Shabbat Menu again! (and vegetarian cholent recipe)

MY SHABBAT GUESTS JUST CANCELLED!

So, I guess it's a good thing I forgot to defrost the chicken, now I'll defrost less than I had originally planned...

Here's my plan:


Split pea soup (Fri. nite) with lots of carrots (carrots are cheap right now, have I mentioned that?)

Cholent (for lunch - and now I am being pressured to replicate last week's cholent. Wish me luck! It had lots of onions, potato chunks, black beans, diced garlic, sweet potatoes - although those may get replaced with butternut squash, barley, and water and spices - the most crucial one is the smoked paprika. Cayenne Pepper is pretty important too...)


Chicken in BBQ marinade (easy, and delish!)

Potato Kugel (already done! actually I made 2, so now we'll have extra. They don't freeze so well. maybe I should stick one in the cholent, the way that Helen (my father's cousin, who took on the role of my grandmother in Israel) used to do?)

Rice (already done!)

Maple Roasted Butternut Squash (already done!)


Vegetarian Mock Deli Roll (I'll let you know how to make it after I try it out - if it's good!) - I already defrosted the puff pastry, so I'll make it even though this was an extra because of guests!)

Make your own salad (we have avocado, tomato, carrots, pickles, and purple cabbage, will that work?)

Dessert - Blondies, I think!

Shabbat Shalom!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

It's that time of the day again - when I must figure out what's for supper. I wish I could say my kids are all happily playing and learning but that would only be a half-truth. A couple of them are spending their time fighting... so I'm having a hard time focusing on any tasks at hand.

I think tonight's menu will look something like this:

Carrot muffins (I got carrots last week for a great price)


Red lentil soup (onions, garlic, sliced carrots, red lentils, vegetable stock, and seasonings)

Make your own salad: Avocados (found them for a great price last week), Red peppers, Tomatoes, and whatever other salad-worthy vegetables I find (I think there is still some purple cabbage in the fridge!)

I can't decide if this is enough, or not. If everyone eats the soup I think it will be fine, as it's a thick, filling, nutritious soup. If someone doesn't - well I guess they'll have to figure something out!

Monday Night, Sept 5, 2011

For some of you it's a holiday weekend, and chances are high you're not so interested in my run of the mill menus today, you're probably eating BBQ with a whole bunch of family and friends...

But for those of us for whom this is a regular monday, here's my regular frugal dinner:

Homemade Flatbreads


Houmus, Roasted Eggplant Salad (I found some eggplant in the fridge I forgot about!)


Make your own Salad


Omelets

Tuesday Night, Aug 23, 2011

It's time I got back to planning and cooking regularly for my family, as I no longer have good excuses not to! (They were: 1. We're moving soon. 2. We just moved and we're unpacking. 3. I don't have an oven)

Here's tonight's plan:

Broccoli puff (broccoli is a bit of a splurge but not so much that we can't have it once in a while) (broccoli, cottage cheese, shredded cheddar or other hard-style cheese, eggs, salt pepper, a bit of flour, all mixed up and baked in a casserole pan)

Make your own salad (we have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and chick peas)

Baked potatoes 

Yogurt smoothies

What's on your menu?

Sunday, July 10, 2011

We just kind of randomly pulled supper together tonight. It was just too hot to think and I am too stingy frugal to run the A/C, especially now that I can breathe again!

Here's what we pulled together:

Jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread for one picky child

Cereal and milk for another picky child

Whole wheat pasta spirals with tomato sauce

Make-Your-Own-Salad

It wasn't too creative and didn't require a lot of cooking. No one went hungry despite the lack of creativity...

My pantry is starting to look sort of bare. We are left with lots of lentils, rice, and barley, but none of my family members want me to make soups and stews! This will be interesting continuing with the pantry challenge. I just may have to cave and go to the supermarket this week, but I'll try not to. We plan to bake some muffins and corn bread tomorrow. We'll see what else we come up with...

Pantry Challenge! July 3, 2011

First of all, I want to thank Yosefa at Cooking Outside the Box for including me in this month's Kosher Cooking Carnival! If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out! There are some great links there!

On a more personal note, with a move around the corner (4 weeks away, be"H!), I've got to get back to my pantry challenge... So, I guess I will be planning menus around whatever is in the house. I've never been able to stick to a true pantry challenge - I crave fresh fruits and veggies - but I'm going to try to do my own modified version. And I reserve the right to stock up on staples if there is an awesome sale, and fill up a box of dry goods to start the pantry off right in our new house. After all, we're only moving about 1/2 an hour away, so it's not like the food will be sitting on a boat for 6 weeks like last summer (and yes, I did bring food in my lift. Most if it survived.)!

