I am joining in on another Menu Plan Monday.
Sunday – Riblets with mashed potatoes and green beans
Monday – Homemade pizza with pineapple, mushroom, onion
Tuesday – Tortilla Soup – I love this recipe!
Wednesday – Vegan Alfredo with Peas – new recipe
Thursday – Subs with cucumber hummus (which I forgot to make last week)
Friday – Curry – potatoes, carrot, onions
Right now I have the pizza crust rising on the counter. It smells good!
Menu Plan Monday is another resource I’ve seen around the internet but have never taken advantage of. I realized last week that posting my menu online would keep me from losing my menu somewhere in the mess that is my desk. Of course, solving the menu issue isn’t an excuse to not organize my desk!
So, here is my menu for this week –
Tonight – Homemade stir fry with broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, tofu, and sweet & sour sauce
Tuesday – Subs with cucumber hummus (hummus is a new recipe)
Wednesday – Tamale pie
Thursday – Orange Style Tofu
Friday – Tofu & Pineapple Thai Yellow Curry (new recipe)
Sabbath – Spaghetti
What’s on your menu?
I am SO glad that tomorrow is Sabbath. We will not be attending church as my hubby isn’t feeling very good. But to have a day to stay home with no chores and all that time to study the Bible or read or sleep! It sounds lovely.
Today I cleaned the apartment quite a bit for the Sabbath. I like cleaning the bathroom on Sabbath because that somehow makes the whole apartment feel cleaner. I just have to put a plug in here for 7th Generation tub cleaner. That stuff is super cleaner! My tub just keeps getting cleaner and cleaner every week that I scrub it out. I also washed our sheets, vacuumed the floors, swept the kitchen, washed all the dishes, ironed our church clothes, and straightened up around the living room.
This morning I decided it was time to make beans. I have a recipe to make refried beans in the crock pot with no added fat, so they aren’t technically “refried.” They taste pretty good, though. The beans have to cook for six hours but don’t require an overnight soak. They were done at 4:30 this afternoon, so I mashed them up and stored them in the fridge.
The plan for dinner this evening was to have burritos with beans, rice, tomatoes, etc. We were out of fresh vegetables so we ran to the store after hubby was off work. On a whim, I checked the frozen section to see if Morningstar Farms is making vegan burger crumbles yet (nope, no luck). Instead, I noticed that Boca Burger now has a vegan burger crumble. Hurray! We bought a bag and quickly switched to soft shelled tacos. AFTER I made beans, of course. Oh well. They’ll be good for the weekend and early next week.
My kitty seems to be feeling a bit better today. He’s not as hot to the touch and he has a little bit more energy. He still spent most of the day sleeping on my pillow, but I think he’s on the mend.
I had grandiose plans for today. Haha. Best laid plans? There’s a text somewhere in the New Testament that talks about people making plans and how they should say “IF the Lord wills, we will do such and such.” That was basically my morning.
Hubby has been working late nights and I’ve been staying up to keep him company. I think last night we went to bed around 11. I woke up at 6 and stumbled out to the living room. After nearly falling asleep just sitting on the couch, I decided I needed to go back to bed. I promptly passed out for another two hours.
After getting up, hubby was immersed in phone calls with clients. During that time, I ensure that the clients can’t hear me in the background. That means I don’t have much I can do. I can either read or do something on the computer or… that’s about it.
Around 10:30, I finally got my chance to make cookies. Yay! The batter mixed up really well. It smelled great. It baked nicely. And… my peanut butter cookies didn’t taste like they contained peanut butter. They were pretty good, just not peanut butter cookies. Some of the reviews mentioned that, but other people said they tasted great. I will either have to continue looking for the perfect peanut butter cookie or tweak this one so it tastes like peanut butter.
