autumnal eating

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Dinners This Week

It is really and truly starting to feel like fall around here. We’ve got the trees going all out for the remainder of the season, cool evenings, rainy and blustery days, and scary movies popping up on all the streaming services. I am LOVING IT. 

Of course, we’ve got rain and plummeting temperatures in the forecast for the whole week, so I’m anticipating that our glorious autumn scenery will be replaced in short order with skeletal tree limbs and roads paved in damp leaves. 

My husband and I are leaning into the cozy fall weather with our meal plan for the week. He helped me come up with five dinner ideas, and – as you know – if someone else is willing to do one third of the heavy lifting required to get a meal on the table, I am going to LET HIM.  

Dinners for the Week of October 20-26

  • Slow Cooker Chili: We did not eat this chili the first week of October as originally planned. But it is IN THE SLOW COOKER right this very moment. I am… hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. This recipe calls for a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, and it smells strongly of vinegar. Ew. Also, it makes approximately ten gallons of chili, so if it turns out I don’t like it, my husband is going to be eating a lot of chili.
  • Lentil Stuffed Sweet Potatoes: My husband and I were looking for a separate recipe and found this one, and it sounded good to my husband???? My husband who likes to have meat with every meal???? Heck yeah. These sound different and interesting and autumnal as hell.
  • Shrimp and Orzo Risotto with Saffron and Lemon: This is the recipe we were originally looking for. It’s in the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated and I will try to come back and post a photo of the recipe. In the meantime, I think it’s similar to the America’s Test Kitchen recipe linked in the recipe title, but there’s a paywall. I got some impromptu frozen shrimp at Trader Joe’s the other day even though we don’t really eat a lot of shrimp these days – I had just arrived at the car line when Carla texted me that she had practice after school, which she hadn’t known about, and so I had time to kill and also I was hungry and also it’s Trader Joe’s – and now I have a Real Reason to make it!
  • Pumpkin Ravioli with Browned Butter Sage Sauce: You know what else I got at Trader Joe’s? If you said, “a lot of things you don’t need” you would be right. If you said, “pumpkin ravioli,” you would also be right. Do I like pumpkin things? No. Do I typically make ravioli? No. But my husband was considering ordering pumpkin ravioli recently and so I had it in my head that he wanted to eat some pumpkin ravioli, and then I had time to kill at Trader Joe’s and I bought some, even though I had no idea how to prepare or serve it. (I also bought some goat cheese and caramelized onion ravioli – WHAT DO I DO WITH THOSE????) My husband to the rescue: he said he thought pumpkin ravioli would be good with some browned butter and sage, and lo and behold, there are recipes for that very thing all over the internet. I also got some French green beans at TJ’s, so we will have those on the side. (If you are counting, this is the second vegetarian meal of the week.)

This meal plan pleases me for multiple reasons: 1. I did not come up with any of the ideas except the pumpkin ravioli, just had to second them. 2. There’s a nice variety of proteins, and we don’t repeat ANY of them. 3. New recipes are so much easier for me to make, sometimes, because of the novelty factor. 4. Except for the shrimp and orzo, these all scream FALL to me, which is fun. 5. I wish I had a fifth bullet because I dislike even amounts of bullets. 

Of course, the downside is that I have to both buy ingredients I rarely / never use (sage??? saffron???? Aleppo pepper?????) and prepare five entire meals. I’m hoping the novelty factor does a LOT of work this week. 

Anything on your meal plan you’re particularly looking forward to eating this week?

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Grump Update, Cat Trauma, Holidays, Dinners This Week

Let’s see. I have quite possibly gotten over my end-of-summer crankiness (although I reserve the right to revert at any time). Maybe I am even, a teeny tiny bit, getting into the idea of fall???? My kid is feeling better. My husband is now sick. I have a scratchy throat and am wondering why I thought having covid would be protective against whatever non-covid illness Carla had. 

What else? The cat had a traumatic experience: my husband accidentally set off the burglar alarm when he left the house the other day, and no one was home. This reminds me of the time when my housekeeper accidentally set off the burglar alarm while I was dropping Carla off at school. I had no idea until the alarm company called to ask me what was up. When I got home, ten-ish minutes later, our poor sweet housekeeper was still shaking. And she was a HUMAN who presumably understood what was going on. The cat is a CAT and, based on the blank but searching stare he gives me whenever I try to talk to him, he does not understand a lick of English. Carla and I came home to the cat hiding under my bed, which seems to have become his Place of Refuge. (My husband accidentally knocked over a chair the cat was sitting on while Carla and I were out of town, and the cat sought Refuge under our bed and my husband endured several worried hours where the cat remained entrenched under the bed; he had to resort to poking him with a broom.) No one can reach him under the bed unless a broom is called to service; very safe. Carla sat in my room with him, tempting him with treats, for three hours until he decided to grace her with his presence. He seems fine now. 