Hopefully, though, this pantry challenge will mean we will spend a lot less at the supermarket over the next 4 weeks, and that will help us buy an oven for the new house. I have no idea where the oven will go though. The people who designed the kitchen did not put an oven in, nor did they leave a space for an oven... My guess is they ate take out and ate out all the time - what a different life than mine!

So, without further ado, I will jump right into the pantry challenge!
Tonight's menu:


Pita Crisps (I have some pitot in the freezer)
Pasta with Cheese
Make your own salad (we have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow peppers)
Watermelon

Shabbat Parashat Chukat, July 1-2, 2011

This is my 100th post! What a milestone! Thanks for following my adventures and sharing in my quest for frugal food in Israel!

This Shabbat I am serving the leftovers from the birthday dinner for Friday night, but I'll make some General Tso's Chicken to go with it, instead of the vegetarian version we had the other night. This plan was ok'd by the family - I know it's unconventional to have leftovers on Shabbat, but I wouldn't want the food to go to waste!

For lunch we'll have:

Breaded, oven-"fried" chicken

Make your own salad (lettuce, roasted red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, diced carrots, cucumbers, and whatever else I find around)

Roasted Zucchini with olive oil, salt, and pepper - this is delish served cold!

Potato Kugel

Chocolate cake for dessert (the kids made a big cake recipe for my hubby's birthday)

Seudah shlishit note:

I do very informal seudah shlishit usually. The leftover challah and whatever salads, chummus, peanut butter, jelly, etc are around. no fussing...

Shabbat Parshat Sh'lach

We've been sick, as well as busy, as well as sweltering hot.
I'm trying to work out a menu that will not require any time over a hot stove (although I'm willing to run the oven. The architect who designed this house put a little alcove off the kitchen where the oven is, so I can shut that part off from the rest of the house, open up the window in there and the heat doesn't come into where we are!)

Here's the plan:

Salatim (vegetarian liver, chumous, various other salads)

Chicken in ? sauce

Southwestern style Pasta salad (to be served at lunch) - I'll cook ONE pot of pasta on the stove, at night, Thurs night.

Make-your-own-salad (we have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers)


Rice with mushrooms (oven baked) (for Friday night)


Oven-Roasted Butternut Squash (found a sale - 2.99 NIS/kilo - much lower than what I usually see)

Oven-roasted Kishuim with olive oil, salt and pepper (also, 2.99 NIS/kilo sale)

Potato Kugel


Carrot Kugel from freezer

Popsicles, watermelon, and other fruit for dessert


Gazpacho and whatever I pull together for seudah shlishit

Wish me luck getting it all done!

Shabbat Shalom! Feel free to share your menus and deals...

Shavuot Menu!

I can't believe it's Shavuot already! I love cheese, and cheesecake, and using my great-grandmother's dairy china (I never met my great grandmother, but since my grandparents gave us the china when we got married, it makes me think of them. They were amazing, wonderful, special grandparents. I think of them all the time, and I know they are watching over us.)...

(I just don't love the custom of staying up all night, but that's another story)

Anyhow, I am throwing frugality out the window for the chag. It is, after all, the shortest chag. It's only one day. And cheese is not a frugal food but somehow I've already purchased a LOT of mozzarella, cheddar, feta, and bulgarian cheese. Not to mention gevinah levana, cottage cheese, and more...

I'm planning to make the following foods that my family loves:


Creamy mushroom soup

Broccoli Puff (chopped broccoli, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, some flour. all combined and baked together)

Spinach Puff (same idea as above, but with chopped spinach)

Lasagna (with homemade tomato sauce)


Fingerling Potatoes

Make your own salad (greek salad style)


Brownies


Mini Cheesecakes

That sounds like enough, but I might bake something else in case someone around here actually decides to stay up very late learning. And pop some popcorn (I love the air popper!).

Tuesday Night, May 31, 2011

No time to write today, so here's the menu:

Pita Crisps

Creamy tomato soup (saute onions and garlic in olive oil, add diced tomatoes and water or soup stock. bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10-15 min. puree. add salt and pepper, honey (optional), and 1/4 tsp baking soda. add optional milk or cream and reheat gently)

Broccoli "burgers" - I had some odds and ends lying around. I put the following ingredients in my food processor: broccoli, walnuts, sesame seeds, oats, sauteed onions, process. transfer to a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste, and 1/4 - 1/2 c. hot water. mix well and let sit for 5 minutes. form patties and fry in cast iron frying pan. (I made these early in the day!)