I realized how poor some of the quality of our ingredients is. The cookies are supposed to be sugar free, other than what is in the tiny bit of maple syrup. My cookies were not sugar free. The maple syrup (fake, cheap stuff) contained high fructose corn syrup. The almond milk had added sugar (I didn’t know that!). And the peanut butter had added sugar! I thought I had bought a natural peanut butter without added sugar. I guess not… So much for sugar free cookies!
My kitty is sick, I think. He’s been hot to the touch since yesterday. He’s extremely clingy and really likes sleeping on my pillow when I’m in the bedroom. Poor baby. 🙁 He’s eating a bit less than normal, but still eating. I’m just going to watch him and see if he gets better on his own. I really don’t want to take him to the vet and get him shot up with medication. Hubby reassured me that we will spend money to take him to the vet if it comes to that. I just want him to feel better!
I hope this post doesn’t sound all doom and gloom, because I did have a good day. It just wasn’t what I expected!
One of my worst homemaking skills is menu planning. I don’t know why, but I am so lacking in this area. I’m really good at shopping sales to get us great fruit every week, though I haven’t figured out how to have ripe fruit available every day.
But when it comes to menu planning, I’m… bad. Sunday afternoon generally finds me scrambling to put together some sort of a menu so that we can go grocery shopping. By Friday, we’re usually scraping the bottom of the barrel and wondering what to eat.
This week I’m going to try something different. Yes, it’s Tuesday and I haven’t gone grocery shopping yet. But I planned out a menu through Friday night and then we’ll go shopping Friday as soon as my hubby gets off work. This way I have two days to put together a comprehensive menu that covers Sabbath through the following Sunday evening. That will get us back to grocery shopping on Sundays like I prefer to do.
Wednesday – vegan mac & cheese – This is a really good recipe. I’ve made some tweaks to it, but I really like it.
Thursday – pumpkin coconut curry from a vegan cookbook
Friday – orange chicken-style tofu – Another really good recipe. I’ve made some major changes to this recipe so I’ll plan on posting mine once I figure out the last change. I’ve stopped using processed sugars while cooking, only using a bit of honey and dates. So I’m going to figure out if I can make this recipe with honey and then post it. Yum!
I’ve already put together a shopping list. Surprisingly, we already have most of what we need for each of these recipes but we’re missing a key ingredient. No bread for the mac&cheese. I might have everything for the curry. And no tofu for the orange tofu. Oops.
I am so excited to have my camera back up and running! I don’t use it a lot, but I really notice when it’s not available.
My awesome green smoothie:
That’s two bananas, 6 ounces of frozen raspberries (bought fresh but frozen for use), a handful of spinach, and a splash of water. It blends up really pretty!
おいしい！ Delicious!
I started working on my quilt again. It’s amazing what you have time for when you don’t play around while cleaning and waste time surfing the internet.
All I completed today was a set of strips to strip piece my double nine patch. For some reason, I have a hard time visualizing how to use the rotary cutter. I’m extremely grateful for the library having loaned me Rotary Magic. It’s much easier to figure out what I’m doing when I have pictures and a detailed explanation in front of me.
Off to relax with the hubby! I hope everyone is having a great evening!
I am making breakfast burritos for dinner. If we’re not eating them at breakfast, are they still considered “breakfast” burritos?
Tortillas, diced and fried (in very little oil) tofu, hash browns, rice, guacamole, fresh tomato, salsa, onions… yum yum!
It’s been just shy of six months since I’ve intentionally eaten dairy, whether it be eggs, milk, or cheese. I don’t miss it much, as there are very good non-dairy ice creams available. I do miss this very unhealthy pasta salad I used to make on a weekly basis – rotini noodles, ranch, Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, peas, and olives. Extremely tasty and extremely fattening. It’s little wonder I was 50 pounds overweight.
I think the next step in our diet reform is to replace the vegan junk food with whole foods. We still eat crackers (long chemical sounding ingredient list so they can’t be healthy), a bit of soy, and a few other highly processed convenience foods.
