Meal Plan: September 8-14

Sunday

Asian-style Rice and beans.  I did not have mandarin oranges, so I used peaches and pineapple juice that I had on hand.  I also added some scallions.  It was delicious!  

Monday

Onion soup

Tuesday

Slow Cooker Meat Loaf, mashed potatoes and whatever vegetables strike my fancy!

Wednesday

Pasta with red sauce

Thursday

Meatloaf sandwich with pickles and sliced tomatoes

Friday - Taco night 

Saturday - Annie makes dinner!

Open faces sliced egg sandwiches

For a treat this week:  whole wheat peanut butter cookies

http://bakingbites.com/2012/04/whole-wheat-peanut-butter-cookies/

For breakfast this week:  peach and blueberry muffins

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/basic-muffins-with-berry-and-oatmeal-versions-recipe

Meal Plan: June 3 - 9

Losing power last night cost me my whole routine... almost.  Since we did not have our roast chicken last night, opting instead for convenience store fare that could be heated on the Coleman stove, we made it tonight.  I got a little misty with pride when Annie argued, "but isn't today soup night?!?" and another plus:  she ATE ASPARAGUS.  Here's to changing things up (even a tiny bit).

Monday:  

Smitten Kitchen Flat-roasted chicken with little yellow (peeled, this time) potatoes, asparagus and cantaloupe.

Tuesday:

Sliced chicken breast, pasta side with arugula and a smidge of bacon, broccoli and pineapple

Wednesday:

Rigatoni with Red Sauce and green salad

Thursday:

Hoppin' John with Brown Rice

Friday:

Taco Night

Saturday:

Pork chops with chutney, asparagus and herby-green salad

Sunday:

Roasted or grilled chicken with sides from the market

Meal plan: January 30 - February 5

Monday:

Birthday leftovers - ham with apple jelly, macaroni and cheese, spinach and pickles

Tuesday:

Pasta Alfredo with ham and zucchini

Wednesday:

Beans (and ham) and rice with broccoli

Thursday:

Ham and onion pot pie

Friday;

Ham salad sandwiches on bulkie rolls with pickles and roasted potatoes

Saturday:

Pizza

Sunday:

Split pea soup

Meal Plan: January 9-15

Monday:

Slow Cooker Apple Sauce Chicken and Company's Company Potatoes Au Gratin from A Year of Slow Cooking with shredded zucchini

Tuesday:

Asian-style orange pork with brown rice and broccoli

Wednesday:

Slow Cooker Squash Soup from A Year of Slow Cooking with chicken salad sandwiches

Thursday:

Left over Split pea soup with cheddar shallot toasts

Friday:

Pizza

Saturday: Visit with the Andrades!

Our own Slow Cooker chili, cornbread and salad

Sunday:

Franks and beans with homemade sauerkraut

Meal Plan: October 23-29

Sunday:

Oven-fried chicken, roasted potatoes, Brussels sprouts

Monday:

Slow Cooker Mexican Black Beans with rice and leeks

Tuesday: (Kate traveling)

Pumpkin risotto

Wednesday: (Kate traveling)

Leftovers

Thursday: (Kate traveling)

Pasta Pesto!

Friday:

Pizza

Saturday:

Slow Cooker Cranberry Pork Roast with roasted potatoes, vegetables from the farmer's market

Meal Plan: July 17 - 23

Sunday:

Stuffed Patty Pan Squash, Coleslaw and Barbecue Chicken (made with last season's apple-peach BBQ sauce)

Monday:

Chicken salad, Scott's homemade Pitas, garlic-roasted cauliflower and broiled sweet onions

Tuesday:

Creamy Pesto Pasta with sliced tomato

Wednesday:

Grilled cranberry-orange sausage, potato salad with peas and purple peppers, roasted maple beets

Thursday:

Pea and bacon risotto, garlicky beet greens, apple pie

Friday:

Pizza

Saturday: leftover buffet/market inspired

Meal Plan: July 10-16, 2011

Sunday:

