Camping pancakes

We normally stick with eggs and sausage for camping breakfast, but if we have friends joining us I'll take it up a notch with some pancakes. I loathe doing dishes while camping, so I avoid anything that requires mixing on site. Making pancakes ahead of time is tricky because they usually depend on baking soda and/or baking powder as leavening, both of which act quickly and lose power if they sit around. So for camping I rely on a yeasted recipe instead.

Don't expect traditional diner style pancakes here. These are yeasted and allowed to sit for a few days, so they have a tender, almost lacy crumb texture and a slight sourdough flavor. The batter is only lightly sweetened, but they pair beautifully with maple syrup, or with my personal favorite pancake topping - Greek yogurt swirled with jam.

To adapt for camping I put the batter in a gallon ziploc bag. Because the yeast are active little buggers the bag will fill up with CO2, so you do have to remember to open it up and press the air out once or twice a day. When I'm ready to make pancakes, I cut a corner off the bag and use it as a batter dispenser.





Camping pancakes (serves 4 - 6, original recipe here - scales up easily)

1 teaspoon (about 1/2 package) active dry yeast
2 tablespoons lukewarm water
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar
2 cups buttermilk, shaken
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter

Dissolve the yeast in the water and set it aside.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

In another bowl, beat together the buttermilk, eggs and melted butter. Add in the yeast mixture, which should be nice and foamy by now if your yeast is working properly.

Mix the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk just until combined (don't worry about lumps).

Pour the batter into a gallon Ziploc bag and stash it in the cooler. Remember to check on it twice a day to let out pressure or you could end up with a batter explosion on your hands.

When you're ready to cook, heat your griddle to medium, butter it and then snip one corner of the bag off and use it as a pancake dispenser. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface, then flip. Camp stoves aren't precision instruments, so be prepared for the first batch to be a trial run as you adjust the heat. I find that it takes a couple of minutes cooking on each side once the heat is adjusted properly.

Pancake batter should hold up for at least three days. I usually make it on Friday evening or Saturday morning and cook it on Sunday, so I haven't tested the limits of this.

Thanksgiving 2016

I haven't hosted Thanksgiving in a few years and I decided that this year I would be relaxed about it. I still made all my lists, of course, and I took a couple hours off on Wednesday to get some cooking started, but when I hadn't finished everything I was supposed to finish by Wednesday evening, I refused to worry about it. I showered and went out for drinks with our friends as planned and it was lovely. And then on Thursday morning we met up with friends and waited in a crazy line for holiday coffee at Go Get Em Tiger, and even though I knew that I was behind on my oven schedule, I refused to worry.

Which is a long way of leading into telling you that it all worked out, and being relaxed was nice, but I definitely had a moment in the early afternoon when I was running around the house and feeling like maybe I had been too relaxed and next time I'm going to try to find a better balance. Or at least set aside some time to polish the crystal and cut out the place cards early in the week. I think I just need to get back in a hosting groove.







The camera was definitely not my priority during this last minute craziness, but I managed to get a couple quick shots of our table (before we'd gotten around to cutting out the place cards or adding the silverware). I kept meaning to think about what to do for a centerpiece, but then it was Thursday and I hadn't picked up anything at all. I ended up cutting off some sprigs of podocarpus from the tree in our yard and I'm happy with how it turned out. Simple, free, done.

The holiday was wonderful and it cooled down just enough in the evening that we were able to have a fire and sit around talking for a bit before people rolled themselves home. It felt good. And the next day I washed dishes for a couple hours and got two batches of turkey stock made and drank some holiday tea. 

Meal planning apps - Pepperplate and Big Oven side by side reviews

As I mentioned last month, I wanted a meal planning app that would help me make grocery lists. I googled a bit and found Big Oven, and tested it out. I was pretty happy with it and you can read more about my experience with it here.

I was planning to go on with Big Oven but a couple commenters mentioned Pepperplate and I decided it seemed only fair to try that as well so I started playing around with it right away and used it to help plan meals and grocery shopping while I was up north with my sister (I was cooking meals for us and trying to get their freezer stocked up a bit, so there was a lot of grocery shopping!).

Pepperplate is similar to Big Oven in the sense that it's a meal planning app that syncs across your desktop and mobile devices. You enter recipes (or clip them from websites) and then Pepperplate allows you to choose which recipes you want on which days, and creates a shopping list for you.

Let me admit upfront that I've only scratched the surface of these apps the last couple months, so if you have been using them for a while and have feedback, feel free to correct me! Here's my impression of the two apps (sorry this is so long winded but you know how seriously I feel about meal planning!).

