EASY Easter Dinner

Sometimes less-experienced cooks get in a panic over pulling off a big holiday dinner.  Those of us who have done it more than a time or two know that the cooking isn't the problem.  It's the cleaning!  I can't help you with that, but I thought I'd share a quick synopsis of what we're cooking for Easter this year.  It's easy, but still very festive.  We do pretty much the same menu every year, and that helps to simplify the planning. 

Having a simple menu is essential when you work on Easter Sunday. Don't get me wrong- Easter is a joyous, uplifting celebration. And it Wipes. Me. Out!  I definitely don't want to spend all day in the kitchen on Easter after I've spent the morning playing church services and directing several choirs.

 We'll be making our usual potato casserole (you might remember it from Christmas dinner 2010).  It has to be prepped the night before, which helps in meal preparation on the holiday. After the ham has baked about 45 minutes, we'll start assembling the pineapple side dish.

It takes about ten minutes tops to mix up the pineapple custard. 

Pineapple Custard *
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup sugarSo here's the plan.  First of all, we opt for a spiral-sliced ham.  The one I bought weighs 8 1/2 pounds, and it will need to cook around 15 minutes per pound.  So- about two hours and fifteen minutes of time, but very little effort.  We got one with a brown sugar glaze this year.

4 beaten eggs

1/2 cup water

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 20-ounce cans crushed pineapple, undrained

3 tablespoons of butter

dusting of ground cinnamon

In a glass 8 x 8 baking dish, mix together the cornstarch and sugar.  Add the eggs, water, and vanilla.  Add the crushed pineapple, juice and all, and stir well.  Slice the 3 tablespoons of butter into about 5 pats and dot the pineapple mixture with them- don't mix in.  Dust lightly with a ground cinnamon.


 

Bake uncovered for one hour and fifteen minutes at 350 degrees.

Next, we'll get our potato casserole into the oven (it has to be prepped the night before the holiday).  It cooks for 45 minutes to an hour.  The oven will be crowded but everything should fit.

Overnight Cheesy Potato Casserole-start the night before!

1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream

1 teaspoon  minced garlic

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon coarse-ground black pepper

2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese

2 pound package Mr. Dell's frozen shredded hash browns

1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, melted

1 cup crushed cornflakes

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1.  In a large mixing bowl, combine sour cream, garlic, cream of mushroom soup, salt, and pepper.  Set aside.

2.  Melt 1 stick of butter, set aside.

3.  Arrange half the package of hash  browns in a large rectangular baking dish.  Pour half the melted butter over them.  Pour half the sour cream mixture over them.  Top with half the sharp cheddar cheese.  Repeat with the remaining potatoes, butter, sour cream mixture, and cheddar cheese.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.

4.  Just before baking, sprinkle the crushed cornflakes over the top of the casserole and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of melted butter.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes.

An easy way to get crushed cornflakes:  Measure out about four times the crushed volume desired into a large sealable plastic storage bag.  Crush the cornflakes with a rolling pin- make sure the bag has been sealed tight first!

When the hot dishes are about 20 minutes from being done, you can prepare a fresh vegetable of your choice on the stove top.  We like asparagus or broccoli to add some color to our plates, or a mix of broccoli and carrots is great, too.  When the ham has finished cooking, remove it from the oven and let it "rest".  Same with the other two hot dishes, as everything should be done at about the same time.  If you're worried that they'll get overly cold sitting on the counter top for 10 minutes, cover with aluminum foil.  Now you can crank the heat up on the oven and cook either brown and serve rolls or a good frozen roll (we like Sister Schubert's dinner rolls from the freezer section of the grocery).

If you want dessert, I'd recommend making one of your choice the day before the holiday.  We don't usually have one, because the pineapple custard is sweet enough to double as a dessert of sorts.

There you go.  Easter dinner is served!

*Pineapple Custard was published previously, but I've doubled it and clarified the directions from the first time I posted the recipe.

