I'm Always Learning New Things As A Homemaker

 An entirely homemade breakfast.  

Yogurt, orange marmalade, peanut butter, and whole wheat bread made with freshly ground flour.

I'm not sharing this little breakfast to brag about it.  What I want to point out is that these are all things I learned to do within the past 2-3 years.

It's a lot cheaper to make yogurt at home with a gallon of milk rather than buy a tub of it already prepared, so I learned how to make yogurt.  

Someday I hope to make jam with fruit from our own fruit trees, so I started learning those skills by making and canning marmalade with store bought oranges.  

We discovered we could make peanut butter ourselves without any added oil or sugar, resulting in a more nutritious food we could enjoy.

Noah did the math on the cost of a loaf of bread from the store as compared to the sandwich bread I could make at home.  This led us down the rabbit hole of freshly ground flour.  We bought a grain mill, some bags of grain, and we haven't bought a loaf of sandwich bread from the store since.  The bread I make it home is a bit more expensive than the store bought bread we were buying since it is a higher quality product, but it is much more nutritious so I think it is worth the price difference.

On one of my favorite podcasts, Homemaker Chic, they often talk about "skilling up" as a homemaker.  Their view is that a homemaker might not be an expert in a specific field of study, such as someone with a job dedicated to one subject, but she does have the advantage of her knowledge being very broad simply because of everything her vocation entails, and the opportunity to continually improve her wide skillset.

My marmalade did turn out a bit runny, sometimes I over-proof my bread and it falls flat, and I'm often forgetting to do things around the house.  So I might not always execute things perfectly as if it were the only thing I'm focusing on, but I'm still learning and making an effort.

I am blessed with the responsibility of taking care of my family and the many avenues I travel day to day fulfilling my purpose.

One day I might be learning to bake a new bread or special treat to go with a meal.  On another I'm reading about gardening techniques so we can grow vegetables in the summer.  I'll find new activities and books for the kids to enjoy.  I'm trying to keep the kitchen tidy so I can make meals efficiently (I'm always working on that one).  Forever keeping up with laundry so everyone has clean clothes to wear.  Teaching the kids how to put away dishes, sort laundry, and clean the house.  Learning what to do when the kids are sick and how to keep them comfortable.

There is never a shortage of things to do or new skills to learn having to do with our basic daily needs.

Every homemaker is different and we all have a wide range of interests.  Don't feel like you are limited because you don't have a "career" in the worldly sense of the word.  Instead, take advantage of your tasks at hand and learn how you can "skill up" and accomplish them even better.

I Fed The Kids Chicken Nuggets For Lunch

I have been feeling really burnt out with cooking lately.  Hence the lack of "Cooking At Home" blog posts during the past few weeks.

But it's about more than just a frustrations or boredom with cooking.  We went through a stressful year with the pandemic, Noah was unemployed for eight months, we were all adjusting to a new routine when he started his new job, and then navigating changes in Adeline medical treatment which involved having her undergo minor surgery.

I finally hit a wall trying to manage the mental and emotional strain of the past year and I literally could not think of a single thing to cook for dinner.

Doing the laundry, taking care of dirty dishes, and vacuuming the floor were still manageable because they are simple tasks that you do the same way every single time.  

But cooking?  Cooking involves choosing a dish, gathering or buying ingredients, sometimes cooking components ahead of time, or making sure meat is thawed out beforehand, gauging the time it takes to prep and cook everything, and figuring out how long that meal will last so you know when you will have to cook again.  Those are a lot of mental hoops to jump through just to get food on the table.

I pride myself on cooking and baking from scratch as much as possible for several different reasons.  I know I have the skills and time to cook this way and I want to feed my family the healthiest food possible.  Another reason is because we don't know what is causing Adeline's precocious puberty so I am constantly wondering what exactly is in the food we're consuming (and other household products we're constantly using).

But when I finally hit that mental wall, I told Noah I needed to have some pre-made foods around to feed the kids for lunch.  Chicken nuggets, fish sticks, something.  I know they're expensive and not the healthiest thing we could be eating, but sometimes I just need things to be easy.  Noah picked up a bag of chicken nuggets for me from the store and they sat in the freezer for a few weeks before I finally opened the bag and tossed some in the oven for lunch.

Let's take a look at what is on these plates.  Chicken nuggets, fresh fruit and veggies, bean and corn salad, and some hummus.  But look closer.  I cooked those black beans from scratch in the crockpot, they were not canned.  I also cooked the chickpeas myself and turned them into homemade hummus.  So even though I went against what I pride myself on (cooking from scratch) by feeding the kids chicken nuggets, they still had a lot of healthy, homemade, whole foods on their plate.  (To be truthful, they didn't eat much of the bean salad, probably because this was the third day of eating bean salad and they were tired of it.)

As we were eating lunch it dawned on me that Adeline is four years old and I think this is the first time she has eaten chicken nuggets.  

The kids happily munched away on their lunch and life went on.  The world didn't end because I fed the kids pre-made foods.  Though I will tell you, a meal like this is very much the exception in our house.  I will only ever use it as a fallback and not a regular food choice.  But I am trying to figure out ways to make thing easier for myself, especially cooking since it takes up so much time.

Don't forget to give yourself a break sometimes, my friends.  We could all benefit from a chance to relax.

Cooking At Home - Volume Seven

This was not a stellar week for meals.  I was tired, not feeling well, and stressed about a doctor appointment for Adeline.

The three or four weeks since this one have been a struggle too.  I hit a wall with adjusting to managing so many day-to-day household things on my own since Noah started his new job, and then talking on the phone numerous times trying to navigate a change in Adeline's medical treatment, trying to handle Adeline's hormonal mood swings, and just feeling so overwhelmed and worn out I can't think straight.

A couple days ago I sat down and tried to figure out ways to make my day-to-day duties easier, meal planning being one of them.  I think I figured out some handy changes that will lessen my mental burden a little more so I'm hoping things will start to improve going forward.

Even during this abysmal week I somehow made it work and we still had something to eat every day.

Breakfast

I honestly don't remember if we really ate for breakfast what was written on the menu.  I did manage to make pancakes for breakfast on Saturday though.

Lunch

I didn't really write down anything for lunch this week.  I made some Irish soda bread one day, we had scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, fruit, vegetables, and whatever else was around that I could throw together quickly.  I regretted not planning more ahead of time, but I honestly did not have the mental energy to get my act together this week.

Dinner

On Monday we had biscuit breakfast sandwiches.  I baked biscuits and some breakfast sausage patties in the oven, scrambled some eggs on the stove, and put together some veggies to have on the side.  I quite liked baking the sausage patties rather than cooking them on the stove.  It was certainly less messy.

