January Cook at Home

[treehugger]

Friday I made cottage pie with ground beef from the freezer (I buy whatever is on sale and then grind it myself) and CSA potatoes that were a little past their prime, plus CSA carrots and celery. It was a little too saucy (my fault, for winging it), but still tasty and made a good dinner on a cold night.

Made butternut squash and sage lasagna Sunday afternoon. Had "Christmas dinner" at inlaws that night, so ate our lasagna for dinner last night, and wow, that was yummy! Used CSA squash, backyard sage, and ricotta that I made from a failed batch of yogurt. Seriously delicious.

With the oven hot for the lasagna, I also roasted some CSA sweet potatoes and beets. The sweet potatoes are nice in burritos with black beans. The beets are good all on their own.

Pizza on the menu some day this week. Need to remember to make the dough, since I like it "aged" a few days.

Kara

[Rosemary]

The tofu bibim bap was excellent. I used forbidden rice, kale, carrots, and cucumber. Quick-pickled some julienned carrots, and steamed some. For the gochu jang substitute I used homemade peach jam, tamari, miso, and some chili-garlic paste.

Had a lot of leftover rice, so for lunch yesterday DH and DD had tomato-rice soup with some of Thursday's polenta cubes. I had the remaining kale and carrots.
For lunch today I turned the last of the rice and last night's dinner leftovers (zucchini frittata & steamed green beans) into fried rice.

Tonight for dinner, vegetarian chili and salad. There will be leftovers that DD can take in her lunch for a couple of days, too.

[JaneV2.0]

I'm going to experiment with pork ribs and Asian-inspired sweet and sour marinade/sauce. I did something similar once before and it worked out pretty well, but I have no idea what I did--and the ribs were baby back ones that time.
Lord help me.

I also have a recipe for flax meal focaccia I'm thinking of fiddling with:
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/bre...axbasicfoc.htm

[Kat]

Been eating leftovers along with cereal and bologna and cheese sandwiches (we had the flu so were shooting for quick and easy). I did turn the leftover lemon chicken into lemon salad, though, and used some for topping on a nice green salad. Found an avocado to add, too. It was really good! Also made a batch of homemade mac n cheese with hot dogs. I really do need to make that lasagna. Maybe this coming week I'll get that done!

[Blackdog Lin]

Even though I can't really join in the challenge, as we don't eat out much at all, I sure do enjoy reading everyone's menus. Ideas and inspiration!

Tonight is chicken spaghetti (a new casserole recipe, terribly unhealthy but it sounded oh so good), and tomorrow is beef-broccoli-zucchini etc stir-fry over brown rice. The leftovers ought to carry us over through Tuesday. And I took a fridge inventory tonight, and need to create something involving 1 c. leftover rice, 4 oz. or so bulk sausage, and the last 4 romaine leaves (which have amazingly stayed crisp for over a week. I tried a Pinterest tip for putting a paper towel in with the lettuce, and darned if it didn't work!) I'm thinking some sort of oriental sausage-rice-cuke (there's a cucumber in the crisper) roll-it-up-in-romaine rollup thing. Perfect for tomorrow night, if I can make it work. There's also 2 lone potato patties in there - they may just have to go to the chickens. No ideas.....

Loving your menus and creativity.

[Tiam]

Even though I can't really join in the challenge, as we don't eat out much at all, I sure do enjoy reading everyone's menus. Ideas and inspiration!

Tonight is chicken spaghetti (a new casserole recipe, terribly unhealthy but it sounded oh so good), and tomorrow is beef-broccoli-zucchini etc stir-fry over brown rice. The leftovers ought to carry us over through Tuesday. And I took a fridge inventory tonight, and need to create something involving 1 c. leftover rice, 4 oz. or so bulk sausage, and the last 4 romaine leaves (which have amazingly stayed crisp for over a week. I tried a Pinterest tip for putting a paper towel in with the lettuce, and darned if it didn't work!) I'm thinking some sort of oriental sausage-rice-cuke (there's a cucumber in the crisper) roll-it-up-in-romaine rollup thing. Perfect for tomorrow night, if I can make it work. There's also 2 lone potato patties in there - they may just have to go to the chickens. No ideas.....

Loving your menus and creativity.

I put paper towels in with my romaine, celery and cilantro.

[lhamo]

Agreed to get pizza for the kids on Saturday (I had one piece, plus caesar salad), but otherwise did pretty good with eating at home. Air quality in Beijing was at historically bad levels so we didnt feel like going out. I actually seemed to time my grocery shopping trip for the lowest dip in pollution levels over the weekend -- that was fortunate!

Ate up the last of the Dave's 21 grain bread I brought back from the US for breakfast on Saturday -- if anyone knows a good recipe to replicate Dave's breads, I'd love a pointer to it. Kids had quesadillas.

Pizza/salad for lunch Saturday (delivery, not made at home).

Made pasta for me and DS for dinner Saturday. Had the burner on too high and the sauce got burned, but DS still liked it. Didn't use the whole package, but still had enough leftovers for one lunch (which I ate today)

Made pancakes for the kids for Sunday breakfast. I had the last bagel we brought back from the US.

Lunch Sunday was baked chicken for DD/baked salmon for me and DS and roasted broccoli. I improvised with the baked salmon and tried to recreate the sauce they had on the prepared salmon we got at Costco in the US. Coated the baking tray with butter instead of olive oil, and then made a butter topping with garlic, fresh dill, salt and pepper. DS declared it better than the Costco sauce -- yay!

Dinner sunday was clam chowder for me and DS and leftover chicken for DD.

I thought about making another frittata for my breakfasts this week, but realized we had some ham in the fridge that needed using up so I'll save the fritatta for next week.

lhamo

[ApatheticNoMore]

Got ambitious and did my cooking for the week, for the most part: cream of salmon and potato soup, cauliflower with cheese and tomato sauce (I consider it a main dish as it has cheese), made homemade salsa (the plan is if/when I run out of food, thaw some frozen chicken legs/thighs from the freezer and cook in homemade salsa). All the same old recipes around here.

Also pre-chopped some sweet onion (the plan is later in the week to make a salad I often make for lunch: canned tuna (or salmon) and garbanzos, sweet onion, parsley, olive oil, vinegar). Two TJ's vegetarian salads for the rest of the lunches - I usually use my own dressing with them, but they satisfy me in a way none of my own veggie salads have yet so yea giving into lazy.

Haven't really been good at the cooking at home thing lately, been out of it for the holidays, depressed afterward etc.. Food would spoil in the fridge, I ate homemade nachos much of last week for dinner (!) etc.. This week nothing should spoil though (except maybe an old head of romaine lettuce, I really should do something with ... and might), at worst I freeze some extras.

[Rosemary]

The veg chili made enough for DH & DD's lunches today plus dinner tomorrow when DD has a late afternoon activity.
Today I'll roast a small piece of pork loin in the slow cooker along with some carrots and potatoes, and we'll have salad. We'll have tacos on Wednesday with the leftover meat (and probably Thursday as well - after all the chopping that goes into tacos, we usually have 2 meals of food).

[treehugger]

Yesterday, we had a small party (just his three parents) for DH's birthday. The meal I made, at his request: achiote pork tacos with homemade corn tortillas, pickled onions (red onion from CSA box), and cilantro; rice made with salsa and homemade "refried" beans (they weren't actually fried) on the side. For dessert, the traditional Thunder & Lightning birthday cake.

Plenty of leftovers for the week, along with other miscellaneous things in the fridge (roasted sweet potatoes and beets, spinach, artichokes that I need to steam). We took a month off from our CSA, so I am really looking forward to picking up our box tomorrow.

Kara