Planning Ahead for When Menu Planning Fails

I've written a fair bit about menu planning in the past (like, here and here).  I've even written a bit about what to do when menu planning goes awry (here and here, for example).  That's pertinent to our cooking of late, because menu planning hasn't worked out very well for us lately.

We are very busy at our jobs, working long hours, and by the time we get home, we're both often dead-tired.  In one of the older posts linked above, I noted that thorough menu planning can take a fair bit of time - consulting cookbooks and other resources, checking what we've got in stock, writing a grocery list, etc.  Lately I've been too tired to put that much time into planning.   Often I've found myself planning out maybe two meals in detail, having a rough idea for another meal, and otherwise relying on our reserve of staple items to let me toss together something at the last minute.  Thankfully, we keep a lot of things in stock, so I can make lots of different things with ingredients I've got right at hand.

Some of what we consider "staple items" probably differs from a lot of people's ideas of that concept.  That partly reflects our love of Indian and Asian cuisine.  We stock up on common American kitchen items, but things like coconut milk, ground lamb, Asian vegetables and fresh ginger root are just as much staples for us as are items like flour, butter, sugar and onions.  I keep lists of staple items that are running low and pick them up any time I go shopping.

It helps that we have two refrigerators (one in the kitchen, the other, older one downstairs) and a deep freeze.  This lets us keep around a supply of items that need to be kept refrigerated or frozen.   Some of our basic refrigerator items include milk (usually skim and whole), cream, plain yogurt, sour cream, butter (regular and unsalted), some jams and jellies, a couple types of fruit juice, eggs, carrots, green onions, jalapenos, bacon and some basic herbs (rosemary, thyme, cilantro and parsley, plus basil whenever possible). 

Our main fridge also contains a wide range of sauces (soy, tamari, hoisin, Worcestershire, fish sauce, oyster sauce, hot sauce, taco sauce), seasoned oils (Asian dark sesame oil and hot chili oil) and condiments (everything from ketchup and a couple types of mustard to black bean and garlic paste), plus jars of baking yeast.  Finally, we keep on hand a pretty good variety of cheeses (sliced American, brick and shredded sharp and extra-sharp cheddar, Parmigiano-Reggiano, mozzarella, cream cheese). 

The main part of our downstairs fridge isn't very full right now, but that will change once we start getting fresh produce through our CSA in the spring.  Right now, all it regularly holds is beer, but I also use it to defrost frozen meat or to hold things that have to be refrigerated for periods of time (something I'm marinating, for example). 

Our freezers - the deep freeze and the two fridge ones - are kept pretty full.   The freezer of the main fridge and a good chunk of the downstairs one are full of frozen leftovers, which Juli and I take to eat for lunch (and dinners, on Tuesdays and most Wednesdays).  We also keep a fair bit of meat on stock, usually things I buy in bulk when I see a good deal.   Right now that includes some pork loin roasts, a couple racks of ribs and some steaks, plus a couple freezer bags full of individually-packed boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a couple packages of ground beef and some Graziano Bros. sausage.  I also stock up on lamb (usually ground or stew lamb, occasionally chops or even a leg of lamb) whenever I see some at a reasonable price, because there's nowhere around here that carries lamb often enough, or in large enough amounts, to rely on it being available when needed.  Other than that, our freezers contain some frozen produce, frozen naan, ice cream and "fallback" foods such as Graziano Bros. ravioli and meatballs and the every-trusty Tombstone Pizzas. 

Compared to our refrigerator/freezer space, our kitchen doesn't have a lot of cabinet space, but we've made up for that by buying a big steel shelving unit for pantry items and some hanging shelves we use to hold spices.  We keep in stock a wide range of dried pastas, wine and other alcoholic beverages used for cooking, syrups, oils, rice (long grain, basmati and jasmine), dried beans and lentils, dried mushrooms (I buy porcini, wood ear and shitake in bulk through Graziano Bros.), panko crumbs, different types of sugar and flour, unopened boxes of chicken and beef broth/stock, baking staples, nuts, salt (table, sea and kosher), dried fruits, plus a wide range of canned goods.