The Biscuit Recipe I Use All The Time

I've been experimenting with homemade chicken tenders lately.  First I marinated them in the shawarma marinade from the recipe below.

Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma

Then I coated them in flour and baked them in the oven.  We ate them as wraps with hummus, lettuce, chipotle mayonnaise, and whatever else we wanted.  The flour coating didn't become crispy like I anticipated it would, but the chicken was still delicious.

Next we had another pretty easy meal.  I cooked some brats and onions in the oven, pasta on the stove, made some white sauce, and mixed everything together with a salad on the side.

On Saturday we had leftovers for lunch and Noah made "pigs in a blanket" with Adeline for dinner.  It was a fun meal we don't normally have.  We also had some roasted cabbage and more veggies on the side.

Even though it was a rough week and maybe we didn't make the most amazing food, everyone was well fed and taken care of.  Really, that's all that matters.

Cooking At Home - Volume Six

I somewhat unintentionally skipped a week between volumes five and six of this series.  It was a busy week, I was tired, and by the time Sunday rolled around and I was preparing to write down the new menu, I just didn't feel inspired to write about the previous week's meals, so I erased the board without taking a picture and got started on the new week of meals.

Perking up some floppy celery with a bit of cold water.

But I do remember I made my dad's baked ziti recipe during that week and we really enjoyed it.  I don't know why we don't make it more often.  I'll link it below.

My Dad's Baked Ziti

I felt pretty on top of things with this new week of meals.  It was still really cold outside so the kids and I weren't able to get out and play which had been wearing on all of us quite a bit mentally and emotionally, but warmer weather was on it's way which gave me hope of the kids burning off energy outside again.

Breakfast

We started off the week with steel cut oatmeal and then I made two loaves of oatmeal bread from my trusty Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book to have the rest of the week with eggs and fruit.

I don't think we actually had waffles on Saturday.  I try to plan something special for breakfast on Saturday but sometimes I'm worn out from cooking all week so I'll go for something simple instead.

Lunch

I threw together a simple egg salad for lunch at the beginning of the week that we ate alongside crackers, apples, and some veggies.

On Wednesday I tried a new macaroni and cheese recipe.

Cheesy Macaroni and White Beans

I really enjoy macaroni and cheese, but it isn't the most filling meal, so I did some Googling and tried to brainstorm ideas to make it more substantial.  I figured I could roast some onions and cubed sweet potatoes to mix into the pasta, but I wondered if there was a way to incorporate beans.  I came across the recipe above and I think it worked pretty well.  The pureed white beans gave the cheese sauce a thicker consistency.  You could kind of feel the texture of the pureed beans in the sauce, so I wonder if adding more milk to thin it a bit or more cheese would help mask it a little more, but overall I liked the new recipe.  I definitely had to add more milk to the beans than the recipe suggested to get them to blend up smoothly, but everything else worked just fine.  I stirred some shredded mozzarella into the dish to make it extra cheesy.  This macaroni meal lasted a LONG time.  We ate the leftovers for quite a while.

On Friday I made a couple of pizzas for lunch.  I experimented with baking the pizzas on my big rectangular baking sheets instead of normal pizza pans.  I baked them on parchment paper on the baking sheets to keep the bottoms of the pizzas from getting soggy.  They ended up being thin crust pizzas loaded with toppings.  The kids quite liked them.

For the sauce I strained a quart jar of homemade tomato sauce so that it wouldn't be too watery.  The toppings consisted of homemade chorizo, black beans, green onions, and a mixture of cheddar, Parmesan, and Mozzarella cheese.  I experimented adding some dry basil, garlic powder, and smoked paprika to my pizza dough, but I don't think the flavor really came through with so many different toppings to compete with.

Dinner

At the beginning of the week we had leftover pulled pork for dinner with homemade buns, homemade coleslaw, and other sides.

Next I roasted a couple ropes of smoked sausage and onions in the oven for sandwiches.  I sliced the sausages and we ate them on homemade buns and had roasted sweet potatoes and veggies on the side.

At the end of the week we had Mexican for dinner thanks to the surplus taco meat and refried beans I had stashed in the freezer.  I have gotten into the groove of planning simple meals towards the end of the week which has been really helpful with our "new normal" of Noah working slightly longer hours and my being on my own with the kids more than I was before he started he started his new job.

Taco Meat and Big Batch Refried Beans

I did quite a bit of cooking on Thursday and Friday so that I wouldn't have to cook at all over the weekend.  All of this cooking also included a big batch of homemade hummus.  It's great to have around for snacks and the kids love it so much they'll just eat it out of a bowl with a spoon.

I cook my dried chickpeas according to the recipe below in my trusty crockpot.

Alton Brown Slow Cooker Chickpeas

For the hummus, I actually don't follow a specific recipe, and for quite a while I didn't even add tahini because we didn't have it around.  So I'm sure my hummus isn't terribly authentic, but it is easy and tasty.

We have an 8-cup food processor and I'll fill it up with cooked chickpeas.  To the chickpeas I'll add some tahini (about 1/4 cup at most), some garlic powder, a bit of salt, some lemon juice, and a couple tablespoons of oil.  I'll starting processing the ingredients and add water as needed to reach my desired consistency.  We'll eat hummus with veggies, flatbread, put it on wraps, and the kids like to eat it on its own.

My Dad's Baked Ziti

My dad wrote this recipe years ago and it was a staple meal in our family for a long time.  Every time I make it I say that I need to make it more often.  It is soooo good!

This is also the white sauce recipe I use as my guideline every time I make white sauce to go with a meal.

Baked Ziti in Mornay Sauce and Grilled Sausage

2 tablespoons of butter

3 tablespoons of flour

2-½ cups milk or half-and-half

Salt

White pepper

Nutmeg

6 ounces of grated Parmesan cheese (not the dry type sold in a container)

2 tablespoons of olive oil

Fresh ground black pepper

1 ½ - 2 pounds of sweet or hot Italian sausage (whichever you prefer)

1 pound ziti pasta, cooked al dente

¼ cup basil if fresh. 1 tablespoon if dried

2-10 cloves of garlic, whole or sliced, whichever you prefer

Start the water to heat for cooking the pasta.

Meanwhile, in a small pan over medium heat melt the butter then blend in the flour.  A flat bottom whisk works well. Cook for 2 minutes. For a lower calorie dish use milk instead of half-and-half.  Add ½ cup at a time stirring constantly for 5-7 minutes.  Season with salt, white pepper, and a pinch or two of nutmeg.  Remove from heat and stir in ½ cup of the cheese.  Set aside and keep warm.