Big Oven vs. Pepperplate



Entering recipes: Both apps have a large upfront time cost. You have to get all your frequently used recipes uploaded and it takes a while. I did all this upfront work on my desktop computer. Both sites claim that you can clip recipes from websites with compatible formats, but I found that most blogs aren't compatible, so you end up entering recipes by hand a lot. Big Oven has the edge here - I found that they can pull from more websites and if they can't pull, they have a nice feature that pulls up the text from the page you're looking at and places it side by side with a manual entry screen so you can quickly copy and paste everything for entry. Pepperplate just gives you an error if it can't pull the recipe, so you have to go back and forth between the page with the recipe and their manual entry page, copying and pasting. For both apps, once you get your most frequently used recipes entered, life gets a lot easier. Anytime someone mentions a recipe I should try, I can quickly enter it and then it'll be there next time I'm meal planning. Previously I would usually forget about recipes people had recommended by the time I was planning the next month's meals and it was easy to end up in a rut. Edge: Big Oven

Meal planning: Both apps have a calendar function that allows you to choose recipes from your collection and add them to a particular date. You could plan breakfast, lunch and dinner if you wanted (I generally only plan dinner). Which is better for meal planning? Pepperplate's interface looks nicer, but you can only see one week at a time, as far as I can tell. This is frustrating to me since I want to plan a month at a time and I'd like to see all four weeks on my screen at once. Big Oven allows you to see the full month, which I love. Big Oven also has a nice feature where when you look at the meal planning calendar all your recipes show up in the side bar and you can quickly drag them over to the calendar. Pepperplate, on the other hand, has you click on a calendar date and then start to type the name of the recipe you want. As you're typing it quickly pulls up any recipes that match the name (so you don't usually have to type more than a few letters). This looks much sleeker but because my biggest issue during meal planning is thinking of what recipes I want to use, it would be nice to have them all laid out on the sidebar. I use a little workaround and have my recipe list open in a new tab and I scroll through it to choose recipes and then go back to the calendar tab to enter them. Edge: Big Oven

Grocery lists: Both apps will generate a grocery list for you based on your meal planning. Big Oven has a nice feature that allows you to scale recipes up or down and then has you review each recipe to deselect ingredients if you already have them. However, Pepperplate is the big winner here because of one crucial feature - you can create custom "aisles" for grocery items. This makes Pepperplate a million times better for me because I shop at different grocery stores for different things. I only buy meat at Whole Foods, I get most of my cheese and frozen stuff from Trader Joe's, I get fresh produce from the local ethnic market. With Big Oven, I would have the app generate the list for me and then I would write it all out again on paper so that it was categorized by grocery store. This still saved me time and headaches, but with Pepperplate I can do that all virtually. I created my custom "aisles" and then specified which categories should go in those aisles. This gives me a pretty well categorized shopping list right out of the gate and then I can quickly move items around or add in items the program couldn't categorize. It's really lovely, especially because it means I can just use the list on my phone instead of carrying around the paper one. Edge: Pepperplate

Cost: Pepperplate is free (they have ads on the desktop interface but I've found them unobtrusive - I had to check to confirm that they did because I couldn't remember noticing them and I couldn't figure out how they are making money - still not really sure what their business model is). Big Oven is free with ads and certain limitations on how many recipes you can upload. Upgrading to a Pro membership is inexpensive ($2/mo or $20/year) and gives you no ads + unlimited uploads. Edge: Pepperplate

Again, I do all the set up and actual meal planning on my desktop computer and use my phone for pulling up the grocery lists or the recipes.

Small feature that Big Oven has that I really appreciate - when you're looking at a recipe in the app, your phone doesn't go to sleep. It drives me a little nuts when I'm cooking and constantly having to unlock my phone because it times out while I'm chopping something. I don't want to tinker with my lock screen settings all the time so I just live with it, but it's so nice not to have to deal with it.

So after all this, it seems like I should be choosing Big Oven, right? Actually I'm leaning towards Pepperplate. The main reason I wanted a meal planning app was to generate my huge grocery lists and the advantage of being able to customize my list outweighs the fact that I can't see a whole month laid out at one time (and who knows - maybe they'll update that at some point in the future?).

If you have any questions, or feedback of your own, leave it in the comments!

FYI - I'm not doing my standard monthly meal planning post this month because it's going to be a little nutty for us and I'm taking it week by week and being flexible (and acknowledging that September can be our hottest month and I might not want to cook much). But I'm going to be excited to get back into it as the weather cools down (fingers crossed) in October.

Monthly meal planning - August (and Big Oven!)

I'm playing August almost completely by ear, hence the very few planned meals. My sister is expecting her second baby in early August and I'm just waiting for the call. It would be very sweet if my new nephew decided to hang in there until I'm scheduled to arrive (his sister was really accommodating this way) but I'm prepared to head up earlier if need be. So this is really just 1.5 weeks of meal planning, but I am using a fun new tool that I wanted to share.



Meals for August:
Miso salmon + Asian chopped salad - both new to me. The salad recipe is for mason jar portions, but I'll probably just make one big salad and maybe set aside one (undressed) serving for lunch.

Meat and veggie balls (in marinara sauce) + green salad - I love these meatballs and haven't made them in forever. They're a great summer dish.

Farro salad with roasted veg - Another tried and true. I made this last month and it was a hit with D's brother, so I'm repeating it.

Coconut, tomato and red lentil dhal - Almost every month. Not sure I'll get up the energy to make saag to go with it.

Modified version of Heather's quinoa salad - We ate this a lot two summers ago but I haven't made it lately. It holds up well in the fridge so I figured it was a good dish to make right before I leave (assuming the timing works out!).