 Canned goods I try to keep always in stock include coconut milk, straw mushrooms, baby corn, black and pinto beans, chickpeas, plus several types of canned tomatoes (crushed, peeled/whole, diced, puree, plus tomato paste and sauce).  I also like to keep a couple jars of good commercial pasta sauce on hand, to go with the meatballs or ravioli or pasta when I don't really feel like going to the trouble of cooking up something from scratch, but want something better than a frozen pizza.

Aside from that, we try to keep some fresh produce in stock at all times.  It's rare we don't keep in stock several heads of garlic, some shallots, white and yellow onions, one or more types of potato (almost always including Yukon gold), fresh ginger root, lemons, limes, oranges and a few Granny Smith apples.  We stocked up on winter squash last fall, but at this point all we have left is a single carnival squash. 

Plus, we have a really, really good stock of spices, including several I buy in bulk and grind myself. 

The advantage of staying so well-stocked is that I can toss together a lot of different things with ready-to-use ingredients, and with a little more time to defrost some meat, I can make a really wide range of dishes.  In fact, I'm guessing I can make at least 50% of the recipes we've featured on the blog whenever I want, without having to go to the store.  I'm pretty certain of that because a good portion of the original recipes I've featured (including several of the curries and most of the stir-fries) are ones I made up on the spot to take advantage of ingredients I had on hand. 

If you find that you often don't have the time to plan out a menu, you might want to try to adapt our stocking strategy to your own cooking, taking into account your own cooking preferences as well as budgetary and storage considerations.  Although I prefer to come up with a more detailed menu plan, and to be more organized in general, it's nice to be able to fall back on something when that level of organization just doesn't work out.

Menu Planning: When Life Gets in the Way, part 2

I had hoped that this week's cooking would end up more organized than had been the case the previous week, when being away from home Friday night and most of Saturday had forced me to leave some parts of the week's menu plan open until late Saturday.  That wasn't the way it worked out, though.

By Monday night, I already knew most of what I wanted to cook during the upcoming week.  I had a new chicken curry recipe I wanted to try out, and since it was going to be pretty quick to make, I figured I'd make it on Friday night.  I also knew we wouldn't be cooking dinner on Thursday night, as we were getting together with my son, but I figured we'd get back early enough for me to try out a new cookie recipe I'd been working on.  And during the previous weekend's shopping, I had picked up a frozen turkey breast which I wanted to make this weekend.  I'd seen a Thai chicken and basil stir fry recipe I wanted to try out as well, and figured that would be a nice, quick weekday supper for the next Monday night.  That left me with a few gaps in the schedule, but I had rough ideas what else I wanted to do.   Namely, I planned to make some other Indian dishes - including, possibly, my first try at samosas - for Saturday lunch, and do some grilling sometime over the weekend.  At that point, my menu plan for the upcoming week looked like this:

Thursday, Oct. 28 - Dinner - Eat Out w/ Alex + try out new cookie recipe
Friday, Oct 29 - New Chicken Curry Recipe

Saturday, October 30 - Lunch - Something Indian
                                  - Dinner - Roast Turkey Breast, Cranberry
                                     Sauce, Mashed Potatoes

Sunday, October 31 - Dinner - Grill Something (Steak and Squash?)
Monday, November 1 - Dinner - Thai Chicken-Basil Stir Fry + Coconut Rice

Right off the bat, things went a bit awry.  Juli wasn't feeling very well on Tuesday, so she stayed home, and I ended up coming home from work after a few hours as well due to a really dreadful sinus headache.  Thus, we were both home, and while neither of us felt very well, we still had to eat something.  I didn't feel well enough to focus on my work, but I figured I could throw together something simple, at least for lunch.

One thing I've learned is that sometimes life throws you a curve ball, and you end up not being able to cook something you'd planned for one reason or another.  Perhaps you get home too late, or the store is out of a crucial ingredient for whatever you were planning to make.  In any case, it pays to have some fallback options.  Thankfully, we've done a pretty good job of preparing for such occasions.

