Tuesday, Jan 17, 2012

It got busy here, but I need to make sure I have a supper plan - so I'll quickly write it down!

We were really intrigued by the milk thistle growing out back, and after some experimenting and research, I decided to use it for supper...

We have a really large patch of this growing out behind our house!

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And, those beans that I cooked overnight... those were supposed to be for supper tonight, not prepared simply, but rather turned into attempt #2 in my hunt for the perfect vegetarian meatballs!

So, it turned into an afternoon of  dicing, pureeing, checking greens for bugs, pulling little thorns out of my fingers, chopping, sauteeing...

Here's the menu:

Whole wheat spaghetti with black bean vegetarian meatballs and tomato sauce (recipe for meatballs not perfected yet, sorry! But they were good and this time they actually held their shape. SOON, I will share my recipe. Next batch I will actually record what I did, ok?)

Milk thistle and feta cheese roll (This involved a whole bunch of steps. 1. Forage for tender milk thistle leaves. 2. get all the thorns out of your fingers. 3. soak and check said leaves. 4 chop them (you can leave the thorns on if you'll be cooking the leaves, they soften when cooking and you won't notice them there). 5. Cook milk thistle leaves with onions, till the milk thistle is a really dark green and looks like spinach. 6. Spread the milk thistle and onion mixture on puff pastry, add feta cheese, and season to taste. 7. Roll up puff pastry. 8. Bake.

This took me so much time, but all was delicious!

Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011

I am not in the mood to make dinner... How do you handle that? I didn't plan what's for supper, and I'm running kind of low on EVERYTHING since last week's pantry challenge hasn't actually ended yet - I didn't venture to a supermarket today.

Here's what I'm scrounging up:

Leftover soup from Friday night

Spaghetti with optional tomato sauce

Sauteed vegetables - I have eggplant, green pepper, fennel, and onion. Yummy with spaghetti.

What are you cooking?

Sunday, Sept 18, 2011

My cupboard is bare!
Help!
I couldn't find anything to make for supper after a slightly busy day, so here's what I scrounged up...

Whole wheat spaghetti

Tomato, red lentil, and vegetable sauce (kind of like my sloppy joes from last week)

Mango (found some for 3 NIS/kilo. must use them before they are mushy!)

Tuesday Night, Aug 30, 2011

Today I decided I have to work on getting my family to eat more lentils - they are an amazingly frugal source of protein! My oldest son requested rice, so I figured it was a classic combination.


However, my family members don't really like rice and lentils together, so I had to get creative.
Here's what I came up with:

Choice of:
Brown Rice 
Whole Wheat Spaghetti


Sauteed vegetables with red lentils in tomato sauce


Fresh fruit

Wednesday night - March 23, 2011

I'm really hoping to bake some bread in the morning on Wednesday (let's see if I can really do it this time. Every time I have planned to since our Aliyah, I have given up before getting started). So I don't want to spend much time in the kitchen in the afternoon. (I think this is a common theme. I never seem to want to spend much time cooking. Life has just gotten too busy...)

So, with that in mind, here's what we're having for supper:

Garlic Bread

Spaghetti with Roasted Vegetables (Tomatoes, Red Peppers, Onions)

Make-your-own-Salad (we have lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, purple cabbage)

Fruit Salad (my 6 year old's specialty!)

What are you making? Please join in our pantry challenge! Let us know how you're using up your pantry in preparation for Pesach.

Tuesday Night (Feb. 1, 2011)

I think I've been doing pretty well making sure our meals are balanced, nutritious, and frugal, and even a healthy mom deserves a really easy supper night sometimes!

So, it's Pasta Night!

Pita Crisps
Spaghetti with Rose Sauce
Spiral Pasta with Cheese (for those picky children)
Cut vegetables with "Ranch" dressing
Citrus Fruits for Dessert

Some notes about these foods:

If you have day-old pitot to use up, split them open, cut into wedges, brush with olive oil or melted butter, sprinkle with garlic, salt, and oregano (optional: parmesan cheese, but at approx 100 NIS/kilo, I decided not to buy the parmesan right now), and bake at 375 F (190 C) till crisp.

I use whole grain pastas. This makes me feel better about serving pasta, and my kids don't know about any other kind. Occasionally my husband says he misses white pasta, but I have convinced him that the health benefits of eating whole grains outweigh all of his complaints. Nitzat Haduvdevan has organic whole grain pastas on sale this month, the Teverya Mazon Organi store has them for just over 6 NIS, or I found (conventional) whole grain pasta at Yesh last week on sale for 3.99 NIS/bag.

Rose Sauce: I use shortcuts! I just simply combine crushed tomatoes with basil, garlic, salt, and pepper, and mix it with Gevinah Levanah (Israeli white cheese), and heat, but not to boiling. It makes a passable stand-in for Rose sauce.

Ranch Dressing - we really do miss Newman's Own Ranch Dressing. We haven't found anything like it. So I just mix up some yogurt and spices and pretend it's ranch dressing, and the kids eat it, but they do say there's something missing. Any ideas to improve it are appreciated! Just leave me a note in the comments!

A note about organics: I prefer organic over conventional in most cases, but having recently made Aliyah and still trying to figure out how to make our new budget work, I find that I have been forgoing some of my organic purchases for now. I have found that some things (bulk grains, legumes, sugar, etc) are about the same price at the health food store as the conventional version in most supermarkets - sometimes even less, so I'm sticking with affordable organic items for now, using lots of "Sterily" fruit and vegetable cleaner on my produce, looking for lab-path "pachot hadbara" certification, etc, and trying to buy items that are as natural as I can find. (Oils have been a challenge - you can find lots of cold pressed olive oil here, but it's very hard to find oils of any other kind that have not been chemically extracted. I've been splurging on organic sunflower oil and using it sparingly...)