Weekly Meal Plans

After battles with a notebook, pen, and my brain for months when trying to write a full weekly meal plan, I’ve figured out something a lot less complicated.  I would sit for an hour at a time trying to come up with breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the week as well as shopping lists to go accordingly in order to save money and waste less. The breakfasts usually got changed anyways, the lunches were half-assed based on work schedules, and sometimes the dinners went according to plan.  I’ve decided that an hour is a lot of time and energy to waste on something that doesn’t really get used.  Recently, we’ve come up with a weekly layout that we try and stick to for dinners only.  I usually stock up on eggs, bacon, avocados, flax/chia meal for hot cereal, yogurt&fruit , kraut, etc. for breakfasts and combine them with leftovers for lunch and put all my real effort into dinners. We now have a guideline to follow which is based on this:

Mondays: Poultry

Tuesdays: Burgers or Tacos

Wednesday: Ethnic or Exotic/Offal Meats

Thursday: Pizza/Pasta Night (recently changed from Fridays because of fish specials at work)

Fridays: Seafood

Saturday: Date Night

Sunday: Leftovers,  Comfort Foods, or Dinner with Family

This has made it SO much easier to sit down and figure out what I need for groceries.  Every other week or so, on Mondays we do a whole chicken and use the leftovers for lunches, make stock, and soup for the week.  Of course there are days I work until close and we don’t get to do dinner together and we just work around it.  I write down what I plan on having for dinners for the rest of the week usually on Sunday night and grocery shop on Monday.  I know when to pull what out of the freezer and what I can use in different meals to save from having to throw anything out.  We also enjoy vegetarian meals from time to time so the pizza and pasta night gives us a ton of room to play with either a tapioca pizza toppings or some zucchini noodles or spaghetti squash with a ton of fresh vegetables.

I hope this helps if you are a meal planner like me and if not, give it a try! I promise it will save you money and make life less hectic whether you’re just cooking for yourself or a family.

The BEST Grain-Free Scones You’ll Ever Have

A thought occurred to me yesterday at work.  I think it’s a pretty common thought that a lot of fast food workers are overweight and unhealthy.  A lot of people in the food industry in fact.  The funny thing is, working in a restaurant can be some serious physical activity.  Number one, you’re on your feet for long shifts. Sometimes I literally don’t sit down for 12 hours at a time.  Secondly, you are lifting heavy things all the time.  Boxes, bags that weigh 50+  lbs, the guys who are lifting 160 pound kegs up on shelves, I frequently carry two 40 lb buckets at a time, etc.  So, if we are doing all of this physical activity why are so many of us overweight?  Obviously it’s the food.  This just proves that no matter how much exercise you do, it really comes down to diet in the end.  When I say overweight I don’t mean by the stupid BMI scale they have plastered at the doctor’s office (according to them I’m in the low overweight section..what?).  I mean having enough extra body fat that it is unhealthy and has the potential (If it hasn’t already) to lead to disease.  Anyway, just a little thing to think about next time you are running 6 miles and head for Mickey D’s after.

Moving on to the real reason I’m writing today.  The most awesome scone recipe in the history of the world.  I know all of this paleo baking stuff is sometimes silly, we really shouldn’t be consuming mass amounts of ground up nuts with added sweeteners, BUT sometimes you just need something comforting and warm and sweet in the morning to go with your cup of coffee and obviously this is the better option compared to Dunkin Donuts.

Ok I’ll have to admit.  I made these based off of this recipe.  So happy I came across it because it truly is awesome.  I halved the batch and kept the one egg and wanted to use some of my homemade lard in place of half of the butter. I’m really excited to try these with other flavors.  Thinking maple bacon for the fall with some crushed pecans on the top? Anyway, here is my version:

1 cup almond flour

1/4 cup arrowroot powder

1 Tbsp maple syrup

pinch of salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp lard, melted

1 Tbsp butter or ghee, melted

1 egg

1/2 cup blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl. In another small bowl, whisk the egg, butter, and maple syrup.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry, then fold in berries.  Line a cast iron skillet (or round pan) with parchment paper.  Form into large ball and flatten until you have a circle roughly 6-7 inches in diameter.  Bake at 350 for around 18-22 minutes until the top is golden brown.  I moved mine to the top rack for the last 8 minutes and it turned out perfectly.  Cool and cut into wedges!