Cook the sausage over an outdoor grill or in the oven using the broiler, 3-5 minutes per side.  While the sausage is cooling, cook the pasta.   Add cold water when done to stop the pasta from overcooking.  Slice the sausage in ½ inch pieces.

The garlic can be kept in whole cloves or sliced, either way mix it with olive oil, salt, and pepper and cook it in an aluminum foil dish until roasted.

Drain the pasta and place in a large mixing bowl; add the Mornay sauce, sausage, and garlic.  Mix thoroughly and pour into a greased 2-quart baking dish.  Top with the remaining cheese and place into a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.  Broil for a few minutes to brown the top.

Let cool for a couple of minutes and serve, garnish with the basil.

Cooking At Home - Volume Five

This was the week my meal plan was disrupted by having to drive to the doctor twice in one day during the middle of the week.

Enjoying coffee on the front porch.

I had to get bloodwork done as part of my yearly physical, but due to visitor restrictions I wasn't allowed to bring the kids with me to the lab to get my blood drawn.  (I didn't know about the restrictions beforehand or I would have made arrangements ahead of time.)  Since I had already been fasting for quite a while and there was a storm due to blow in the next day I needed to figure out how to still get my bloodwork done that same day.  Thankfully one of our neighbors was able to watch the kids for me so I could drive back to the doctor and get my labs done.  I was in and out the door in five minutes.  It was the fastest bloodwork I have ever had done.

After fasting for more than twelve hours I was finally able to eat breakfast/lunch at 1:00 that afternoon.  I was pretty worn out after this whole debacle in addition to not sleeping well the previous couple of nights, so I didn't have the energy to keep up with most of the cooking I had planned, not to mention all of that driving ate up a lot of time I would have spent prepping meals.

Breakfast

For breakfasts during the previous week I had made a couple loaves of oatmeal bread instead of steel cut oatmeal and we enjoyed it so much that I decided to do it again.  We had some simple microwaved rolled oats on Monday to give me time to make bread.  With the oatmeal bread we had eggs, yogurt, and fruit.  By Friday the bread was running low so we had steel cut oatmeal for breakfast while I baked two more loaves of oatmeal bread.  One loaf was for us and the other we took to a friends' game night on Saturday.

My oatmeal bread recipe comes from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book.

Lunch

Our leftovers from the previous week didn't stretch quite as far as I had hoped so I ended up throwing together some quick breakfast burritos for lunch after church on Sunday.  I scrambled some eggs with black beans, cheese, and green onions.  We topped them with avocado, spinach, and some yogurt and rolled it up in tortillas.  We also finished off the bit of leftovers we had hanging around in the fridge.

Last week I roasted a chicken for dinner and then simmered the carcass in the crockpot to make chicken stock.  I used the bits of leftover meat and the chicken stock to make white chili for lunch at the beginning of the week.

White Chicken Chili

My beans took longer to cook in the crockpot than anticipated so I threw together something easy for lunch on Monday and we ate the chili from Tuesday onward.

"Boiled eggs and such" was my tired way of saying, "I have no clue what to plan for lunch, so I'll just write down something easy."  I think we ended up having cheesy scrambled eggs with veggies and toast two days in a row.

A big snow storm blew in Thursday night.  Seeing all of that deep, fluffy snow outside made me crave something warm and cozy for lunch.  I roasted some sweet potatoes and made a bit of miso butter pasta which we ate along with the last of the Pad Thai.

Tuna melts finally happened for lunch on Saturday.

Tuna Melts

Dinner

These sriracha pork meatballs are one of our favorite recipes.

Sriracha Pork Meatballs

I make them a little easier to cook by quickly browning them in a skillet and then transferring them to a 9x13 pan, pouring the sauce over the top, and cooking them the rest of the way in the oven, at about 450 degrees Farenheit until the internal temperature of the meatballs reaches 160 degrees Farenheit.  I typically make a double batch of meatballs so this makes cooking them a lot quicker instead of cooking them through on the stove for ages.  Throwing them into the oven also frees me up to prep other things to go with dinner.

Sriracha Pork Meatballs

We eat these meatballs with the rice recipe below.  I leave the sriracha out of the actual meatballs and sauce so it isn't too spicy for the kids.  Noah and I will top our servings with sriracha and then gulp water because we have made our food too spicy.

Cilantro Lime Rice

Next we made Pad Thai.  We followed the recipe below.

Pad Thai

I cut up an entire head of cabbage to go into the Pad Thai this time.  It looked like a ridiculous amount until it all cooked down.  If you don't have a wok big enough to accommodate all of the ingredients you could make this in whatever big pan you have by cooking each element separately and then stirring them together in a big bowl afterward.  Don't skip the pickled turnips/radishes and make sure you get the sweet variety, not the salty.  If all you can find are the salty turnips then soak and rinse them before adding them to the Pad Thai otherwise it will end up being way too salty.  We made that mistake once.

"Mexican" is a pretty vague thing to write on a menu.  It means we're having some kind of meat with some kind of beans eaten on some kind of tortilla.  If I am making something specific like enchiladas or carnitas, then I'll write that on the menu.  But this time around we were keeping it simple.  Just some taco meat, refried beans, and tons of fixins to go with them.  I have linked below my husband's family's taco meat and refried beans recipes, though the beans have been re-written to make the recipe a lot easier.

Taco Meat and Big Batch Refried Beans

We ate the meat and beans on store bought tortillas along with avocado, cheese, corn, lettuce, cilantro, green onions, rice, and homemade canned salsa.  This is one of our favorite meals.  Noah is 1/4 Hispanic and I grew up in Texas so we are always game for Mexican food.

Everything got pushed around and delayed with the menu this week, but it was very helpful to have a plan to fall back on when things settled down.

Taco Meat and Big Batch Refried Beans Recipes

Step away from that packet of taco seasoning.  There is a better way to satisfy your taco craving.

My mother-in-law threw a bridal shower for me when Noah and I got married and she asked everyone to bring a recipe to pass on to me.  Mary gave me many of their family's recipes, especially for Noah's favorite meals.  Here we have a simple taco meat recipe (no seasoning packet required) and a re-worked version of their refried beans recipe.

Taco Meat

1 lb. ground beef

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 large tomato chopped, or 1 can diced tomatoes

1-2 tsp. ground cumin

1-2 tsp. chili powder

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. pepper

Brown beef and onion together (drain fat if needed).  Add garlic, tomato, and spices.  Simmer about 20 minutes.

Feel free to adjust seasonings to your own taste.

