we stopped for a bathroom break. I think I made the kids eat cheese/yogurt at our destination.
ReplyDeleteSat- wedding reception at tapas restaurant. Gorgeous food, wonderful service, but after 45 min I took kids and my sister back to our airbnb. The food was too fancy and flavorful for our picky eaters (my sister and me included). But bride and i had talked about this ahead of time. Pizza there. Others didn't get back for 3 hours, absolutely sated.
Sun- I had brought food to the airbnb for lunches and breakfast, so we ate leftovers. Deli meat, grilled cheese,chips, broccoli. I made muffins to warm up the house.
Mon- leftovers still, with some baked chicken to stretch it. Pineapple, apples, chips ( still some leftover- a miracle!). Cookies to warm up the house.
Tues- leftover chicken stewed in gravy, carrots, mashed potatoes, broccoli., leftover rolls.
Wed- basketball game, so easy night. Grilled cheese, bacon, BLT for husband, chips, apples. Muffins to warm up house, and use up leftover yogurt from trip.
Thurs- volunteer night for one son, so I made fried rice, with some plain on the side for picky eater. I had leftover breakfast sausage in scrambled eggs when I got home to use them up.
Snow already! Wow. We had rain (finally) early in the week. After a dry warm fall with a lot of fire risk warnings, it was a nice change. Now we have to spend the weekend closing up storm windows and raking up leaves. Fall finally here for good.
Enjoy the weekend!
Yeah, this has been a very early and heavy snowstorm.
DeleteFriday-eggs scrambled with canned tomatoes and frozen peppers and onions, oven-fried potatoes
ReplyDeleteSaturday-kielbasa, scalloped potatoes (yep, us too), peas, pumpkin pie a la mode
Sunday-chicken enchiladas, brussels sprouts, last of the pie carefully divided into tiny slices so everyone got some. Luckily there was still a reasonable amount of ice cream.
Monday-leftover beef and sour cream, baked potatoes,, brussels sprouts
Tuesday-rice and tomatoes with cheese
Wednesday-baked pork and potatoes, green beans
Thursday-baked cube steak, baked potatoes, coleslaw
Huh. I have never seen pumpkin pie with ice cream. Only whipped cream. Something about those custard pies seems like ice cream doesn't go with it. I have no idea why that is, though.
Deletewell, I forgot the whipping cream at the store and it was too far to go back. But I had ice cream. Actually it was a good combination.
Delete