Food

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Dinners This Week

My sleep last night was abysmal. ABYSMAL. 

Multiple factors, some within my control, some without, went into making last night so terrible. But the thing you should know is that the cat does not care if I slept poorly and really, really need the extra nine minutes of rest my snooze button promises. No. He leapt out of his warm snuggly position under my arm and galloped off the edge of the bed. And then he tried – key word is tried – to jump onto my dresser for reasons known only to him, failed, and landed on the floor with a thud loud enough to wake my deep sleeping husband. 

Anyway. I’m up. The cat’s needs have been tended to (for now). Let’s think about dinner.

In fact, I got to thinking about dinner yesterday after I read Julie’s Dinners Last Week post. I started drooling over her description of the Diwali meals she and her family ate, and wondered if I could make my own aloo gobi. YES, apparently I can. 

Dinners for the Week of October 27-November (!!!!) 2

  • Aloo Gobi: I found this post about aloo gobi, which has recipes for both semi-dry and gravy versions. Since I like-ah the sauce, I think I am more interested in the aloo gobi masala option. My husband was mildly enthused about this idea, but he did express his feeling that aloo gobi is a side dish, not an entrée, and he would be requiring a protein. Oh look, this same website has a recipe for tandoori style chicken! Maybe that would work for my husband?
  • Salmon and Farro Bowl with Honey Mustard Dressing: Julie also posted a recipe for salmon and farro, and that sounded delicious. I am a little wary of the honey mustard dressing, as my husband dislikes mustard (and salmon for that matter, hmm, perhaps I should rethink this one?) and I dislike honey mustard. But I read through the recipe and it seems like it might be okay. We’ll see. This will be the recipe that drops off the list if I am too tired to deal with dinner.
  • Tacos: We haven’t had proper ground beef tacos for awhile. Let’s do it. 
  • Lentil Stuffed Sweet Potatoes: We did not get around to making these last week, but Julie did, and she gives them a thumbs up. Back on the meal plan they go!
  • Green Curry: This is kind of a cheat, because I made this last night. But I’m counting it because it was a lot of work. I was actually in the mood for red curry, but my grocery store didn’t have my preferred curry paste (Maesri) and then the South Asian grocery store didn’t have red curry paste. FYI: green curry paste is much spicier than red. I ended up adding a second can of coconut milk to help cut some of the heat. 

All right, the cat has just come into my office to remind me that we need to go wake up Carla. I did not know when I acquired a cat that he would be such a rigid manager. I guess someone needs to be in charge. 

Taking a break in the middle of his rigorous 5:30 am workout routine.

What time does your alarm clock go off on weekdays? And does your alarm clock purr? 

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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.