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Whew. Another week of full time temporary work (same place as the previous weeks) has gone pretty well. I very much enjoy the work and the days go quite fast. The house is still in one piece and dinners have been very good.
I did better with taking lunches and snacks last week. I did buy some granola bars to keep in my desk but also took homemade muffins and GORP (good ol’ raisins and peanuts) for snacks. Lunches were leftovers or tuna salad and soft cheese.
The Crock pot was my friend again last week. One thing that I have been continuing to do (and has been a huge help) is making stock each week. It is wonderful to have it on hand for soups and sauces.
Here’s what we had for dinners this last week:
Monday– Thai Coconut Soup.
This was a combination of Coconut Soup from Nourishing Traditions, this Thai Coconut Curry Soup and my own substitutions. I omitted. Plus I didn’t have mushrooms or red pepper so those were also omitted. I did have a nice little crookneck squash that went into the soup. Just to make it a bit more ‘main dish’ I added about half a package of rice noodles broken up as best they would break up (those things are not easy to break). DELICIOUS. We had it with a loaf of bread made out of my sourdough bucket bread (Lesson 5).
Tuesday– Crock Pot Chicken with Fried Potatoes
Wednesday– BBQ Chicken and Cornbread Casserole.
Yummy. I used this recipe as a guide but instead of cooking it in the crock pot I just put it in the oven when I got home. I did let the bbq chicken part cook on it’s own for about 20 minutes and then added the cornbread topping. We also had our loaf of bread from bucket bread and steamed broccoli.
Thursday– Lentil and Potato Soup with dumplings. I had planned on making Chicken and Dumplings but there wasn’t any chicken left. So then I thought I’d make a creamy potato soup but I only had three potatoes. So it became lentils and potatoes. I normally presoak the lentils but didn’t this time. I cooked the lentils and the potatoes together for about 20 minutes in chicken broth while cooking sliced onions in a skillet with a little duck fat (slow and low). Then added the onions to the lentils/potatoes plus seasoned with basil, salt and pepper. I found on another blog the suggestion of using the sourdough bucket of dough as dumplings. They worked pretty good. Still not the light fluffly dumplings that my family loves but the flavor was nice.
Friday– I did not cook! Joe did 🙂
He made Chicken Fried Antelope with gravy and rice. It was delicious.
Saturday morning we got up early and went to Joe’s parents house not coming home until Sunday afternoon, so I had pretty much an entire weekend off from cooking.
I’m planning for this coming up week (I’m working again this week and probably next week). I know that I should at least start some muffins (did I mention that I actually have been making my muffins in cake pans for ease of assembly and clean up?) and I want to make soft cheese this week again (I made some last week and it turned out great. So nice to have fresh milk again). But I’m really having a challenge coming up with dinners. We have plenty of antelope and deer plus Joe’s parents sent us home with elk and fish and I still have quite a bit of beef from my CSA delivery last month and of course chickens in the freezer. Deciding seems to be my problem. I’ll be making a grocery store trip tomorrow so I really need to get a menu plan and grocery list put together. I think I’ll visit a Year of Slow Cooking for some crock pot inspiration.