First, we keep on stock a pretty wide variety of pantry and refrigerated items - various sorts of canned tomatoes and beans, several types of flour and oil and sugars, nuts, dried beans, pasta, hot peppers, fresh herbs, various sorts of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables, a range of sauces and condiments, and several cheeses - plus some frozen meat (usually a few chicken breasts, some lamb, maybe some ground beef).   We also keep our freezer stocked with fresh-frozen meatballs, ravioli and so forth, purchased at Graziano Bros., keeping these on hand for when I'm suddenly in a mood for some Italian.  That all ended up being helpful on Tuesday.  That prep, plus the fresh basil from our herb garden, made it a snap for me to toss together a Quick Marinara Sauce and cook some pasta and frozen meatballs to make up a batch of Spaghetti and Meatballs. 

As it turned out, after sleeping a good chunk of the afternoon, I felt well enough to toss together something for dinner as well, and by defrosting some ground lamb and pulling some ingredients out of the fridge and opening a few cans, I was able to toss together a quick and easy lamb curry.

We both felt well enough to return to work on Wednesday, and by Thursday morning I'd filled in the blanks for the weekend's cooking schedule.

Thursday, Oct. 28 - Dinner - Eat Out w/ Alex + try out new cookie recipe
Friday, Oct 29 - New Chicken Curry Recipe

Saturday, October 30 - Lunch - Pumpkin and Red Lentil Curry Soup,
                                                 Sweet and Hot Shrimp Curry,
                                                 Naan, Seasoned Rice (maybe Samosas?)
                                    - Dinner - Roast Turkey Breast, Cranberry Sauce,
                                                    Mashed Potatoes

Sunday, October 31 - Dinner - Steak, Grilled Squash, Mashed Potato Casserole

Monday, November 1 - Dinner - Thai Chicken-Basil Stir Fry + Coconut Rice

Plus, Juli was wanting to make a batch of homemade applesauce somewhere in there.

Thursday night threw a wrench in the plans, though.  The sinus stuff was still dragging us both down, and by the time we got home from dinner (we went to India Star again), I was too exhausted to want to make cookies, or do much of anything, really.  Then, the next morning we discovered we'd gotten a hard frost overnight.  That finished off our garden for the season, killing off my hot peppers, the cherry and grape tomato plants and - most pertinent for my cooking plans - did in the basil for the season.  Since the recipe I was planning for Monday requires a fair bit of basil and I was less than thrilled about the idea of paying a fair bit for the poor-quality stuff I've been seeing in stores of late, that would mean having to change my plans for Monday's cooking. 

And then Friday was yet another draining day - busy at work, plus still struggling with the sinus crud.  By the time we got home, I really, really didn't feel like cooking at all... which is where another of our fallback options came in handy.

For those times when we don't feel like cooking, or don't have time, we keep a few frozen ready-meals at hand.  Some frozen Indian entrees, for example... and Tombstone Pizza.  Now, I'm not going to claim that Tombstone Pizza is exactly great food... but it isn't bad, either.   In fact, as far as frozen pizza goes, I personally think it's as good as anything out there, and better than most.   Interestingly enough, the folk at Cook's Illustrated agree.  When they taste-tested frozen pizza in 2007, Tombstone tied with a couple other brands as "recommended," and the other recommended brands were somewhat more expensive.  To me, that makes Tombstone the best bargain of the bunch.  We tend to buy a few whenever it's on sale, which makes it even more a bargain.

It's been awhile since I've had any occasion to make a Tombstone Pizza, but it was quick and reliably good, as always.   It also gave me an opportunity to use the oldest piece of cookware I own.

Back in 1986, I took a year off college between undergrad and grad school.    Money was tight, and like many students before and since, I got by largely on ramen noodles, the occasional salad and - when I felt like really splurging - frozen pizza.  Tombstone was my pizza of choice, then as now.  In order to better prepare this culinary favorite, I bought the pictured below.  There's not much to it - a thin metal rim and metal mesh - but it does a great job of heating up frozen pizza.  I don't have any idea what brand it is - any distinguishing marks (if there ever were any) were long ago erased by more than two decades of frequent use and washing - but what I do know is that it is quite dependable.  
 