Garlic Scape Lamb Chops with Baby Artichokes, Pan-fried Potatoes, Sliced Tomatoes and Tzadziki

Monday:

Vegetarian Chili with Rice and Broccoli

Tuesday:

Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Salad

Wednesday:

Broiled Fish with Roasted Cauliflower and Rice tossed with Garlic Scape Butter

Thursday:

Steak and Egg Salad

Friday:

Pizza

Saturday:

Market-inspired dinner with Grandpa and Ya-ya

Food Storage Inventory as of June 26, 2011

Frozen

Vegetables:

6 Gallon Bags Broccoli

30 Pint Bags Frozen Spinach

Blueberries:

1 Gallon bag

Cranberries:

1/2 Gallon Bags

Zucchini:

54 Pints Shredded

Meats:

1 Quart Pork Fat Back

1 Quart Suet

10 Chicken Breasts

10 Chicken Thighs

10 Chicken Drum Sticks

10 Chicken Wings

3 Half Chickens

4 Chicken Stock bags

Pesto:

7 muffin cups

Pantry

Jams/Fruit:

4 Half-pints Blueberry Jam

2 Pints Apple Jelly

2 Quarts Apple Pie Filling

3 Pints Peach Jam

1 Pint Peach Applesauce

3 Half Pints Apple Butter

5 Half Pints Orange Marmalade

3 Half Pints Strawberry Jam

4 Half Pints Strawberry Preserves

Pickles:

4 Pints Radishes

3 Pints Red Cabbage

12 Pints Cauliflower and Carrots

45 Pints Bread and Butter Pickles

48 Pints Dilly Beans

Sauces:

2 Pints Barbecue Sauce

2 Pints Sweet and Sour Sauce

3 Half-pints Chutney

Meal Plan: June 19 -25

Sunday:

Burgers, pasta salad and strawberry shortcake

Monday:

Slow-cooker navy beans with chutney, brown rice and broccoli

Tuesday:

Pasta salad, beet greens with chickpeas

Wednesday:

Zucchini, carrot, chickpea pancakes with pesto sauce

Thursday:

Leftovers from Monday with spinach

Friday:

Homemade pizza

Saturday:

Steak salad or burgers (after Farmer's Market)

Meal Plan: June 11 - 18

Sunday:

Spinach Quiche with red leaf salad

Monday:

Slow Cooker Cowboy Beans with rice and spinach

Tuesday: (K at 1769 Reception)

Tortellini with tomato sauce

Wednesday:

Leftover Quiche and salad

Thursday:

Spinach tacos with leftover Cowboy Beans

Friday:

Pizza

Saturday: (K at 1769 Reception)

Pancakes for dinner

Meal Plan: June 5-11

Sunday:

Lamb and Rosemary Sausage pie with tossed salad (recipe to come)

Monday:

Fresh pasta with broccoli and garlic sauce

Tuesday:

Leftover sausage pie with salad and stewed rhubarb

Wednesday:

Pasta with pesto and garbanzo beans

Thursday:

Roast beef wraps with hummus, zucchini tzatziki, red leaf lettuce and radishes

Friday:

Homemade pizza

Saturday:

"Market dinner"

Meal Plan: May 8 - 14

Eight days post-move and we are a fully functioning household. We will be unpacking "non-essential" belongings throughout the summer, but for now we can cook, dress, wash clothes, park our car in the garage and play with our full range of Legos and other toys. This Saturday, as I may have mentioned, was the first outdoor market of the Norwich Farmers Market season. The kids and I spent the morning there getting reacquainted with friends made last year and dancing to the live music and snacking on our weekly treat of "choco-doodles" made by Susie at Timeless Herbs Farm in Woodstock, VT.

One of my favorite farms is Hurricane Flats in Royalton, VT. Their produce is beautiful, delicious and plentiful. This week we found ramps (wild leeks), fiddleheads, arugula, radishes, spinach and chard. It is a pity I will be traveling this week, so I couldn't buy everything that I wanted. This week's meal plan consists mostly of meals I have already prepared ahead to make the week go more smoothly with one less set of hands in the house. You may notice that this is a meat-heavy menu for us, but we are trying to use up some very generous meals that were made for us over our moving weekend and a steak I bought for next week ended up in the refrigerator and not the freezer, so there you have it.