Homemade French Fries

Make-your-own-salad

Tuesday Night, May 24, 2011

It's pasta night! While I still haven't found a really great place to buy whole wheat pasta now that my Yesh stopped carrying it (your advice is appreciated!), I did buy some anyway...

Here's the menu:

Pasta with a choice of sauce: homemade tomato sauce or cheese sauce. Perhaps I'll add pesto into that equation - a bit of splurge, though.

make your own salad - lettuce, tomatoes, olives, feta cheese (yay for kimat chinam's cheese counter sales!), carrots, purple cabbage - assuming I get around to washing and chopping it all...

fruit salad (i have a few lone fruits in the fridge, so we'll throw it all together!)

Monday Night, May 23, 2011

I hope everyone had a great Lag Ba'omer! It's a fun holiday, but not so much fun for asthmatics. My inhaler got a lot of use, unfortunately...

But, Sunday is now over, and Monday is approaching. Time to plan!

Here's what's on our menu:

Sloppy Sams (tofu sloppy joes) with Pitot

Make your own salad (we have lettuce, purple cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, and whatever else I discover)

Watermelon

Keeping it simple - there's a lot going on here lately and every day is BUSY!

Wednesday night - May 18, 2011

Wow! Once again, I don't have to cook this Shabbat! 2 weeks in a row, quite unusual around here.

So, that means I want to skip my usual Wednesday grocery run. And looking thru my fridge/freezer and pantry, I think this means we'll have some sort of "shmorgasbord" dinner tonight. Let's use up some of my ridiculous odds and ends! (Actually, when I do this, my kids ALL find at least one food they are happy with, so I think it works out ok in the end)

Here's what I found: beets, lettuce, red pepper, yellow pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, potatoes, kishuim (like zucchini),eggplant, melon, apples, overripe bananas, eggs, cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese, yogurt, milk, 2 grapefruits, phyllo dough, "corn pie" (polenta with veggies and cheese), assorted packages of leftover this or that, barley, rice, oatmeal, whole wheat flour, couscous, etc

Here's what we'll have:

Vegetable soup with barley (in my crock pot)


Corn Pie, Broccoli Quiche, and assorted odds and ends from the freezer

Baked Potatoes


Banana Bread


Make your own salad

Monday Night, May 2, 2011

Today we commemorate Yom HaShoah. It is a day dedicated to the memory and heroism of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. We pledge to never forget; to never allow history to repeat itself. We speak with our children about our history, and pledge with them to keep the memories alive.

We speak of people starving, being starved, being treated as subhuman. We pledge to treat all people with dignity and respect. Lessons we all want our children to learn.

We spend each day learning, but the solemnity of this day required that I say something particular. We learn, read, and more, and I plan our dinner. Nothing fancy, but enough to nourish.


Here's the menu:

Pita crisps
Minestrone soup (made with homemade pureed tomatoes. This time I roasted them in the oven before pureeing. yum)
Baked potatoes topped with broccoli and cheese
Make your own salad

Wednesday night - April 27, 2011

Everyone is craving chametz and kitniyot around here! It was only a week, but they are acting like it was a month! Is your family behaving the same way?

I didn't want a carb overload, but I did want to indulge their cravings a bit, so here's what we  had:


Corn soup (saute onion, garlic, red pepper in olive oil. add frozen corn niblets and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Turn off flame, and puree with an immersion blender. Add some milk, salt, pepper, and fresh chopped scallions (just the green part). Reheat, but don't boil again. Yummy, and easily vegan if you use soymilk or ricemilk...)

Spiral Pasta (whole wheat) with roasted veggies and homemade tomato sauce (we also served plain spiral pasta, and had shredded mozzarella on the table for topping it, for the pickier palettes) Today I roasted onions, red peppers, and zucchini with fresh chopped garlic - the veggies that were just hanging around waiting to be used up!

Make your own salad - lots of lettuce (Yesh has nice, large, crisp heads of lettuce for 1.25 NIS), cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots (all at Yesh for 1.85 or so per kilo), and sliced olives. Served with homemade ranch dressing (still working on the perfect recipe!).

The salad was in my pretty bowls that my 6 year old loves, and thinks are so fancy. She's really into "fancy" things right now, so she ate lots of salad!