Saturday morning I was feeling a bit better, so I decided to make some Blueberry Pancakes for breakfast.  By the time I'd done that and then gotten lunch ready and done with, it was mid-afternoon and we were both, frankly, pretty stuffed.  Beyond that, it was a beautiful day out, and there was a lot of work that needed to be done in the yard and in the garden (pulling the deceased tomato and pepper plants, weeding, getting rid of some ground cover plants that had more or less taken over some of the flower beds, etc.).  So, by the time we did a few hours of yard work, it was getting late (and close to the time trick-or-treaters would start coming around), and I didn't have the energy to put into the planned meal (roast turkey breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, etc.), nor did we want to end up eating dinner at close to 9:30 pm. 

So instead I grilled up a steak, as I'd originally planned for Sunday and planned to make the turkey dinner on Sunday. That was a lot faster and easier.  In addition to a juicy steak and sweet, grilled kuri squash, this gave us leftovers of the Mashed Potato Casserole that would save us having to make mashed potatoes to go with the turkey the next evening.

The next evening we did indeed end up having roast turkey, cranberry sauce, gravy and some peas, and Juli did get her applesauce made. And on Monday night, I finally made the new chicken curry dish I'd been planning to make for awhile now, and which had originally been planned for Friday. I also gave a first try to the new cookie recipe I'd been working on. 

So, what we ended up making included the bulk of what we'd planned to make, though not necessarily in the same order or on the same nights.   My having planned ahead assured we'd have what we needed to prepare the meals, and kept us from wasting a lot of time wondering "What should we have tonight?" so it still paid off, even if things didn't go quite as planned.  Planning is good, but flexibility is crucial if you're going to deal with the obstacles, surprises and opportunities life throws your way.

The upcoming week is going to be a rather different one to plan for, as Juli is going to be gone for a good chunk of the weekend, doing some fun stuff with friends for most of Saturday and doing work-related and continuing education tasks until very late on Sunday.  Right now I'm not sure yet what I'll be making, but I do have some ideas.  I'll end up finalizing plans by Thursday morning, then we'll wait and see how things play out and roll with that.

Menu Planning: When Life Gets in the Way, part 1

The last couple weeks have been... let's say interesting, in terms of menu planning.   Like in the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times." 

Last week, we knew we were going to be away from home Friday night and most of Saturday.  I planned to do some cooking while we were off visiting relatives, in between shopping at farmer's markets and other fun stuff, but we didn't know when we were going to get back.  Thus, we had to leave some of that week's cooking unplanned, and fill it in as we went.  We also had to make what plans we could based around the travel, which would necessitate some things that were pretty quick to make and wouldn't require a lot of shopping. 

As I considered what to make in the coming week, the basic plan was pretty clear:  I was going to cook something on Thursday; we'd eat out before getting on the road on Friday; I'd make some cookies on Friday night or Saturday AM, planning to take some of them to my work's pot luck lunch the next Wednesday; on the way home on Saturday we'd figure what to make for dinner based on our expected time back home; Sunday I'd make something a bit more elaborate; and Monday I'd make something pretty quick, and that way also have time to make something else to take to the pot luck. 

The cooking selections that I could plan ahead - everything but Saturday - started to fall into place pretty quickly.  I had already decided to make one of the new main dish recipes I'd been designing for awhile for Sunday's dinner, and I'd make the 30-Minute Meatloaf recipe for dinner on Monday, since that was fairly quick and Juli and I had both loved it when I'd made it before.  Picking where we were going to eat on Friday was also a no-brainer, since we hadn't been to our favorite Indian restaurant in awhile.  So, on Monday, I already had some of the blanks filled in for the next week, as so:

Thursday, Oct. 21 - Dinner - ?