I also got us a couple packs of veggie burgers for quick meals. Trader Joe's has the best veggie burger options and I'm tempted by all of them but we usually end up with the veggie masala burgers, because potatoes are the best.

In meal planning news - I'm experimenting with using Big Oven for meal planning. The actual monthly meal plan is easy enough for me to do on paper. Usually I shuffle through my recipe binder (or the stacks of recipes I haven't put away) and then just sketch out the grid. The sucky part comes next - doing the shopping list. I have to look at each recipe and write down the ingredients, then go back again to compile them into a single shopping list. It usually takes about 5 sheets of paper and I forget at least one thing. It's not a huge deal, since it's basically 30 minutes out of my entire month, but last month it finally annoyed me enough that I went looking for a better option and found Big Oven.

The premise is pretty simple. You can search for recipes directly on Big Oven, or "clip" them from various websites (how simple this is depends on whether the site is using formatting that is compatible - my blog is 100% not compatible because of my formatting, sadly, but it's still fairly simple to enter the recipe), or enter it by hand. Then you can use the meal planning feature to drag recipes from your collection to the calendar and (this is the part I'm excited about) export a grocery list.

This is what my meal planner looks like for August on the website (yes, I still write it out by hand because I like having something to stick up on the fridge).



They offer a two month trial of the Pro membership, which gives you an ad-free experience, unlimited recipe uploads (although I can't figure out how many recipes you can add with the free membership) and custom folder sorting. I've been using that so far and I think I might go ahead and pay to keep using it, since the cost is pretty reasonable ($1.99/mo or $19.99/year).

There was a fairly big time investment to start, since I had to add my most frequently used recipes. I ended up creating a folder that is just called "All my recipes" in addition to my category folders, since sometimes I just want to see everything at once. I'm still getting used to the interface but sometimes I find things a bit wonky. One small example - you can organize your recipes by dragging them into folders (love), but unfortunately the Pinterest button shows up almost exactly where you need to grab the picture and sometimes makes it difficult.

The grocery list feature works really well in general. You can specify what time frame you want to buy groceries for and then the program pops up each recipe to give you a chance to uncheck ingredients you already have. Once you've done that for each recipe in the time period, it will compile everything (sort of - it won't add up how many carrots you need, but at least it sorts everything so that each type of item is grouped) and you can have it emailed to you or just access it on your phone. I end up re-writing my grocery list on paper at the end, because I like to split it up by store. But having everything from each recipe automatically pulled together is amazing.

Because I like to do one massive shopping trip at the beginning of the month for any non-perishables or hearty stuff, and then just purchase vegetables weekly, I do need to figure out a way to modify it a little. Because you have the option to make edits when you are checking each recipe's ingredients (while Big Oven compiles your grocery list) I've just been adding a note to the "notes" section next to the ingredients that I want to buy during a specific week. That note will show up on your grocery list.

Overall, I'm feeling really good about this and I think it will make it easier for me to try out new recipes. In my paper system the most often used recipes tend to rotate back into the top of the stack, and if I lose a recipe sheet then I forget about it for ages. With the online system, I can quickly add in any recipe that catches my eye, even if I'm not meal planning right at the moment. You can flag recipes as "want to try" and scroll through those first.

Anyone already using Big Oven care to chime in? I'm still so new to it that this is all first impressions.

Meal planning - July wrap up

Whew.



It was a busy month. As I mentioned, I bumped up my planning to four meals a week, to accommodate our slightly larger family last month. As it turns out, four meals a week is pretty much perfect for three adults on a good week. We had two weeks where we were all at home for dinner almost every night and it was nice. But then everyone got busy at work and the last two weeks were pretty unpredictable and we all seemed to eat at different times. I cut out a few meals to accommodate this and it was fine.

I didn't try anything new last month, so this is going to be very short.

But, I do have the PDF of the monthly meal planning template for you, in case you want it! It's very simple, but I much prefer using the grid to hand sketching one every month, so hopefully it'll be useful for some of you. You can download it right here.

Around here

I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen lately, and it's been nice. I know that soon the weather is probably going to get nuts and I won't even want to turn on the oven, so I'm taking full advantage now.



 Over the holiday weekend I prepped a few things for the month (pizza dough that I could freeze for quick weeknight dinners, chicken stock in the crockpot so I could portion it out for the recipes I'm using this month and freeze it).



Last Saturday I spent most of the day baking cupcakes and arranging flowers for my grandfather's 100th birthday party. I was just supposed to do the flowers, but while I was browsing Pinterest for arrangement ideas I kept seeing sunflower cupcake tutorials and couldn't resist.



Sadly, I forgot to get a picture of the best ones since I took them to the party, so I only have the rejects left but I'm sharing them anyways. I'm so far from an expert cake decorator and sometimes I think I should take a class or something but I'm pretty sure I'm doomed to failure. I always have trouble piping buttercream because my hands are so hot that they basically melt the frosting instantly so for this project I had two bags of frosting set up so I could rotate them in and out of the refrigerator and it kind of worked. I used this tutorial for the decorating, because it doesn't require any special tips (although I cut the hole in the bag a little small which made for a less polished result). I went back to my old school favorite frosting and it didn't disappoint. It's the creamiest, fluffiest, lightest frosting - similar in taste to a whipped cream frosting. It does get really soft at room temp, so I knew it wasn't the best choice for decorating but I'll always take taste over aesthetics. I didn't have superfine sugar but I just blitzed some regular sugar in the food processor and it worked just fine.