Noah grew up eating homemade refried beans while I grew up eating canned refried beans.  When we got married I learned how to make his family's refried beans.  After trying it out on my own, I questioned whether it was worth the effort.  The recipe required simmering the dry beans on the stove for ages until they were soft (and making sure they didn't boil over) and then you had to drain them and put some of them back into a pan on the stove so that you could cook them AGAIN.  You add the spices, oil, some water if needed, and then meticulously smash them with the back of a spoon to achieve that certain refried bean consistency.  I thought to myself, "This is dumb.  I don't have time for this.  No refried beans are worth this amount of effort."  I eventually started cooking all of my dry beans in the crockpot and that did make it a lot easier, but I still wasn't a fan of the second round of simmering and smashing.  Then one day I tried out the method below and it worked like a charm.  Noah scaled up the spice quantities for me from the smaller batch in the original recipe and now this is the only way I make refried beans.  It might be a cheater's way of making refried beans, but I don't think they taste differently from the original recipe and this batch is so big that I can make beans to go with dinner and have plenty leftover to stash in the freezer.

Big Batch Refried Beans

2 lbs dry pinto beans (approximately 12 cooked cups)

1/8 -1/4 cup chili powder

1/8 -1/4 cup cumin

1/2 Tbsp seasoned salt

1/4 cup oil

1 tsp. garlic powder or a couple cloves of fresh garlic

Add your two pounds of dry beans (and a couple cloves of garlic, if desired) to a crockpot and cover with water.  Cook your beans until soft, about 4 hours on high or 8-ish hours on low.  Drain your beans and return them to the crockpot.  Add the spices and oil to your beans and begin blending with a handheld electric mixer.  You will also need to add water to reach your desired consistency for your refried beans, about 1-2 cups of water.  Continue blending and adding water as needed until the beans and spices are thoroughly combined and you reach your desired consistency.

Cooking At Home - Volume Four

Welcome to a week where we didn't eat oatmeal almost every day for breakfast!

One of my favorite mugs.

Contrary to what you might think, I don't plan a perfect menu every single week when I first write it down.  I know this kind of defeats the purpose of planning so much ahead of time, but sometimes I'm tired, all of our recipes sound boring, and nothing seems very appetizing to me at the moment.  I just stare at those little squares on the whiteboard with absolutely no idea what to write.

What do I do when I'm struggling to fill out the menu?  I pick easy things, even if they're just a placeholder for something else I'll write in later on.  (I even created a "Stress Free Meals" category in our Paprika recipe app to help me out on days like this.)  Eggs are easy to whip up for lunch.  Roasting a whole chicken is simple and the leftovers last for days.  Not to mention you can simmer the carcass for stock after you've eaten all of the meat.  Noah had been talking about some kind of sausage and potato dish that his parents used to make so I wrote that down for later on in the week.  I wish I had taken a picture of the original menu just so I could show you how much it changed throughout the week.

Meal plans don't have to be set in stone.  You wrote it down, you can change it if you need to.

Breakfast

Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted something besides steel cut oats for breakfast this week.  On Monday we had yogurt with toppings and some eggs I boiled the night before.  After breakfast I baked two loaves of oatmeal bread from The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book to have around for breakfast that week.  This is the cookbook I use for nearly all of the baking I do with my freshly ground flour.  I found my copy on Thrift Books.

The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book

For the rest of the week we had toast, eggs, yogurt, and fruit for breakfast.

Noah has been asking if we could use my babka recipe to make French toast for breakfast someday.  So on Friday I made the babka and we somehow managed to save it for Saturday.  This babka is soooooo good and it made the best French toast I have ever eaten!

Cinnamon Babka

Lunch

Do you remember those "brothy beans" I made last week that were kind of bland?  I repurposed them into lunches for this week.  We try really hard to not waste food, even if we make something that doesn't turn out very well.  On Monday I mixed up the beans with some cooked quinoa and shredded Mozzarella cheese, and then baked it in the oven for a bit.  It improved the beans quite a lot and the kids actually ate some of them.  On Tuesday I used the bean mixture paired with some chopped fresh spinach as a filling for quesadillas.  Crispy tortillas make everything better.  :-)

Lunches for the rest of the week were a combination of dinner leftovers and some quesadillas I made on Friday because I just did not have the energy to make soup like I had planned.  I threw some cheese and black beans into some tortillas and grilled them in a skillet.  We added spinach and avocado to them and enjoyed a quick and tasty meal.

Dinner

On Monday we had falafel wraps for dinner.  This is one of the more intensive meals in my recipe collection because I make the falafel and flatbread simultaneously so everything is fresh for dinner.  You could use store bought tortillas or flatbread to make this meal easier.

Crispy Falafel

Greek Pita Bread For Souvlaki

The first time I made falafel I tried baking them in the oven as the recipe says to but they turned out quite dry and not very crispy.  Since falafel is traditionally deep fried I thought doing a sort of shallow frying would work better.  So I end up making little falafel patties and cook them on the stove in a little oil.  This helped me achieve the crispy exterior and moist interior I was looking for.

We eat our falafel wraps with spinach, yogurt, green onions, and whatever else we have around that would be tasty.  Tomatoes and feta would be yummy too.

There was quite a bit of flatbread leftover from the falafel wraps so on Wednesday I made what were basically homemade chicken tenders that I baked in the oven and we ate them as chicken wraps.  My chicken marinade didn't add much flavor to the chicken and then the flour I dredged the chicken in didn't turn crispy in the oven like I thought it would, but it was still a tasty dinner.

On Thursday I roasted a whole chicken for dinner.  I know it sounds intimidating, roasting an entire chicken, but it is actually pretty easy.  You prep it, throw it in the oven, and bake it.  That's it.

Perfect Roast Chicken

I like to prep my chicken the day before I'm planning to roast it.  I take it out of its packaging, drain off any extra liquid, sprinkle salt all over the outside and inside the cavity, put it in a deep pan, and put it back in the fridge.  There always seems to be some small bit of the chicken that hasn't thawed out quite yet so unwrapping it the day before gives it a little more time to thaw out.  The next day there will be more liquid in the bottom of the pan and if you pick up the chicken and tip it over even more will come out of the cavity.

If you want to get fancy, turn your chicken over so that it is breast side up and slide your hand in between the skin and breast meat so that the skin becomes loose all over the top of the chicken.  Don't rip the skin, just make sure it's loose and detached from the chicken.  Now you have a place where you can introduce flavor.  Stick some herbs under the skin, some butter, salt and pepper, whatever you desire.

You can learn even more about roasting chicken in the video below.

4 Levels of Roast Chicken: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

In the past I have roasted my chicken on a bed of vegetables but found that the underside of the chicken took a lot longer to cook than the top of the chicken.  So this time I lined my baking sheet with foil, crunched up a few balls of foil, and set a cooling rack on top of the foil balls.  This raised my chicken up off the pan even more and helped the air circulate all the way around the chicken so that everything cooked much more evenly this time.  (Though I am curious to try the cast iron pan method from the video above next time.)