Friday, Oct 22 - Dinner - Eat Out/India Star

Fri nite/Sat AM - make cookies ?

Saturday, October 23 - Dinner - ?

Sunday, October 24 - Dinner - Chicken Breasts Stuffed with

                                                 Apples, Cranberries and Goat Cheese

                                - served with?

Monday, October 25 - Dinner - 30-Minute Meatloaf

                                - served with?

                                - plus ? for potluck

From there, I started looking at my various cooking resources for ideas.  I looked through some of my first-line cookbooks, the recent episodes of my various cooking magazines, the Cook's Illustrated website and various cooking blogs and recipe sites I follow, plus I flipped through some less-used cookbooks and files, envelopes and binders full of miscellaneous recipes.  I quickly decided on a recipe from ATK's 30-Minute Suppers - Parmesan Chicken Cutlets with Cherry Tomato Salad - for Thursday night, as a quick read of the recipe confirmed it would be fast as well as tasty.  Saturday's dinner would still have to wait until we knew when we'd be home, so I would have to pack some of my more reliable resources to consult during the trip home.  Since our garden was still giving us some late - and quite tasty - cherry and grape tomatoes, I decided I'd make something with those to go with Sunday's dinner.  Flipping through cookbooks, I saw a couple recipes featuring snow peas and sugar snap peas, which gave me the idea to pick up either some fresh or frozen of one or the other of those, depending on what was available at the store.  I knew the store we usually shop at reliably carried frozen sugar snap peas, so one way or another I'd have what I needed.  Add some herbs, salt and pepper and toss with olive oil and the snow peas or sugar snap peas would make a salad. 

I still needed some sides to go with the 30-Minute Meatloaves.  Potatoes are a natural companion to the meatloaf, and I knew the same book that had that recipe also had a variety of potato recipes, as I'd made several of them already.  I'd been considering making the Roasted Garlic Potatoes for awhile now, and figured Monday would be as good a time as any, but I still needed a vegetable dish.  I knew we were going to a farmer's market over the weekend, though, so I decided to wait and see what we bought there before deciding what else to make to round off the meatloaf dinner.

That left me needing to decide what sorts of cookies to make, and what else I might make for the pot luck.  (Not that the cookies wouldn't be enough on their own, but since I started on my cooking craze, I've rather enjoyed pot lucks as a way to show off what I've been doing.)  The Coconut-Oatmeal Cookies Juli loves so much were a given.  I'd also been giving some thought to the Chewy Sugar Cookies recipe in the latest issue of Cook's Illustrated, and especially the Coconut-Lime variant of that recipe, so I decided to try that out.  I also had been working on some cookie and muffin recipes, and decided that on Monday evening, I'd make some muffins to go with the cookies. 

That filled out most of the week's menu, save for one a couple things I had decided to fill in on the way back from our trip.  So, on Thursday I was able to do some of the shopping for the upcoming week.  I also knew I'd be packing some of my kitchen tools and a few ingredients to take along, and that I'd be doing some grocery shopping for other needed ingredients once we got there, then do some more shopping for the rest of the week's cooking once we got back home.  At that point, the menu was as follows:

Thursday, Oct. 21 - Dinner - Parmesan Chicken Cutlets with Cherry Tomato Salad

Friday, Oct 22 - Dinner - Eat Out/India Star

Fri nite/Sat AM - make cookies - Thin and Crispy Coconut-Oatmeal Cookies and

                                                    Chewy Coconut-Lime Sugar Cookies

Saturday, October 23 - Dinner - ?