D was busy with a client project so we didn't see each other all day but we reconvened to admire our work and share a beer in the evening. I know I'm biased right now because the weather has been so great, but I'm kind of wishing summer would last forever. I'll be singing a different tune in September, I'm sure.

Monthly meal planning - July

So I wasn't going to meal plan this month because it seemed like it might be nice to have a break for summer. But then that's exactly what I had the last week of June, since I'd left the schedule open, and let me tell you - it wasn't fun to go back to figuring out meals on the fly, especially when we'd just come back from vacation and I was feeling tired.

And so I'm back to it for July, with even more meals. I'm going to be cooking four nights a week this month instead of three, because D's little brother is staying with us for a bit and I'm hoping that this will be the correct amount of scaling up for us. If we're ending up with too much food, I'll readjust partway through the month and start deleting meals. If it isn't enough food then I'm moving out and everyone can fend for themselves. Kidding. Sort of.



I am making it easier on myself because I'm sticking with tried and true recipes and not doing anything new.

Recipes for July: 

Chicken tikka masala + saag - Made this for the first time last month and D requested it again immediately.

Brown rice noodle bowls with stir fried vegetables (x2) - no recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. 

Farro salad with roasted vegetables and fontina - Haven't made this in a long time but we used to make it a lot.

Coconut, tomato and red lentil dal - Always popular around here.

Spicy sloppy joes + salad - This is my go to recipe for sloppy joes and I'm figuring these will be a hit with the teenager. I'm not really modifying our regular meal planning much, but I thought it might be nice to add in a few recipes for him that aren't lentil or vegetable based.

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese (x2) - Apparently I make this every month now. I'm lazy and always buy the pre-cubed squash from TJ's. It's only a tiny bit more expensive than buying whole squash and it saves a lot of time.

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - Solid spiralizer recipe, should be good for summer weather.

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - My current favorite red lentil recipe.

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - I would eat this all the time if the cost of shrimp (and the guilt associated with it) weren't so burdensome. Last time I made it I doubled the pesto recipe and put the extra in the freezer, so this time around it will be super simple.

Sweet potato bolognese + salad - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Indian dal nirvana + saag - Love this recipe and it's a nice change from all the red lentil recipes.

Grilled shrimp and vegetables with pearl couscous - One of our favorite summer dishes. Holds up so well in the fridge, good cold, also great on top of kale salad.

Homemade pizza night - I prepped for this over the holiday weekend by making a batch of my favorite pizza dough and then freezing the portions. That way I just have to defrost and it's a quick weeknight meal. One batch makes enough for four pizzas, so we'll probably get two meals out of it.

Monthly meal planning - June wrap up

June was a little hit or miss because of guests and traveling, but I made it through. I skipped a couple meals and then moved a few things around to make it work.



New recipes this month - 

Broccoli rabe with spicy Italian sausage and zucchini noodles - Ugh. I really, really didn't like this. I like broccoli rabe, but this just didn't come together for me. We ate it, but I ended up tossing out the last serving because I just didn't want to eat it as leftovers again.

Chicken tikka masala + saag - New to me recipe recommended by a reader. This recipe is a bit more work than the slow cooker version that I've used in the past but it is 100% worth it. The flavor is so good. I made this while my sister, brother-in-law and niece were here and everyone loved it. I'll probably keep both versions in my repertoire, since you do have to devote a fair amount of time to this one so it's best suited for weekends. Note - you can prep the sauce ahead of time, which would make it doable for a weeknight meal.

Monthly meal planning - June

June is a little weird because we're having guests and I have some traveling to do and the way the weeks fall on my calendar I'm planning for five weeks instead of four. I'm not going to freak out if things don't work out as planned, and I'm barely planning anything for the end of the month because travel and then coming home is rough and I'm not sure if I'll feel like cooking. If I know we're facing a busy time I make sure that I stock our freezer with a few Trader Joe's meals. Cheaper, easier and quicker than take out, and they'll hold if we magically manage to cook a real meal instead.



Recipes this month - 

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowl - no recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. 

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - nice spiralizer recipe that I tried out last month. 

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - the winner of the red lentil recipe showdown last month.  

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - spiralizer recipe that I tried out and loooved last month. 

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - one of my favorite recipes lately and it makes a great work lunch. I always toss the arugula lightly with some balsamic dressing. I still use this basic recipe and almost always have a jar of it in the fridge. Lately I've been adding a shallot in there, along with garlic and whatever herbs I have on hand. If I'm packing it for work, I put the lentils, butternut squash and goat cheese at the bottom of a large container, then put plenty of arugula on top and pack a small container of dressing to toss it with right before eating. 

Sweet potato dirty rice - easy, satisfying recipe. I get spicy andouille sausage from Whole Foods and I usually add more peppers than the recipe calls for.

Broccoli rabe with spicy Italian sausage and zucchini noodles - new to me recipe that I've been meaning to try out for a while.

