Meal Planning: Dec. 27 - Jan. 1, 2020... or why we had take-out pizza
First the menu as I planned it this morning.
Friday
(We enjoy celebrating a night of Hanukkah... telling the story of the Maccabees and the oil in the temple, eating good food, and playing dreidel.)
Latkes
Jelly donuts
Bought from the store
Saturday
Butter chicken (in the crock pot)
I'm using the recipe I linked to
Naan
From the store
Basmati rice
I always keep this on hand as well as Jasmine rice
Sunday
TAMALES!!
Some friends are coming over and we'll be making them from scratch. I'll make the fillings the day before. I'm planning pork with red sauce, chicken with a green chili sauce, and peppers and onions
Monday
Ninth Night Lamb
For Christmas, M. got me a cook book called, The Italian Country Table. I had checked it out of the library before, and several of my favorite recipes came from it. We were talking and I mentioned I would love to own a copy of it since I remembered there being so many other good recipes in it. I was right! Since I had some frozen lamb, I couldn't help trying out this recipe from it.
Pasta
Salad
Tuesday
(New Year's Eve)
Farm Woman's Risotto
Also from my new cook book
Garlic Bread
Store bought
I needed a simple dinner because we'll be having guests over to celebrate New Year's Eve
Party treats... Bacon-wrapped jalepenos, Artichoke dip, Chips and salsa
Wednesday
Beans and ham
Traditionally, these should be black-eyed peas, but we use pinto beans here. The story is, my paternal grandmother grew up in Louisiana. When she moved as a young woman to Arizona, there were no black-eyed peas available, so she used what was... pintos. This is what my father grew up eating on New Years. So, when my parents got married, this is what my mother made for my father and what I grew up eating. Tradition says if you eat beans on New Years, you'll have money for the whole year.
Cornbread
Homemade
So that was my menu. I planned it this morning, and then spent the afternoon grocery shopping and stocking up on obscene amounts of tamale-making supplies. In the meantime, J. announced that he was going to put in my new kitchen sink. This is the kitchen sink that I bought before we moved and has been living in the shed ever since. I was very, very excited to have my huge sink and decent faucet put in.
Well, as most home improvement stories go, things were not as simple as they first seemed. It is an undermount sink that we are mounting on top of the counters. We did this in our old house, too. The difficulty comes in that the holes in undermount sinks do not match the diameter needed for faucets. As J. was struggling with what to do, I suddenly had a flashback to when we were redoing our kitchen in the Big Ugly House and a whole herd of contractors were staring at my sink, scratching their heads, and trying to figure out how to make it work. They ended up taking a piece of Corian, mounting it on top of the sink, and drilling holes through the faucets through it. It worked fine, though I was never quite sure what the original problem had been. Now I understand! Suddenly the difficulty of eleven years ago makes perfect sense. I think we will be using the same solution on this sink. In the meantime, this is my kitchen.
It's not exactly conducive to cooking, so we decided that ordering pizza was going to be the best solution for feeding people. We put our Hanukkah celebration on hold and I'll have to do some rearranging of meals... or I'll just add it on to the end and we'll celebrate a bit late.
Friday
(We enjoy celebrating a night of Hanukkah... telling the story of the Maccabees and the oil in the temple, eating good food, and playing dreidel.)
Latkes
Jelly donuts
Bought from the store
Saturday
Butter chicken (in the crock pot)
I'm using the recipe I linked to
Naan
From the store
Basmati rice
I always keep this on hand as well as Jasmine rice
Sunday
TAMALES!!
Some friends are coming over and we'll be making them from scratch. I'll make the fillings the day before. I'm planning pork with red sauce, chicken with a green chili sauce, and peppers and onions
Monday
Ninth Night Lamb
For Christmas, M. got me a cook book called, The Italian Country Table. I had checked it out of the library before, and several of my favorite recipes came from it. We were talking and I mentioned I would love to own a copy of it since I remembered there being so many other good recipes in it. I was right! Since I had some frozen lamb, I couldn't help trying out this recipe from it.
Pasta
Salad
Tuesday
(New Year's Eve)
Farm Woman's Risotto
Also from my new cook book
Garlic Bread
Store bought
I needed a simple dinner because we'll be having guests over to celebrate New Year's Eve
Party treats... Bacon-wrapped jalepenos, Artichoke dip, Chips and salsa
Wednesday
Beans and ham
Traditionally, these should be black-eyed peas, but we use pinto beans here. The story is, my paternal grandmother grew up in Louisiana. When she moved as a young woman to Arizona, there were no black-eyed peas available, so she used what was... pintos. This is what my father grew up eating on New Years. So, when my parents got married, this is what my mother made for my father and what I grew up eating. Tradition says if you eat beans on New Years, you'll have money for the whole year.
Cornbread
Homemade
So that was my menu. I planned it this morning, and then spent the afternoon grocery shopping and stocking up on obscene amounts of tamale-making supplies. In the meantime, J. announced that he was going to put in my new kitchen sink. This is the kitchen sink that I bought before we moved and has been living in the shed ever since. I was very, very excited to have my huge sink and decent faucet put in.
Well, as most home improvement stories go, things were not as simple as they first seemed. It is an undermount sink that we are mounting on top of the counters. We did this in our old house, too. The difficulty comes in that the holes in undermount sinks do not match the diameter needed for faucets. As J. was struggling with what to do, I suddenly had a flashback to when we were redoing our kitchen in the Big Ugly House and a whole herd of contractors were staring at my sink, scratching their heads, and trying to figure out how to make it work. They ended up taking a piece of Corian, mounting it on top of the sink, and drilling holes through the faucets through it. It worked fine, though I was never quite sure what the original problem had been. Now I understand! Suddenly the difficulty of eleven years ago makes perfect sense. I think we will be using the same solution on this sink. In the meantime, this is my kitchen.
It's not exactly conducive to cooking, so we decided that ordering pizza was going to be the best solution for feeding people. We put our Hanukkah celebration on hold and I'll have to do some rearranging of meals... or I'll just add it on to the end and we'll celebrate a bit late.
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