Sunday, October 24 - Dinner - Chicken Breasts Stuffed with
                                                 Apples, Cranberries and Goat Cheese
                                - served with Sugar Snap Pea and Cherry Tomato Salad.
Monday, October 25 - Dinner - 30-Minute Meatloaf
                                - served with Roasted Garlic Potatoes and ?
                                - plus Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Muffins for potluck

As it turns out, we did indeed find something at the farmer's market that gave me an idea what to make with the meatloaves and potatoes on Monday, and on the way home I decided to try out my own spin on Chili Mac.  That completed my menu plan for the week, as follows:

Thursday, Oct. 21 - Dinner - Parmesan Chicken Cutlets with Cherry Tomato Salad

Friday, Oct 22 - Dinner - Eat Out/India Star

Fri nite/Sat AM - make cookies - Thin and Crispy Coconut-Oatmeal Cookies and

                                                    Chewy Coconut-Lime Sugar Cookies

Saturday, October 23 - Dinner - Spicy Chili Mac

Sunday, October 24 - Dinner - Chicken Breasts Stuffed with

                                                 Apples, Cranberries and Goat Cheese
                                - served with Sugar Snap Pea and Cherry Tomato Salad.
Monday, October 25 - Dinner - 30-Minute Meatloaf
                                - served with Roasted Garlic Potatoes and
                                            Green Beans with Creamy Mushroom Sauce
                                - plus Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Muffins for potluck

Normally I like to plan things out completely in advance, to minimize shopping time, but that wasn't possible on this occasion.  I had to go into the week's cooking not completely knowing what I was going to make, and fill in the blanks as I went along.   It worked out fine, though I did look forward to things being more planned out the next week.

It didn't quite work out that way, though...

(to be continued)

More About Menu Planning

After my recent "Menu Planning" post (http://jeffreyandjulicook.blogspot.com/2010/10/menu-planning.htm), Juli asked me some questions about the thought process that goes into my selections. Since she thought my answers were interesting, I though just maybe some of the readers would also find them interesting. If not, worry not, as this one isn't long and my next post will be more directly cooking-related.

As I've said before, most of the time we cook meals five of the seven nights of the week (Thursday through Monday), plus Saturday lunch and the occasional batch of cookies or other such extra cooking we fit in here and there. Usually by Tuesday I'll have a pretty good idea of at least a couple of the recipes I want to make for the week, based on things I've been reading and wanting to try, or based on weather (nice weather makes me want to grill, whereas a cool Saturday morning often inspires me to cook up a pot of chili or soup), or based my wanting to make something we've not had in awhile or which Juli has stated she'd like. This weekend, for example, I knew I wanted to take another shot at thin crust pizza, and that I also wanted to make General Tso's Chicken, as that particular recipe had been on my menu plan a couple times in recent weeks, only to get bumped off by circumstances. With those two dishes decided on, that helped lead me to some other decisions. The General Tso's called for some other sort of Chinese dish, and would require vegetables to round things out nutritionally. Since the General's Chicken is pretty hearty and flavorful, I decided to go light with the rest of the meal, and since I'd recently been reading soup recipes and had found a Hot and Sour Soup recipe I wanted to try, I tossed that on the list. Still not much in the way of vegetables, though, and not particularly colorful, either, so I decided to round things out with a quick and simple broccoli stir-fry (in addition to the rice). Since making three dishes requires a bit of time, I figured my Chinese feast would fit in best for Saturday lunch.

Once I've got a few things figured out, I consider what other main ingredients and cuisines I might want to work with for the week. Much as I love pizza, one meal of pizza a week is enough (I did make extra pizza dough with last night's pizza, but more on that another time), and it would be good to have some other cuisines represented instead of doing more Chinese or Italian. Indian is almost always a given, so I figured I'd make a couple Indian dishes on one of the weekend evenings. Since I already had a chicken recipe selected, I selected a pork recipe and a vegetarian side for the Indian meal. Looking in the pantry and noticing a few cans of black-eyed peas helped me decide on the side dish.

I also knew that the weather was supposed to be nice this weekend, but perhaps rainy on Monday evening, so I figured I'd grill something for Sunday dinner. I had some lamb in the freezer and hadn't yet selected a lamb recipe, so I decided to do lamb kabobs for Sunday. Grilled veggies of some sort was a natural, and since tomato goes well with lamb, I decided I'd grill up some thick-sliced tomatoes while one could still find reasonably good tomatoes in the store. I considered making some couscous to round things out, but Juli had requested I make up another batch of some hummus I'd made awhile back, so I decided to go with hummus and pita bread instead, and since pita and tomato was approaching gyro territory, that gave me one last idea: I could make up a batch of the yogurt-dill sauce I often make with lamb and we could have that, the grilled chunks of lamb and the grilled tomatoes on some of the pita bread, in addition to using it for dipping in the hummus.