We also had green beans that I had stashed in the freezer from our garden, salad, and what I dubbed "miso potatoes".  Quite a while ago I saved a recipe from Half Baked Harvest that was basically cooked ramen noodles swirled around in some garlic miso butter with some zucchini added in.  When I went back to the website so I could send the link to my mom, the recipe had changed!  I ended up sending her screenshots of the saved recipe from my Paprika app.  I will share them below.

For the miso potatoes, I boiled some small potatoes cut in half and then drained and set them aside while I prepared the butter.  I put the butter and garlic into the same pan, waited until it melted and started cooking the garlic, and then added the miso paste and mixed it all together.  I poured the butter on top of the potatoes and made sure it was evenly distributed.  These potatoes were so good!  I need to make them more often.

On Friday I made Chicken A La King with some of the roast chicken.  It is basically a white sauce/gravy with chicken and mushrooms in it and you eat it on top of biscuits.  I'll link to the recipe below.  It's one of Noah's favorite meals.

Chicken A La King

This was our second full week of Noah being gone all day working at his new job and I was feeling pretty burned out by Thursday evening.  I managed to get dinner made on Friday and Noah helped me make dinner on Saturday.  I filled up two baking sheets with sweet potatoes and cabbage and roasted them in the oven while Noah cooked some smoked sausage and onions in a skillet on the stove.  We had some leftover green beans and salad on the side.  It was an easy meal that everyone enjoyed and where I had to do very little cooking.

Chicken A-La-King With Biscuits

This is a very simple and comforting meal.  I try to make it with fresh mushrooms if I can and we usually leave out the pimento and green peppers.

I have also included the basic biscuit recipe we use nearly every time we make biscuits.

Chicken A-La-King

1 small can mushrooms

1/2 cup chopped green pepper

1 stick butter

1/2 cup flour

1/2 tsp salt and pepper

2 cups chicken broth

1 pint half and half or milk

1 small can pimento

4 cups diced chicken

Saute mushrooms and green pepper in butter.

Blend in flour, salt, and pepper and let bubble.

Slowly stir in chicken broth and half and half or milk.   Bring to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly.  Boil 1 minute.

Add chicken and pimento and heat through.

Serve on a biscuit.

Ed's Biscuits

2 cups flour

1 ½ tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

¼ cup shortening

¾ cup milk

Mix dry ingredients. Cut in shortening finely and stir in milk. Knead slightly and roll out to about ½ inch thick. Cut out biscuits. Bake on ungreased sheet at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Cooking At Home - Volume Three

Welcome back!  Here we are with my third installment of Cooking At Home.

Onions and such hanging out in the kitchen.

This was our first full week of Noah working at his new job.  After being at home almost every day for eight months, we knew it would be a bit of an adjustment as we all got used to not having him around during the day anymore.  This was also the week I began to realize that I needed to plan more simple meals for later in the week when I am likely to be running out of steam.

Breakfast

For breakfast this week we had steel cut oats quite a few times, as usual.

Overnight Steel Cut Oatmeal

I made carrot muffins this week that didn't really turn out very well, but they were nice to have around for easy breakfasts and snacks.

On Saturday we had pancakes for breakfast to celebrate the weekend.

Fluffy Pancakes

Lunch

We basically ate leftovers from last week for lunch four days in a row this week.  Thank goodness for leftovers!

On Thursday I made soup based on the recipe below from Donal Skehan.

Hearty Farmhouse Vegetable Soup

I didn't have any leeks around, so I subbed in some other vegetables.  I used carrots, a large sweet potato, some celery, onions, garlic, corn, and white beans.  I thawed the white beans and some turkey stock from the freezer the day before.  I blitzed the entire pot of soup a couple times with my immersion blender before adding the beans and corn.

Oliver is very anti-soup for some reason.  I don't think he took even one bite.  Adeline seemed to not like it very much either.  I honestly thought it was ok.  Not amazing, but still good.

We finished out the week with the vegetable soup and a smattering of leftovers for lunch.

On Saturday I mixed up some tuna melt topping to go along with the soup.  I use the recipe below as a guideline.  I go pretty light on the mayonnaise and add more celery than it calls for.

Tuna Melt

I'll mix the grated cheese into the mixture and put it on pieces of toasted bread that I'll put under the broiler in the oven so everything gets warmed up and the cheese starts to melt.  So it's an open-faced tuna melt sort of thing.  I know warm tuna might sound like a weird thing to eat, but it is very good.  Even picky Oliver eats it!

Dinner

On Monday I made pasta for dinner using the recipe below as a guideline.

One Pot Pasta

I sauteed some onion and garlic, added sliced pre-cooked brats, a pound of rotini pasta, and about five cups of water.  Brought the pot to a boil.  Once the pasta was cooked through I added an entire bag of fresh spinach from Aldi that I had chopped up.  Rather than mixing the Parmesan cheese right into the pot, I made a Mornay sauce in a separate pot and stirred that into the pasta at the same time as the spinach.  Mornay sauce is Bechamel but with the addition of grated cheese.

Roux, Béchamel, and Mornay: A Guide to Basic French Sauces

For a side we had roasted cabbage.  It might sound weird, but roasted cabbage is very delicious.  It is the only vegetable that Oliver never refuses to eat.

First, peel off any funky looking outer leaves.  Then cut the cabbage in half from top to bottom and cut out the core.  Put the cabbage cut side down onto your cutting board and cut from top to bottom into thick slices, about half an inch wide.  Place your slices on a metal baking sheet, drizzle or brush with oil (about a tablespoon total), and sprinkle with sea salt.  Roast at 450 degrees Farenheit.  Flip the slices over after 20 minutes and roast for about 20 more minutes.

On Tuesday I made a ham and spinach quiche while using the recipe below as a guideline.  I have followed this recipe before from a cookbook that I own and I made a few adjustments this time.

Quiche Lorraine

I decreased the liquid by half a cup and used six eggs instead of five.  My previous quiche had kind of a squishy but bouncy texture (if that makes sense) and I thought it would improve by using less liquid and more eggs.  My hypothesis was correct.  Also, I make this recipe with milk, not cream.  I thawed out a package of spinach and some leftover ham from the freezer.  I mixed in a chopped green onion, some pepper, and a bit of shredded Swiss cheese that was hanging out in the fridge.

Can I tell you a secret?  I mix up my pie crust dough in my stand mixer.  I have been very pie crust challenged for a long time, so I will use whatever tips and tricks I can to have it turn out nicely.  I also roll out my pie crust between two layers of plastic wrap, a trick I learned from my Cook's Illustrated cookbook.  It helps keep the dough intact as you're rolling it out, makes transferring it to the pan quite easy, and it keeps your rolling pin clean!