Chicken tikka masala + saag - New to me recipe recommended by a reader. I love the quick and easy chicken tikka masala recipe that I've used in the past, but this one looks extra delicious.

Meal planning review - May

Still loving the monthly meal plans. I'm doing so much better with cooking on weeknights and we're barely eating out at all because we're usually well stocked with leftovers (part of that is that D has been working a lot of evenings, so there are more leftovers). I originally didn't think I'd continue this during the summer (because usually our summers end up being much less structured) but it's been so nice that I wanted to keep going. 



I mixed it up a lot more than usual last month! I'm barely doing anything new in June, though. so next month will be a bit boring. 

New recipes from May - 

Spiced red lentils with caramelized onions and spinach - This was pretty good, but in the May red lentil showdown the red lentils and spinach in masala sauce won out. That one is a definite keeper, and I'll be making it again. The masala paste is a little more effort but totally worth it. You do have to watch the spice, though. I'd start low and adjust up to taste.

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - New to me spiralizer recipe. Loved this one! The green sauce that you make for it is so flavorful that I kept snitching bites of it while I was cooking. It has an avocado base, similar to the avocado pasta sauce recipe that I love from Oh She Glows, but all the herbs take it up several levels. The veggie noodles are left raw in this recipe, so when I packed the leftovers I made sure to keep the sauce separate until I was ready to eat. The recipe says this is 2 - 4 servings but I think it's more like 2 generous servings or 3 side portions. 

Chicken korma + rice + saag - New to me recipe, recommended by a reader. This was very good, but fairly similar to the cashew nut chicken I already make regularly (although I did like all the extra cilantro). I tried this saag recipe and it was a big loser. Just sooo bland. It also wasn't the one I meant to try. Apparently there are two saag recipes on Chowhound and I looked at one and then printed the wrong one. I'm so over hunting for saag recipes at this point, so I'm going to stick with the one I liked from Food52 (note - there are also multiple recipes for saag on Food52, but I've only tried this one). 

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - Another spiralizer recipe from Pinch of Yum. I also loved this one. The pesto is amped up with spinach and kale, and it's amazing. It's also vegan, since it doesn't call for the traditional parm, and I like that it calls for almonds, since we always have almonds in the house. I will absolutely make this again. Also held up well for lunch the next day, I just put the noodles on one side of the dish and the pesto on the other and then tossed it together when it was time to eat. 



Bonus - I ended up making this naan recipe. I usually have a package of the Trader Joe's frozen naan, but I didn't realize we were out and I really wanted it. Waiting two hours for your naan to rise > braving TJ's during rush hour, right? Anyways, this was a very good recipe, and it was easy, but I still find that nothing beats that frozen stuff. We're so obsessed that if we're getting Indian take-out we'll often not order any naan and pull some out of the freezer instead. I'm not sure how they do it. 

Friday flowers

Ranunculus and peonies and hypericum, plus filler.







D is in a major time crunch right now and needed to block out most of Sunday for work, which meant no trip down home for Mothers' Day. But luckily our moms were willing to drive up here and I put together a simple brunch (which ended up looking a little formal once I set the table). I love, love, love our wedding china and my dad's beautiful crystal together. We're still on the hunt for a good set of vintage silver for big gatherings, because we only have eight settings of our silverware and we never remember that's an issue until we're setting the table for a big party and suddenly start scrambling for forks.

I made these biscuits, these eggs (which I overcooked to an embarrassing degree - lesson learned) and this citrus salad. Plus coffee and bacon, of course.

Monthly meal planning - May

Actually trying out a few new recipes this month. As the weather starts to warm up I'm looking forward to more veggie noodle bowls using the spiralizer, so I found some recipes to test.



Recipes this month - 

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Spiced red lentils with caramelized onions and spinach - New to me, looks good. 

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowl (x2) - No recipe, I just stir fry a bunch of veggies with some ginger and garlic and the extra firm tofu from Trader Joe's (it has the best texture!) and toss with some Soyaki marinade (also from TJ's) and the cooked noodles. This month I'm excited because I found some brown rice ramen noodles at Costco and I think they'll be delicious in this. 

Rainbow power salad with roasted chickpeas - New to me spiralizer recipe. Looks hearty. 

Red lentils and spinach in masala sauce - I was looking for a new red lentil recipe and couldn't choose, so I've inadvertently created a red lentil show down this month. We'll see which recipe we like best. 

Chicken korma + rice + saag - New to me recipe, recommended by a reader. I really liked the Food52 saag recipe I tried last month (also recommended by a reader - you guys are the best) but I might try the Chowhound recipe this month. It uses frozen spinach, which means you don't have to blend at the end. Worth it? 

Coconut curried red lentils + saag + naan - Our standard favorite around here. 

Spicy shrimp with pesto zucchini noodles - Another spiralizer recipe from Pinch of Yum. I've never tried their recipes before and I have two in one month. Fingers crossed! 

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - One of my favorite recipes lately. I do toss the arugula lightly with some balsamic dressing. I still use this basic recipe and almost always have a jar of it in the fridge. Lately I've been adding a shallot in there, along with garlic and whatever herbs I have on hand. 