Looking over the recipe I'd decided to use for the thin crust pizza, I noted the dough had to be made the night before. Since we get home so late on Wednesdays, that eliminated pizza as a Thursday recipe, so I figured I'd make the dough on Thursday night and have pizza on Friday. That called for something fairly easy for Thursday dinner, and since we didn't have a shrimp dish yet, I decided to make the shrimp curry recipe I'd been designing for Thursday dinner.

That left me with just Monday unplanned. I didn't want anything too complex or time-consuming for a Monday night, so "fast, and preferably one dish" seemed the way to go. Fortuitously, on Tuesday we got something in the mail that gave me an idea. My subscription to Cook's Country magazine came with a free copy of America's Test Kitchen 30-Minute Suppers, and that had finally arrived. The dish featured on the cover - Pasta with Butternut Squash, Spinach and Prosciutto - looked absolutely delicious, and a quick look at the recipe itself sold me on that for Monday's dinner.



Menu in hand, I was then able to come up with a grocery list, so that when we got home on Thursday, I was ready to start cooking for the week. As I write this, I'm half-way through the week's cooking, more or less. So far all is going as planned, and soon I'll start thinking about next week's cooking.

Menu Planning

Monday through Wednesday, I spend a fair bit of time (what little I have spare, since we get back so late on Tues and Wed) planning out cooking for Thursday through the next Monday.  I like the result, but it can be a chore.

It's pretty necessary, really.  We do a lot of our shopping in Des Moines, as the local grocery stores in the small town we live in can't be relied on to have much in the way of specialty items, and sometimes are iffy even on some basics.  Plus, we have so little downtime on weeknights, and usually have so many other things that have to be done on weekends, that we want to use our time as efficiently as possible.  Then there's the fact that usually at least one of my menu choices involves something that has to be marinated or otherwise prepared a night in advance.

So, planning is important.  But it can also be tedious.

Here we see a not-atypical scene: I was looking through several cookbooks, old cooking magazines and my newest issue of Cook's Illustrated for some ideas, and had to get up to look elsewhere for another recipe I've been considering.  I came back to find Juno less than pleased with me getting up all the time, not to mention with me messing with books when I could be petting her.  When I sat back down she kept turned away from me - atypical behavior for her, and when I tried to pet her, she jumped off the couch.  Earlier she had shown her displeasure by chewing on the corner of a legal pad while I was writing on it. 

From Monday through today, I've consulted at least nine different cookbooks - some in depth - and probably a half-dozen cooking magazines, plus several of the cooking blogs I follow and the Cook's Illustrated website.   Plus I've checked weather forecasts, which can impact my planning.  It looks to be warm and sunny for the weekend, which means it'll probably be too hot for big pots of soup or chili, but grilling is an option.

This week's menu is finally coming together.  I've tried to base my selections as much as possible around items we already have in stock, to cut down shopping time and cost.  We've been trying to keep a good supply of basic items on stock, and it's paying off now.  I've got red curry paste, fresh basil, pineapple, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, coconut milk, palm sugar, fish sauce, lamb stew meat, tofu and a lot of the other things I'll need.  So far, it looks like we'll need to check out Graziano Bros. market for some excellent, fresh mozzarella and maybe some of their sausage, and pick up a few other things at one of the big supermarkets in Des Moines.  Everything else we can probably pick up here in town.  I have a quick shrimp curry (an original recipe) planned for Thursday, and I'm going to make some pizza dough on Thursday evening, which will make for a quick dinner on Friday.  Tentatively, I'm planning Chinese dishes for Saturday lunch, Indian for Saturday evening, and grilled lamb kabobs for Sunday's dinner.