The quiche took about 15 minutes longer to cook than the stated time, probably because of the extra moisture from the spinach (I should have squeezed more water out of it before putting it in the quiche) and I cranked the oven up to 350 degrees Farenheit for that last bit of time.  We had some salad, grapefruit, and carrot muffins on the side.

On Wednesday I made something that is always a big hit.  Slow-Cooker Char Siu.

Slow Cooker Char Siu Pork

This recipe makes A LOT of food.  (We ate it for dinner twice and Noah took some to work for lunch.)  I used a five and a half pound pork butt this time around and I cooked it over night on low for about ten hours.  Much like cooking corned beef, you will likely need to cook your pork butt longer than your recipe suggests.  You want to hit that magical internal temperature of 195+ degrees Farenheit so that your pork is tender and falls apart easily rather than being dry and tough.

The above recipe asks you to separate the fat from the leftover sauce once the pork has finished cooking.  This is another reason why I cooked the pork overnight.  It is so much easier to separate the fat if you pour the leftover sauce into a bowl and let it chill in the fridge all day.  The fat will rise to the top and solidify making it super easy to remove from the sauce.  After removing the fat I chopped up the pork, put it in a dish, poured in most of the remaining sauce, covered it with foil, and then warmed it up in the oven since it was already on because I was roasting sweet potatoes to go with dinner.

If you're having trouble finding Hoisin sauce for the marinade, see if you can find an international grocery store nearby.  We have a couple of favorite Asian grocery stores where we buy our special ingredients such as Hoisin.  The ingredients we buy there cost less than what we could find in the "international foods" aisle at a typical grocery store and there is much more variety to choose from.

We ate the pork over rice with some cilantro, green onions, and sesame seeds for toppings.  If you struggle with cooking rice, I suggest trying out the recipe below.

Cilantro Lime Rice

My rice was always starchy, too wet, and just a gloppy mess.  No need for a fancy rice cooker or steamer, just a normal pot will do fine.  Quite often I don't bother with browning the rice before adding the water.  I'll just bring the water to a boil, add the rice, and then turn it down to a simmer and follow the rest of the recipe.  You can add whatever seasonings you like to your rice.  Definitely make sure you set a timer!  You don't want to burn your rice or end up under cooking it.

At the end of the week I mixed up some ham salad for sandwiches.  I know the words "ham salad" don't sound very appetizing, but it is actually quite a tasty filling for grilled sandwiches.  It was also a great way to use up that last bit of leftover ham in the freezer.  I found the recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook one day when I was looking for new ham recipes to try.  It is pretty similar to the recipe below, although my recipe doesn't mention anything about cantaloupe.

Ham Salad

As always, I go very light on the mayonnaise.  (Why do so many recipes call for so much dang mayonnaise??)  We made grilled sandwiches with cheddar cheese, ham salad, and avocados.  

I also made a "brothy beans" recipe after watching this Sorted Food video, but it didn't turn out very well and I was reminded why I always cook my beans in the crockpot.  Even after soaking the beans they had to cook on the stove for more than an hour before they were soft enough to eat.  I ended up pulling some frozen veggies from the freezer to go with dinner that night because the beans were taking so long.  The flavor of the beans was just kind of "meh" but there were still a lot leftover so I fashioned them into lunches for the following week.

This was Noah's first week working at his new job and I was honestly feeling quite tired and burned out towards the end.  It has been a long time since I've been on my own with the kids, and while we are pretty easily falling into a good daily rhythm, it still takes a lot out of you being the only parent around to oversee everything little thing that is going on.  When I'm tired one of the first things I lose motivation for is cooking.  We still had enough leftovers from this week to carry over into lunch on Sunday, but we were starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel.  I think on the weeks when I'm tired I need to force myself to make a big batch of something that can stretch through the weekend so that I can take time to relax and recharge instead of cooking a lot of little meals.

How many times did I cook during this week?  I count about eleven different times I cooked or prepared a new meal or component of a meal.  I also baked some little vanilla cakes with Adeline on Saturday because she had been asking me all week long if we could.  We had quite a few lemons leftover after making the Babish pork loin recipe the previous week so I used the zest to make some homemade lemon extract and then the juice of those lemons to make lemon bars.

Meyer Lemon Bars

Man, they were quite sour the first day we ate them, but the sourness seemed to mellow as the days went on.  I made a double batch in a 9x13 pan because I wanted the effort of making dessert to be worth it.  If you are using normal lemons rather than Meyer lemons, I suggest adding a little more sugar or using a little less lemon juice if you aren't a fan of super sour things.  But even with the sourness, everyone loved the lemon bars!

Cooking At Home - Volume Two

Here we are with a whole new week of meals!

The always present pile of dishes drying next to the sink.

If you read my previous Cooking At Home post, you'll notice some leftovers carrying over into this week.

Breakfast

We started off Sunday with some scrambled eggs and leftover biscuits.

For Monday we had the ever present steel cut oats

Easy Healthy Overnight Steel Cut Oatmeal

We had recently bought some bagels at the store, so we had a fancy breakfast of scrambled eggs and chorizo with toasted bagels on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we finished up the bagels and leftover eggs, along with some homemade yogurt.

How To Make Yogurt

I use our probe thermometer to easily keep track of the yogurt's temperature and a tea towel for straining.

I wasn't able to make another batch of steel cut oats right away because the pot was full of stew, so we finished up what oats were leftover in the fridge along with a couple bowls of microwaved rolled oats on Thursday.

For the rest of the week, we had steel cut oats with various toppings.

You might be wondering, "Why do they eat so much oatmeal?"  It is easy to make a large amount, you can dress it up with whatever toppings you desire, and it's a pretty cheap breakfast.  We buy our steel cut oats from a bulk health foods store and it ends up being quite a bit cheaper than the containers of oats you can typically buy at a normal grocery store.

Even though we eat oats pretty often for breakfast, I do try to plan two or three mornings with something different for breakfast, so we don't get too tired of eating oatmeal.

Lunch

We still had corned beef, sandwich bread, and cheese soup leftover from the previous week, so we had those leftovers for lunch the first three days of the week.  I didn't make a hash on Tuesday like I originally planned.  Noah ended up being gone all day so I kept it low key with the kids and we finished up the remaining bit of leftovers still hanging out in the fridge along with some apples and carrots.

On Wednesday I made Chicken Cream Stew, a recipe from The Gaijin Cookbook by Ivan Orkin.  It is basically what it sounds like, a creamy chicken stew that is served over rice.  A sort of comfort food.  It was good, but we agreed it wasn't too different from any other creamy chicken stews we had eaten before, so I didn't save the recipe.  There are many other interesting recipes in The Gaijin Cookbook though, so I highly recommend checking it out!  I just didn't have any of the specialty ingredients on hand to try the other recipes.  His Ivan Ramen cookbook is also a very interesting read!