Cashew nut chicken + saag + cauliflower rice - Using the package of sauce that I froze last time I made it. I get the cauliflower rice frozen from Trader Joe's (I'm lazy, and hate cleaning all the cauliflower bits out of the food processor) and saute it with a bit of onion and garlic.

My favorite arroz con pollo

I can't believe I've never shared this recipe before. It's one of my all time comfort foods.



Arroz con pollo is just chicken and rice, but the sum is so much more than the parts. It has a pile of sauteed onions and green peppers, the rice is fragrant with saffron and rich with tomatoes and I could just eat it forever.

I don't actually make it very often, because the process takes much longer than I can usually spend on a weeknight, so this is more of a weekend dish but I'll also break it out for company if I can get out of work early enough. We were having friends over a couple weeks ago and I had such a strong craving for this that I rearranged our meal plan for the week so that I could make it.

The recipe is right here (I trust Epicurious to keep their recipe links functional, so I think it's safe just to post the link but let me know if it goes dead).

My comments -

There is no universe in which this makes four servings, unless all four people are starving teenage boys who like enormous amounts of rice. When I make this recipe as written we have enough for four people plus generous leftovers. So maybe 6 - 7 servings is more accurate?

I don't like to bother with a whole chicken, so I just get bone-in thighs and drumsticks (or whole legs). Never, ever skinless.

This is much heavier on the rice than the chicken, so if you want a higher protein to carb ratio, you might want to increase the amount of chicken. Obviously you could decrease the rice, but that will be a bit trickier because you'll have to figure out the liquid ratios. Also, the rice is delicious.

I don't have a saucepan large enough for this recipe. It calls for a 6-7 qt pan that is 12" wide and 4" deep. My beloved stainless steel saute pan (I posted about it here ages ago and I'm still in love and use it almost every day) is 4 quarts, which is perfect for almost everything, but a bit too small for this. My workaround is a little annoying. I use my saute pan right up until the point where you are supposed to add the rice. Then I move the chicken over to one of my Dansk pans, which are larger and still oven-safe. I add the rice to the saute pan and bring it to a simmer, then transfer everything to the Dansk pan with the chicken. Yes, this is a little frustrating, but I'm not willing to invest in a slightly larger pan just for this one recipe. I have considered trying to scale the recipe down a bit so I can just use my normal pan, but I love the leftovers so much that I haven't attempted that yet.

Sorry for the lack of finished product photos, but did I mention that this recipe is time consuming? I've never managed to get it on the table while it's still light enough to take pictures.

Once a month meal planning - April

And April!



As you can see, I started messing around with this month before it was even properly off the ground. We had friends coming over for dinner and I felt like making something a little more special than our usual weeknight meals so I shifted things around a bit.

Recipes for this month: 

Sweet potato noodles and bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here)

Vegetable bowls with brown rice noodles - I gave up on the recipe for this one. I'm just winging it by stir frying some vegetables and using TJ's Soyaki sauce. It works out great.

Enchilada chicken soup - we never seem to get tired of this one.

Sweet potato dirty rice - got a nice Andouille sausage from WF for this month.

Black lentils with caramelized onions - a perennial favorite. I only make a half batch if I just want four servings. Otherwise we'll be eating it for days (which is sometimes good).

Sweet potato, kale and sausage soup - using homemade broth, which makes it a million times better. We tend to get a WF rotisserie chicken a couple times a month for weekend meals, and I'll save the bones in the freezer and use them to make broth. This recipe takes a ton of broth, so having homemade really helps.

Spiced butternut squash salad with lentils and goat cheese - love this salad and you can easily do most of the prep on Sunday if you need a super quick weeknight option.

Cashew nut chicken and saag - I made a triple batch of sauce last time and then froze it with the chicken broth, so this will be super easy this month. I didn't love the saag recipe that I used last month, so I'm thinking about trying this one (minus the tofu, since I just need a side dish).

Salmon kabayaki (+ broccoli) - new recipe. I tend to shy away from cooking fish because it's expensive and I'm always nervous that I'll mess it up and waste it. And it goes bad so quickly in the fridge that it doesn't work well when I only grocery shop on the weekends. But I impulse purchased a bag of frozen salmon fillets from Costco, so I need to get over it.

Sweet potato and black bean chili - a very reliable way to use up all the odds and ends from spiralizing sweet potatoes.

Once a month meal planning - March revisited

Still enjoying our monthly meal planning system, even if this particular month was a little long.



Despite our short trip up north we managed to keep it together pretty well.

New recipes I tried this month (Original plan with all the recipes listed is posted here):

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowls - I ended up not really following this recipe, so I can't review it properly, sorry! I just stir fried a bunch of vegetables and then tossed them with some brown rice noodles and some Trader Joe's Soyaki sauce. Worked well, though, and super easy. Some variation of this will probably become part of our standard repertoire.

Crockpot chicken tikka masala + saag (using that recipe minus the paneer) + cauliflower rice from TJ's. The crockpot chicken tikka masala recipe was pretty great and I'll move it into regular rotation. I was not in love with the saag recipe, so I think I need to keep searching.

Dal nirvana - delicious! I make the black lentils with caramelized onions a lot, and while we love them, it was a nice change of pace to make a different black lentil dish. The cream makes this dish feel decadent and the cayenne gives it some good heat.