Sunday:

Mother's Day Steak Salad

made with pan-fried New York Strip steak from On the Edge Farm, Yukon gold sauteed potatoes, mesclun and arugula greens, browned ramps (the bulbs and greens) beets, radishes, deviled eggs and a chili, scallion yogurt dressing.

Monday:

Split-pea soup with swiss cheese toasts

Left over from last week and made with the end of our Easter ham!

Tuesday:

Beef and broccoli stir fry with Swiss Chard and leeks.

Made with the end of a delicious roast beef aged by my Dad and served over our moving weekend.

Wednesday:

Pasta with creamy pesto sauce

Thursday:

Reuben Casserole

Made with a beef corned by my Dad also for the moving weekend and "horsey-kraut" and homemade Russian dressing.

Friday:

Zucchini and Scallion frittata

BEST EVER Bacon and Tomato Sandwich

I just have to gush about the most AMAZING sandwich we had the other night. I can see that a bacon and tomato sandwich may not sound that exciting to most people, but if that's the case, they can't possibly have eaten a bacon and tomato sandwich at the Hesser House. This one was made on Scott's multigrain bread that was still warm and smeared with our homemade mayonnaise. We were lucky to find some thick cut maple-cooked bacon from On the Edge Farm in Woodstock, VT who sources most of our meats. I don't like to play favorites among my farmer friends, but I was quite smitten with the organic tomatoes from Long Wind Farm in Thetford, VT. They specialize in tomatoes and sell their products at the Coop Food Stores. This sandwich was perfect beside the tomato soup we are still making from the juice we canned over the summer. Only 18 days until the start of the outdoor markets. Here's to a healthy growing season!

Meal Plan: April 10-16

There were Swiss Chard, duck eggs and some end of the barrel storage onions at the Norwich Farmers Market this Saturday. We have been so fortunate to have the monthly winter markets.....and the outdoor weekly market reopens in 27 days!!!!! Not that I am excited or anything. We are looking forward to seeing all the farmer friends we made last summer and to visiting more frequently with those that kept us sustained over the winter.

Sunday:

Shrimp stir fry with broccoli, onions and rice

Monday:

Slow Cooker Baked Beans with corn bread and canned apples

Tuesday:

Pasta and marinara sauce

Wednesday:

Tomato Soup and Cheese Sandwiches

Thursday:

Chili with rice

Friday:

Eggs in a Nest with sweetened rice

Saturday:

Pizza

Meal Plan: March 13-19

Sunday:

Leftover buffet

Monday:

Pasta with pesto and white beans

Tuesday:

Zucchini Frittata with roasted beets

Wednesday:

Tomato Soup and cheese sandwiches

Thursday:

First Annual Flynn Malone St. Patrick's Day Dinner!

Slow-cooked Corned Beef and Cabbage

Colcannon

Irish Soda Bread

Friday:

Corn and seafood chowder

Saturday:

Pasta with tomato sauce

Meal Plan: January 23-29

Sunday:

Sausage chili

Monday:

Chutney Chicken with potatoes and zucchini in the Crock Pot

Tuesday:

Butternut Squash Lasagna

Wednesday:

Tomato Soup and sandwiches

Thursday:

Pasta with leftover chicken broccoli

Friday:

Macaroni and Cheese and salad in CT

Saturday:

Fiesta dinner in South Hampton

Sunday: tbd

Meal Plan: October 11 -17

Monday: Eggs in a Nest with sweet sushi rice

Tuesday: Broccoli with melted cheddar cheese, broiled chicken breast and roasted potatoes with scallions

Wednesday: Pumpkin soup with bread

Thursday: Kate @ DCF Dinner

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: in Norton

Sunday: coming home from Wheaton Meeting

Kate will pack dinner for the car on Cape

Meal Plan: August 28 - September 3

Saturday: Pizza

Sunday: Roast Chicken

Monday: Eggs in a Nest

Tuesday: Chicken Soup (EF Sept. 2010 p. 76)