We really did finish out the week with the chicken stew, minus one day when Noah's mom came over to watch the kids for a bit in the morning so Noah and I could have some time out of the house together.  We picked up some gyros to bring home and eat for lunch after the kids went down for their naps.  The French fries were pitiful, but the gyros were good.  All week we had been reminiscing about the tasty shawarma we ate in Atlanta while I was pregnant with Oliver, which is what led us to buy gyros for lunch.

Baraka Sharwarma Mediterenean

You must eat there if you are ever in Atlanta.  It is so good!  We had it twice during the day and a half we spent in Atlanta.

Dinner

I did make a version of chicken shawarma for dinner this week and it was SO GOOD!!  Every night we ate it we kept saying, "This is so good!  We need to save this recipe.  It has so much flavor!"  I would say the only thing it was missing was whatever tasty sauce the restaurant in Atlanta slathers all over its chicken shawarma.  I used bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs for this recipe and it turned out just fine.

Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma

I suggest roasting twice the amount of onions the recipe calls for.  They are so delicious!  We ate our shawarma chicken wraps with spinach, tomato, homemade white bean dip, the roasted onions, and yogurt.  I make my own pita/naan bread wraps using the recipe below.

Greek Pita Bread For Souvlaki

I have tried many different flatbread recipes and this is the only one that has given me consistent results.  I do tend to add just a smidge more flour so it isn't quite so sticky, but even then it still cooks into soft, bubbly, delicious flatbread.

On Thursday we had burgers for dinner.  I don't know what recipe Noah follows for burgers, but I think he just forms the beef into patties, seasons them, and then cooks them on the grill outside or a cast iron skillet on the stove.  I have been trying to make my own hamburger buns lately but I felt like keeping things simple this time so we used store bought buns.

Have y'all ever had roasted sweet potatoes?  Everyone in our family loves them.  Cut up your sweet potatoes into stick or wedges, toss with a bit of oil (a general rule is 1-2 tablespoons of oil per one pound of whatever you're roasting), and sprinkle with sea salt.  Spread them out on a baking sheet, making sure they aren't too crowded or they won't brown very well.  Roast them in the oven at 450 degrees Farenheit for about 45 minutes, depending on how big your cut your potatoes.  Check on them halfway through the cooking time, stir them around and flip them over.  Poke them with a fork to see how soft they are and how much longer you need to cook them.  These potatoes are a very simple and tasty side dish.

Now, let me tell you about the blue cheese sauce we had with the burgers.  The first time we had it we ate it with steak like the recipe suggests.

Grilled Ribeye Steak with Onion-Blue Cheese Sauce

We had some extra cream hanging out in the fridge and Noah had recently bought a little container of blue cheese so I figured we could try something new with our burgers.  Neither of us are really huge fans of blue cheese.  We don't seek it out.  But there is so much more to this sauce than the cheese.  You have the soft, slightly sweet caramelized onions, richness from the cream, and the bit of stink and flavor of blue cheese all wrapped up into something that you just cannot stop eating.  Really, it is that good.

On Saturday I tried out a new pork loin recipe from Andrew Rea of the Babish Culinary Universe.

Babish Culinary Universe

Whole Pork Loin

We agreed it was the best cooked pork loin we had made at home thus far.  It wasn't dry and the filling added another layer of flavor.  I think though that maybe my pork loin was a little bigger than what he used in the video, or maybe I didn't have enough bacon in the filling (I didn't have any pancetta around so I used bacon instead), but I think it could have used twice as much filling as what I ended up with.  I had only four pieces of bacon to use, so I think next time I will use eight pieces.  I believe we had salad as a side dish that night and probably something else.

So, how many times did I cook a meal or part of a meal this week?  There were about six different cooking sessions this week.  That number came down quite a bit from the fifteen different times I cooked during the previous week.  We had quite a bit of leftovers carry over from the previous week and I made sure to make big batches of whatever I was cooking so that it would last longer.  This is a good example of a fairly easy week of cooking for me.  Honestly, the two dishes that took up the most time were probably the flatbread and then prepping the pork loin later in the week.

I hope y'all are enjoying these new cooking blog posts.  What are some of your favorite recipes?

Cooking At Home - Volume One

I have been meal planning at least our dinners for quite a while.  It has been helpful, but sometimes I become lazy and end up brainstorming what to cook the next day as I'm trying to fall asleep at night.

A few weeks ago I decided to try planning every single meal we were going to eat that week.  Writing down all twenty-one meals at once.  It sounded very intimidating and ambitious at first, but it has actually turned out to be extremely helpful having such a detailed meal plan.

Dried sage and paper snowflakes hanging in our kitchen window.

This isn't necessarily a "how-to" on meal planning, but rather I would just like to share with y'all what I have been cooking lately.

One of the things I have learned while cooking for our family is to always cook enough so that there are leftovers.  You can either eat the same thing for dinner two nights in a row, for lunch the next day, or make a big batch of something that can be eaten for lunch the entire week.  Being able to fall back on leftovers is extremely helpful.

We have two adults and two children in our family and everyone eats home cooked food for every meal.

So, let's get started.  The first week.

Now that's some high quality photography right there.  ;-)

The menu photos I will be sharing with y'all are mostly accurate.  Sometimes leftovers end up stretching further than anticipated and I don't bother with editing the menu to show that we actually ate something for three days instead of two.  But for the most part, everything in the photo above is accurate.

I think it will be easiest to organize by meal type rather than the days of the week.  We'll see how it goes.

Breakfast

This has honestly been the most helpful meal to have planned ahead of time.  I am not a morning person.  Stumbling out of bed to cook breakfast for everyone in the morning makes me quite grumpy.  Having the meal planned ahead of time and getting up a little earlier makes the beginning of the day a lot easier for me.

For Sunday I try to have something leftover from the previous day that can be eaten quickly before we leave for church.  Pancakes, muffins, scrambles eggs, boiled eggs, or some fruit.  We usually eat leftovers for lunch too on Sunday and then go over to my in-law's for dinner.  I always try to cook something to take over to contribute to the meal.