I really wanted to post a picture of my smoothie this morning but my camera batteries were not yet fully charged. Hopefully tomorrow! Raspberries and bananas make the best smoothies.
One of my current projects is putting together a recipe book. Hubby and I have been eating a vegan diet for the past five months but half of my recipe collection requires dairy. It’s time I finally update my recipes.
I’ve been looking for a three ring binder for quite awhile. I wanted something pretty and durable. After looking at Wal-Mart, Target, Office Max, Amazon.com, and Staples, I finally found the perfect binder.
I love it. It’s very elegant and pretty. Perfect for a homemaker!
Now I have to type out all of my recipes. I’ve recently fallen in love with Microsoft’s OneNote program and am slowly adding all of my recipes to a virtual notebook. I love that the notebooks can be set up with tabs so I can easily find the recipe I’m looking for. It’s so much easier to use than Word.
I’m still trying to perfect my “refried” beans recipe. The last batch came out rather bland. I write down all the ingredients in each batch so that I can figure out the perfect combination to make fat free, flavorful beans. Making “refried” beans from a bag of beans is very simple and just involves tossing everything in a crockpot. I also know it’s way cheaper and healthier than buying them canned. But I’m still trying to perfect the taste.
This afternoon I made falafel with sesame sauce. I picked this dish because my hubby treated me to the Persian Garden Cafe several weeks ago and I ate an amazing falafel. I tried to replicate their dish but it wasn’t the same. I think I’ve discovered I don’t like parsley… I’ll look for another falafel recipe.
I also found a great bread recipe in the Newstart cookbook. When I make bread tomorrow morning, I’m going to try sprinkling sesame seeds on top. Store bought bread has all these different seeds and grains baked into the loaf but I only know how to make plain whole wheat bread. I figured sesame seeds was a good place to start for experimentation.
That is the extent of my recent recipe adventures. I desperately need to test some new vegan recipes. We get very bored with our current eating options and this leads to dairy cravings. Mmmmmm… Pasta salad with ranch dressing and sharp Tillamook cheese.
I am finally getting back into a schedule, though it all revolves around my hubby’s work schedule. Sometimes he is home and sometimes he’s at client sites all day long.
My mornings consist of exercise, Bible study, breakfast, and cleaning. I try to have all the cleaning done by noon. This gets me into the habit of abiding by the time of use plan that goes into effect May 1 with our electric company. They charge more for electricity usage from 11 to 7 on weekdays over the summer so I try to do my housework, baking, etc. on the off-peak hours. It’s one way I can keep the electric bill lower.
In the afternoons, I study Japanese for about an hour, read, quilt, and work on other projects around the house. I have a list of projects about a mile long that I want to tackle but I’m trying to concentrate on only one thing at a time. Last week and this week was devoted to finishing up my quilt for the church. I put in my last stitches this afternoon and will be dropping the quilt off on Sabbath. I think tomorrow I’ll take pictures and post them here in remembrance of my first quilting efforts.
The rest of this week I will spend my project time prepping for a quilting session with my mom. We’re getting together early Sunday morning to start working on Hazel’s mystery quilt. We are dreadfully behind but hope to really dig in on Sunday and complete as much as possible so we’re not lagging so far behind. I have to wash all the fabric and iron everything before sundown on Friday. After that, the only time I’ll be working on that quilt is when my mom and I get together for a quilting session. This will be my second quilt and her first.
My brother, his wife, and his daughter are coming to stay with us for five days in May. I’m hoping to have all of my deep cleaning complete for the living areas of our house. I also have to clean up the spare bedroom so that they have a place to stay. We have a mattress on the floor in that room and tons of boxes filled with who knows what. I wish we could afford to buy a second bed so we had a proper spare room, but we can only provide a mattress, home-cooked food, and our company. Ah, the joys of being broke. 🙂
It looks like my hubby is about finished with his work assignment so I am going to go cook up my black bean burgers. The recipe looks really good and I’m hoping it will turn out tasty!