Wednesday: Stuffed Cabbage (EF Sept. 2010 p. 47)

Thursday: Tomato Bread Soup (EF Sept. 2010 p. 20)

Friday: Chicken Handpies and leftover vegetables (EF Sept. 2010 p. 79)

Fresh Chicken and Roasting Recipe

Tonight I had my first ever fresh chicken. What I mean by that is that it was not only free-range, organic and local, but that it had been slaughtered the day or the day before I had purchased it. It had never been frozen. I bought it from a woman at the Norwich Farmers Market yesterday. She owns Thymeless Herbs in Woodstock, VT and she and her daughter were selling chickens, eggs, herbs as you might guess and a wide variety of eye-appealing (and delicious) baked goods. They reminded me of my favorite children's book, Oxcart Man by Donald Hall about a family in the Upper Valley (I think) who send "everything they made or grew all year long that was left over" with the father to sell at the market in Portsmouth.

I was taken aback by how lovely this bird was. In someways I wish I had taken a picture, but I am mostly glad I didn't. In the end, I realize that it's a chicken. But I took a moment to be thankful for the partnership between the family at Thymeless Herbes and my own. They worked and invested to produce an animal which fed my family and I was able to pay them directly for their labors.

I use something loosely based on Nigella Lawson's Roasted Chicken recipe, or method, really, from her book How to Eat:

After removing the innards, I lay the chicken, breast-up, in a cast-iron skillet and then fill the extra space with chopped vegetables: onions, carrots, whole peeled garlic and sometimes fennel bulb if I have it. I cut a lemon in half and put one half inside the chicken. I sprinkle fresh ground pepper and kosher salt over the top and then pour a dime-sized drop of olive oil on the breast of the chicken and rub the oil, pepper and salt all over the skin. As I am doing this I push as many of the vegetables under the bird as I can. Then I squeeze the other half of the lemon all over the top and drop it into the skillet.

I then roast at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes per pound, plus 10 minutes. Get out your calculator and use the exact weight to determine the roasting time. If you are really on top of things, throw a couple of zucchini breads into the oven with your chicken to leverage the energy used by the oven. Today I was. It was a pretty rock-star day.

The advantage of using the cast-iron skillet is that when your chicken is done (180 degrees in the thigh joint) you can transfer it to a cutting surface, put your skillet on the burner and make your gravy, taking advantage of all the brown bits on the bottom. To make the gravy, transfer all vegetables to a serving dish, discard lemon and then heat skillet on burner and stir all contents, scraping the bottom. When you have a little bit of a simmer going, throw in the gizzard (not the liver!) The gizzard looks like a heart. Then add a little bit of cornstarch and a then a little bit of chicken stock until you get the consistency that you want. Some people strain their gravy. I never do. I also like orange juice labeled "high pulp."

To make "in the moment stock" add your chicken's neck to 6 cups of water in a pot and simmer. You can also add the out layer (not the paper layer) of the onion you used and the ends of the carrot along with some salt and pepper.

Carve your bird and serve with its vegetable roasting companions and your gravy. Tonight I threw together a Summer Harvest Stuffing. Tomorrow we are planning to make Pesto Chicken Pizza. Had I not been so taken by the beauty of this foul and my own self-satisfaction in how I acquired it, I probably would not have used the livers for the stuffing linked above. I typically save them throughout the year to make pate for Christmas.

Meal Plan: March 29 - April 4

Monday:

Slow Cooker Osso buco with tomato sauce and pasta

Tuesday:

Shrimp Stir Fry with carrots, broccoli, red pepper and rice

Wednesday:

Burritos with leftover beef, rice and swiss chard

Thursday:

Homemade bean soup with carrots, onions, celery

Friday:

broiled cod with potatoes and asparagus

Saturday: Paul's birthday!

Pizza and carrot cake

Sunday: Easter dinner

Ham and sides TBD