Every time you see OATS written on the menu, it is referring to this recipe:

Easy Healthy Overnight Steel Cut Oatmeal

It is a very simple ratio of one cup of steel cut oats to four cups of water.  You can make it the day before, the night before, and top it with whatever you want.  It just requires a few minutes of hanging out in the kitchen to watch it come up to a boil, stir it for a minute, and then turn it off and put on the lid.  A single batch makes A LOT of oatmeal that will last through the week.  I like to eat mine with a fried egg with a runny yolk, a bit of sea salt, and maybe some chopped up ham.  (One thing I have learned about myself is that I really need to start my day with some protein or I become sluggish and cranky pretty quickly.)  Noah eats his oats with a bit of brown sugar and maybe some nuts.  For the kids I'll pull together a variety of toppings.  Chopped fruit, shaved coconut, some nuts, and a dollop of homemade peanut butter.

On Wednesday we had waffles.  I use the recipe that came with our waffle maker.  It turns out just fine, even when I use my freshly ground whole wheat flour.  We'll eat waffles with homemade maple syrup, homemade peanut butter, and fruit on the side.  I will often cook some eggs to go with the waffles.

On Thursday we had scrambled eggs, likely with some fruit alongside.  I like to cook eggs in our 10-inch cast iron skillet.  If you get it hot enough, and the pan is well seasoned, I have no problems at all with the eggs sticking to the pan.  It was a different story when I used our other metal pans to cook eggs.  Junk would stick to it all the time and I would have to clean it after every use.  Not so with the cast iron pan.  Get yourself a cast iron pan, a thin metal spatula, and you're good to go!

Lunch

On Monday we had egg and cheese sandwiches.  Pretty simple.  Basically just grilled cheese sandwiches with eggs added.  I don't always bother writing down what sides we eat with meals, but I usually try to have one or two sides with every meal, and at least one of them is a fruit or vegetable.

On Tuesday we had tuna salad.  I have no recipe for tuna salad.  It is totally made by taste and by eye.  But I will list the ingredients below.

Diced Boiled Eggs

Canned Tuna

Chopped Celery

Chopped Onion (any variety)

Mayonnaise

Mustard

Salt and Pepper

Use the above ingredients in whatever ratio you desire.  I tend to go light on the mayonnaise.  You could even use yogurt instead if you don't like mayonnaise.  Sometimes I'll add dill or smoked paprika.  You could even add relish or shredded cheese.  Maybe some bell pepper?  We like to eat our tuna salad on crackers or toasted bread.

On Wednesday I made white chili for lunch.  This is a recipe Noah's mom gave to me when we got married.  It is so good!  On Wednesday I also baked a couple loaves of sandwich bread because we had planned to have Reubens later in the week.

White Chicken Chili

On Thursday I made some quesadillas with leftover turkey, beans, cheese, and whatever else was around that I could throw in.  Quesadillas are a great way to use up bits of leftovers.  We ate them with warmed up green beans from the freezer.

On Friday we had leftovers for lunch.  Probably chili and quesadillas.  During this week I actually did prepare a lot of different meals for lunch but I typically try to prepare a big batch of something that will last for multiple days so I'm not always prepping something new.

On Saturday we had cheese soup and biscuits.  Cheese soup is another recipe from Noah's mom.  My version of the recipe is a bit incomplete (it is missing the quantities of a couple of ingredients) but it is quite similar to the recipe below.

Canadian Cheese Soup

We make our cheese soup with ham rather than Canadian bacon.  This soup is so delicious!

Dinner

On Monday I cooked a spatchcocked turkey for dinner following the recipe below.

Roast Spatchcock Turkey

It kind of turned out ok.  It took longer to cook than the 45 minutes the recipe boasts.  And that was even with my forgetting to decrease the temperature partway through the cooking time.  Quite a bit of the meat was dry.  To be honest, I don't really like turkey, and every time we cook one I say that I don't want to cook turkey ever again.  We had the turkey with some mashed potatoes, gravy, and some kind of vegetable on the side.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we had more leftover turkey and mashed potatoes.

By Thursday it was clear everyone was not that crazy about the mashed potatoes so I turned them into potato patties.  I am not sure what recipe I followed, but I think it was similar to the one below.  The potato patties were devoured alongside some leftover white chili.

Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes

On Friday we cooked corned beef in the crockpot for Reubens.  This is seriously the easiest way to cook corned beef.  Plop it into the crockpot with the included seasoning, stick in a probe thermometer like this one, and cook it on HIGH until the thermometer reads 190-205 degrees Farenheit.  Cooking it to the specified temperature is very important so that you end up with corned beef that is nice and tender to use for sandwiches.

Check out this link for more info on corned beef.

We make our Reubens with homemade sauerkraut (sources linked below), homemade sandwich bread (updated blog post on that subject is coming soon), and Thousand Island dressing (which is store bought).  We are big fans of grilled sandwiches around here, especially Reubens.

Farmhouse On Boone Sauerkraut

The Elliott Homestead Sauerkraut

At the end of the week I also made the multi-bean bake linked below to go with the rest of our meals.  I have made it more than once without the called for ground beef and bacon.  I have even made it without the pork and beans and butter beans too.  Really, you can make it with whatever combination of beans you desire.  Just be sure to keep the ratio of sauce to beans the same.  I ended up having to make more sauce to go with the beans this time because I over calculated how many beans I needed.

Multi-Bean Bake

A note about recipes calling for beans:  It is actually quite easy to cook beans at home without babysitting them on the stove.  I can typically cook 1-2 pounds of beans in my crockpot on HIGH in 3-4 hours.  (This cooking method works whether or not you soak your beans beforehand.)  Pour in your beans, fill the pot nearly all the way with water, and let it do its thing.  You can check it periodically to make sure there is still enough water, but it should do just fine.  Once you hit three hours, pull out a couple beans and taste them.  If they still feel hard or gritty, even just a little bit gritty, put the lid back on and keep cooking.  Check them again in 20-30 minutes.  You want them to be soft and easily chewable, but if they cook too long, they will turn into a starchy, mushy mess.  Kidney beans and white beans seem especially prone to turning into mush, so I make sure to keep a closer eye on them rather than black beans which hold together well and pinto beans which I'm probably just blending into refried beans anyways.

To prep for the multi-bean bake I cooked a crockpot full of beans three days in a row.  First white beans, which I also needed for the white chili, then black beans, and lastly kidney beans.  Whatever beans ended up being leftover I stashed them in the freezer.  It might sound like a lot of work, cooking so many beans in one week, and it certainly would have been easier to use canned beans, but cooking dry beans is healthier, cheaper, and I have saved myself some time later on by having cooked beans waiting for me in the freezer.

Well, here we are, at the end of this blog post.  It definitely turned out longer than I anticipated, but I guess I just have a lot to share about food.

If we count up every time I cooked or prepared a new meal during this week, we'll end up with fifteen different meals or components of meals.  That number is a little high, and it's mostly due to the many different lunches I planned.  But you'll see in the following week that I became much more efficient in my meal planning.