Once a month meal planning - March

March is a little wonky because we'll be taking a short trip and the way the calendar works out for my system it's actually five weeks instead of four. I'm trying to add in more side dishes this month so that we're getting more veg. I'm normally really lazy about sides other than salads but now that I have the bigger kitchen there's no excuse. I guess I'm still being lazy because mostly what I'm doing this month is adding a big side of saag to our crockpot meals. I love cooked spinach and since I'm not doing any cooking on crockpot nights anyways, it won't feel like I'm adding too much extra work. Baby steps, right?



Recipes for this month:

Spicy tuna cakes + arugula salad (thinking I'll improvise a Meyer lemon and olive oil dressing for this) - I love this simple recipe and I haven't made it in a few months. I do NOT use the muffin pan because I find they stick like crazy and cleaning a muffin pan is annoying in the best of circumstances. I just form patties and bake them on the Silpat.

Braised cabbage + poached eggs - a perennial favorite. I always like to add some thinly sliced fennel and extra carrots.

Sweet potato dirty rice - another good spiralizer recipe.

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowls - planning to increase the veg:noodle ratio by getting some large carrots so that I can spiralize them and have carrot noodles. Hope the recipe is good, since I haven't tried it before and I'm using it twice this month!

Crockpot chicken tikka masala + saag (using that recipe minus the paneer) + cauliflower rice (I get it frozen from Trader Joe's) - I haven't tried this recipe yet but I'm hoping it will be a keeper.

Dal nirvana + saag + naan (frozen from Trader Joe's) - Another new to me recipe, recommended by a kind reader!

Roasted root vegetables with soft polenta - Not really using a recipe for this, but similar to this one (+ some mushrooms, probably) except that I like polenta soft rather than sliced, so the polenta will be more like this.

Cashew nut chicken + saag + cauliflower rice - Making a triple batch of sauce this time, freezing the other two portions for future months.

Sweet potato bolognese + salad - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here).

And the grocery list for the month. The top left corner is where I write down pantry items that I'm pretty sure I have but I need to check. I get all of my meat for the month at Whole Foods and then divide it up and freeze it. For veg, I decide which items I can get at the beginning of the month (onions, garlic, etc, usually last fine, bell peppers and fennel and the like will hold up a couple weeks) and which items I have to get week by week (salad greens, mushrooms, etc). For the most part, it's been going pretty smoothly and I feel like I spend a lot less time at the store.

Once a month meal planning - February revisited

February was a little rough for me. I was pretty emotional about my dad, Dustin had an insanely heavy work schedule so I was solo most nights, and it just didn't seem worth it to cook all those weeknight meals. I ended up skipping two of the lentil dishes I had planned (weeks 3 and 4), but that's fine because the lentils will keep. I stopped even marking up my planning page after week 2 because I was cooking on different days and just generally doing whatever was most convenient, rather than sticking strictly to the schedule. But it was still nice to have it laid out and know what my options were.

I'm sticking with the monthly system again for March (post up tomorrow). I think it's helping a lot because we hardly ate out at all in February (although that might be due to the whole D = working, me = sad thing I mentioned). I did go over on our grocery budget this month by quite a bit, partly because we entertained a few times and I made a Costco trip to restock some critical items (enormous bag of chocolate chips, bourbon) and partly because I might have been treating myself a bit too much (flowers, wine, good cheese, nice beer). But hey, you do what you need to do, right? I'm going to buckle down again this month and make sure to hit our target.



New recipes I tried in February: 

Lentil and garlic sausage cassoulet - I thought this was pretty tasty but so much work for a relatively simple dish! You make the broth, skim, then cook the lentils, then you're supposed to bake everything in a casserole dish. I would only make this again if I were going to streamline it a lot, or I would have to move it to weekend only rotation.

Spiced butternut squash, lentil and goat cheese salad - This was great, and it came together super fast because I did cooked the lentils and roasted the squash on Sunday afternoon while I was doing stuff around the house.

Canal house lentils - Didn't get to this one.  : (

Lately

Spending a lot of time around the house, specifically, in the kitchen.















Last week was the anniversary of my dad's death, and I just felt quiet and deeply sad. It seems unbelievable to me that we have been living without him for an entire year. I have a million things to say about it but there don't seem to be any words that are right. I just miss him, so much.

I've been taking it easy, self soothing in the kitchen and spending time with people I love and keeping the house full of flowers. Having a larger space makes it a million times easier to have people over for dinner or drinks or no reason at all and it's already been pretty wonderful.

I'm sticking to our monthly meal plan pretty well (monthly updates coming soon) and I like that the weekends are left up for grabs so I can cook something fun if I feel like it. We haven't been going out much but I have been cooking and baking (it feels so glorious to have a full sized oven!), which means I went waaaay over on our grocery budget this month but we hardly touched our entertainment/eating out fund. It'll balance out in the end?

I made the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook last weekend and it was pretty dang good. I used an aged Gouda which might have made it a touch salty and I honestly think in the future I'd cut the pastry dough recipe in half, because it felt like a very high dough:filling ratio. But we did devour it, so I'm not complaining. (Actually, the version on her website looks like it is similar but might be better balanced?)