I would like to make a change to how we celebrate holidays here in the United States (and possibly elsewhere; I know nothing). Instead of celebrating holidays on a specific date, I want to switch to celebrating holidays on the nearest Monday or Friday to that particular holiday. You know – the way we do Election Day on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November or Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. These are imperfect examples, though, because they are Tuesdays and Thursdays and I want ALL HOLIDAYS to take place on Monday or Friday. That way, we can avoid having a random Tuesday off (I’m looking at you this year, Rosh Hashanah), which messes up my entire week. Listen, I really hope I am not being wildly insensitive to religious tradition by making this suggestion. I am banking on it being the tradition that counts, and not necessarily the specific date. I mean, Easter always falls on a Sunday, right? Couldn’t the work-restricted portions of Yom Kippur and Christmas and Ramadan and Passover and Eid all fall on a Friday or a Monday? Please? More long weekends and fewer random mid-week days off. If you are or know someone who can arrange this, I assume you will get right on it. 

Speaking of Rosh Hashanah, which I was, briefly, this Apple Honey Cake is calling my name. Alas, a person can not live by apple honey cake alone. What else can I make this week?

Dinners for the Week of September 22-29

  • Chicken Noodle Soup: I am making a big pot of this for a loved one who is having surgery. The recipe makes a TON of soup, so I am going to withhold enough for me and my husband to eat for dinner one night. I don’t really like chicken noodle soup (and somehow I always misspell “noodle” as “noddle” which is irritating), but my mom swears by its healing powers, so why not enjoy some of whatever benefits it confers?

Oh! We are having out-of-town friends visit this coming weekend! That is super exciting. No idea what I will feed them, but I choose to leave that for Future Suzanne to deal with. 

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Dinners This Week

October is imminent!!!!!!! Alert, alert! 

October plus the gloomy weather we’ve been having has me in full Fall Food Mode. I made some bread yesterday! Today I hope to make a bit ol’ pot of butternut squash soup in which to dip my bread! Yum! I feel very exclamation pointy about October for unknown reasons! 

Surely my October excitement is in part because Elisabeth’s CBBC Walking Club begins tomorrow?! I have recommitted to walking daily and this will be such a big motivator. 

It’s been quite rainy here lately, and humid, but that’s the extent of our weather issues. I hope you and your loved ones are doing okay in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Well. Excitement aside, I still need to make dinner. (Although it’s a birthday week around here, so there will be some meals out that I do not have to plan or prepare, AND I am not in charge of the cake!) 

Dinners for the Week of September 30-October 6

  • Sheet Pan Sausages with Acorn Squash and Onions: I needed a last-minute ingredient on Friday and asked my husband to swing by the grocery store on his way home. He impulse bought an acorn squash, which is pretty much the most adorable thing I can think of to impulse buy. Anyway, that was the inspiration for this meal. I am hopeful that Carla will eat the sausage. She has eaten sausage in the past, I’m pretty sure. Although, as we all know, past performance is no prediction of future behavior.
  • Broccoli Beef Stir Fry: I’m in the mood for another stir fry. As per usual, I will add red bell pepper to the pot for color and extra crunch.
  • Autumn Chicken and Roasted Veggies: I just came across this recipe and it sounds fun. I’m also intrigued by the addition of the cheese tortellini. 
  • Chili Two Ways! My parents are coming for dinner and football this weekend, and I’m planning on making chili. My favorite chili has ground beef and dark red kidney beans, but I don’t think everyone is a fan of beans, so I want to try a bean-free version as well. (I NEED my beans.) I am leaning toward this green pork chili, which my husband would LOVE (although I’m a little concerned about finding fresh tomatillos at this time of year?) or this Texas chili, which my dad would enjoy. (By the way, I make my own chili powder and have been doing so for YEARS, but recently I lost the recipe! I had it written down on a slip of paper, and I thought it was stowed carefully away in our recipes binder. But it is not there! And, worse, I cannot find a bookmarked recipe for chili powder among my copious online recipe folders, nor can I find a link to it on my blog. Argh! I think this may be it, or very close, but we will have to see. Yet again I am kicking myself for never having posted my very easy recipe for chili on the blog, which surely would have linked to the original recipe for the chili powder!) If we were having more people over for dinner, I might try a third version: a white chicken chili. If I were making it purely for my husband, I might attempt this chili verde with sausage and pumpkin. This is making me want to have a neighborhood chili potluck. Is that a thing? Could that be a thing?
  • Creamy Chickpea and Sweet Potato Stew: This is one of the rare vegetarian meals my husband is on board for, so I am taking FULL advantage. In fact, I’m going to add green peppers to my portion as well. (I’m not a huge sweet-potatoes-in-stew fan, plus I love green peppers.) 
From Bon Appetit

Have you ever been to a chili-centric potluck? Would you attend one at my house, if you were my neighbor? If you wanted to come, which chili would you bring? Or which dessert or salad, I suppose; probably at least half of the guests at this imaginary potluck should bring a dessert or a salad instead of chili.