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

Monday Night, May 30, 2011

Many of you are BBQ'ing for Memorial Day, I'm sure. So, I wasn't sure if I would post my ever-so-mundane menu.
I will anyhow, just to get myself back in the habit of posting...

Here's my simple plan:


Quesadilla-style pitot (I just split open the pitot and fill with shredded cheese, put the top back on and toast it. I then call these concoctions quesadillas, even though they are definitely not. we just pretend they are.)

Tomatoes & Cucumbers

Fruit

Leftovers

I was not the most favorite Eema  tonight. I served LEFTOVERS. I did not even try to disguise them, I just said, "deal with it, everyone eats leftovers sometimes!" and asked for my kids to be less kvetchy.

What is it about leftovers that makes so many people turn up their noses? The food hasn't really changed. Ok, so maybe it's "boring" but sometimes life is boring, so what is the BIG DEAL?

Please help me understand.

And for all those people out there - the ones I envy - who do once-a-month cooking, how do you get the family to eat "leftovers" all the time (my kids think anything that was previously frozen is "leftover")?

I'm really hoping to move over to OAMC next year, and I need some advice and inspiration.

Frugal Potato Chips?

Snacks like potato chips are not only pretty unhealthy, they can also put a HUGE dent in our food budget. So I rarely buy them.
Of course, that doesn't mean my kids don't ever ask for them!
I was about to peel some potatoes and cook them (to make mashed potatoes), when I had an epiphany! Instead of throwing out the peels (I don't put potato peels in my soup stock veggies), I could save them and make potato peel crisps!
So I scrubbed the potatoes, and peeled them right into my pyrex baking pan. Then I mixed the peelings with about 1 T. of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt, and baked them in my toaster oven at 400 - 425 F, until they are all brown and crisp! And they taste very yummy!
Have you ever done this?

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

Tuesday Night, May 17, 2011

I can feel myself becoming less inspired to cook as every day passes. I just wish that I could hang out with the kids, doing whatever we feel like doing, and come home at dinnertime to - dinner! However, I just don't think my dream of having a personal chef will ever come true.

So, it's back to reality, and needing to make a dinner plan... sigh.

Here's what I'm making, using foods I have in the house:

Green Pea Soup (saute onion, garlic in olive oil. add frozen peas, water or soup stock, and salt and pepper to taste. bring to a boil, lower flame, and simmer for 10 min. Puree. add milk (you can use soy or rice milk, if you prefer). gently reheat, and serve)

Couscous with lentils (remixing some leftovers!)

Make your own salad (we have lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow peppers, green onions, and green olives that need to be used!)

Eggplant & Zucchini non-Parmesan (just layer breaded eggplant and zucchini with some homemade tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese - no parmesan for so many reasons.)

Monday Night, May 17, 2011

So, what's this Healthy Eema going to do? I'd been buying whole wheat pasta at Yesh for about 4.50 NIS per package, and it's a lot more expensive in other places. But now it seems Yesh isn't carrying whole wheat pasta anymore! And I don't think my family will just give up their macaroni and cheese addiction, and I am not switching back to white pasta. So - please, dear readers, if you are in Israel, please tell me which supermarket chain carries whole wheat pasta for under 5 NIS per package (500 g package, that is)!

In the meantime, we have to have a pasta-free menu...

So, Monday night's menu will be:

Vegetable soup (leftover from last night)

Lentils - prepared very simply so reflux girl will eat something

Artichokes - I think I've mentioned how psyched my younger children are about artichokes, and I found them for 4 NIS/kilo today...

Eggplant baked with a creamy-smoked cheese sauce

Tomatoes with basil and olive oil

And something else that the kids will eat instead of eggplant (usually it would be macaroni and cheese) but I don't know what that will be... wish me luck and creativity!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

While it's really nice to get away sometimes for Shabbat, and have someone else (a hotel!) responsible for all the cooking and dishwashing, it's also really great to be back home. And my kids decided that after eating catered foods, they would stop complaining and start appreciating Eema's home-cooked foods. They all said they like my food better than the hotel food... (It took a lot of convincing to get them to try the foods that were served!)

So, on tonight's menu - it's slim pickings in my house right now since I didn't shop and cook before Shabbat. We'll make do with:

Vegetable soup with noodles

Cucumber and Carrot sticks with Ranch-style dip


Embellished Grilled Cheese sandwiches (optional additions: red peppers, olives, tomatoes, onions)