I'm experimenting to try to find the best cocktail for all the blood oranges that pour into the market right now. So far this margarita recipe has been the biggest hit, although I'm still tweaking it a bit.

Once a month meal planning - February

And on to February! I planned this out super early because I knew that the last thing I'd want to do the weekend we were moving was handle a massive grocery list. I did, however, manage to convince myself to hit the grocery store on February 1st for our big shop and I was pretty impressed with myself because what I wanted to do was lie in bed and order take out (full disclosure - we did go out with friends on Monday and then order take out with them on Tuesday, so we're not exactly starting this month off strong but when your dear friend is only in town for a few days, you take advantage).



I stuck with my basic formula for this month, with weekly lentils and crock pot meals and I'm still hitting the sweet potato bolognese pretty hard. I keep thinking one week I'll realize I'm sick of it but it hasn't happened yet.

Recipes for this month:

Lentil and garlic sausage cassoulet - new to me recipe, only making a 1/2 batch because otherwise we'd be eating it forever. I couldn't find slab bacon so I got a small piece of pork belly instead. Maybe that's the same thing, now that I think about it?

Cashew nut chicken - Using the other half of the sauce that I froze last month (next time I might make a triple batch of sauce - it was so lovely to just dump everything together in the morning).

Spiced butternut squash, lentil and goat cheese salad - new to me, looks so good.

Crockpot beef stew - just realized I don't have the recipe for this posted anywhere. My mom always made it growing up and it's super easy. 1 lb beef stew meat, a couple potatoes, some carrots, some celery, all roughly chunked, 1 can of V8, 1 tbsp of sugar, 2 tbsp minute tapioca, ~ 2 tsp salt, cooked in the crockpot on low for 8 hours. I always consider looking for a fancier recipe, but this one never fails and it is so easy.

Canal house lentils - new to me, looks simple and delicious. Skeptical about the eight servings, though. In my experience, a cup of dried lentils usually equals four servings. Maybe it's meant to be a side dish?

Chicken enchilada soup - always.

Black lentils with caramelized onions - but just once this month.

Sweet potato and black bean chili - again, using up the odds and ends of the spiralized sweet potatoes. Last month I couldn't find ground chipotle so I just used some canned chipotles in adobo sauce (not a whole can! they are spicy) and it was delicious. I froze the other half of the can so I can do it again this time around.

Sweet potato bolognese - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here).



The worst part of this for me is figuring out the grocery list with this many meals in the mix, but I assume I'll get better with that. I just jot down the ingredients for every meal, then consolidate them on a single page, keeping them roughly divided into categories (produce, meat, canned goods, etc). I check the pantry to see what I have and cross those things off. I usually then split the list into what I need from each store, but this month I lost energy at that point and it was fairly well divided anyways. I get my produce from Jons (best produce prices + selection around here) or the farmer's market, meat from Whole Foods, odds and ends from TJs or the regular grocery store. What surprises me is that once I get it all boiled down and consolidated, the major shopping trip really isn't that huge or that expensive! With perishable produce I also note down the week I need it (and make a note on my actual meal planning sheet), so that I can just get it that week.

I don't know - is my scribbled out grocery list the weirdest thing I've ever posted? Maybe next month I'll remember to take a picture before I write all over it and wad it up in my bag to take it out to multiple stores.

Previous once a month meal planning posts - January planning and January execution.

Once a month meal planning - January revisited

You guys, I loved having all my meals planned for the month. Looooved it. Front loading the "real" cooking on M/T/W worked really well for us because it left us a lot of flexibility at the end of the week but ensured that we always had enough leftovers to take to work for lunches. Grocery shopping was super minimal week to week, which makes me happy. We also came in below our usual grocery budget, which is probably because we weren't at the store as often and there was almost no food waste, which makes me happy (totally guilty of being overly optimistic while shopping and buying more produce, etc, than we can actually use - I've been working hard to improve this).



I did adjust as necessary (see all my scribbles - I was trying to keep track of how it played out) and we almost never needed our Th/F quick meals because we usually had leftovers. But it worked out well to have the ingredients because we used them for weekend meals and ate out less.

Even with the move thrown in there things didn't get too hectic. I just cooked as scheduled M/T/W and then as soon as I was done cooking on Wednesday I cleaned up and packed our entire kitchen other than the bare essentials (two bowls, two plates, two cups, a skillet and a smattering of utensils). I knew we'd have enough leftovers to get us through the rest of the week so we'd basically just be microwaving and cooking eggs.

I was so excited about this system that I got my February meals planned well ahead of time so that I'd be all ready to jump in on week one despite our move. Those will be up tomorrow! Fair warning - it will be almost as boring as this month.

Which leads me to this question - did we get bored? Nope! I was afraid we would, but it turns out we're just really hungry when we sit down for dinner and the fact that we ate something two weeks ago doesn't even register. I'm relieved because am I the only one who sees those fancy meal plans and thinks people are crazy for being willing to make a different breakfast, lunch and dinner every day? I love the idea of that much variety but in practice it is way too much work for me. That said, I did search for a few new lentil recipes to try out in February because I don't want to push my luck.