Learning To Have My Ways With Meat…Eat Your Beefy Heart Out.

This is half a pastured pig and about 35 lbs of grass-fed beef both from local family farms.   I asked if I could have the fat from the pig to make lard, and Matt’s dad was nice enough to give us the heart along with our part of his cow.  I am constantly learning new ways to work with meat, especially the less expensive and a lot of times more nutrient-dense cuts and parts and pieces that most people want nothing to do with.  A little piece of info on the nutrition of beef heart can be found here.  My first experience working with heart of any kind was a rather pleasant one.   I’m not really into liver and would rather have it raw and covered up by the tastes of bananas than to eat it like a regular person.  Julia Child’s chicken liver mousse is alright, just not something I want to particularly eat on a daily basis.  Other than that, my organ meat experiences have been few and far between and I plan to change that.  I pulled the 4 lb heart out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge about 4 days prior to working with it.  I really had no idea what I was doing so I just went with it and trimmed off the sinewy parts.  I was planning to make a Moroccan stew to freeze because there was no way the three of us would consume 4 lbs of heart before it went bad, (not REALLY Moroccan, but Americanized) but wanted to cut off some to taste it just seared medium-rare.  Part of me wishes I would have had a big party and grilled the whole damn thing up on skewers because it really is delicious nice and bloody.  Just like a very lean steak with a lot of iron taste., a little gamey I suppose.  Here’s a photo from before:

After trimming, I cubed it and seared it on all sides and threw into the crockpot with the following:

1 large cubed sweet potato

2 small onions, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

about a teaspooon of the following:

red palm oil

curry powder

cumin

cinnamon

salt

pepper

Let it cook on low for 8 hours or high for 6.  The heart doesn’t get quite fall-apart like it would with a regular stew meat.  Like I said, it is completely Americanized and not real deal Moroccan, which I am learning about.  They use ingredients such as harissa and preserved lemons which I don’t have in my pantry quite yet so I cheated a little.  Although not so pretty, the outcome was rather delicious.  Warm and earthy, just as a spicy sweet stew should be.

Conclusion on beef heart: Preferably eat med-rare.  With a good glass of red wine. Followed by dark chocolate.

DIY Engagement Party (Goat Cheese Figs!)

If you haven’t already heard, Matt asked me to be his wife last month.  (!!!) The date we are planning for is June 21, 2014 if all goes well.  I’m so happy to be planning a wedding and to have his parents who offered us to have it on their farm.  Talk about perfect.  A gorgeous Midsummer vintage wedding set on a farm with horses and a lake. I am also lucky enough to have tons of friends and family willing to help out with everything from the invitations to the food.  And some very talented friends at that.

We had our engagement party at the Winery at Wolf Creek.  We picked some picnic table overlooking a hill and lake with a pasture and goats (yes, goats).  We were able to bring our own food so my step-mom and I brought all of the food. Everyone was so impressed they thought it was professionally catered.  Cheese and crackers with peppered salami, fruit, jams and spreads, watermelon with feta and mint, individual spicy shrimp cocktails, a cupcake and chocolate tower, olives, and these fresh figs with goat cheese, rosemary, and honey balsamic drizzle:

20 fresh figs

1 small log goat cheese

rosemary

1/2 cup white or golden balsamic vinegar

3 Tbl honey

Quarter figs starting at stem end and leave the bottom intact.  Push the sides out and fill with a dollop of goat cheese.  For the balsamic drizzle, place vinegar and honey in saucepan and simmer gently until it reduces and turns into a syrup (remember once it cools it will become a lot thicker so keep that in mind and don’t reduce TOO much or you’ll have super glue).  Place a couple leaves of rosemary on each fig while the balsamic cools.  Drizzle just before serving with a spoon. I saved my leftover balsamic reduction in a mason jar for later use.

We loved our engagement party and hope the rest of the wedding planning goes just as smoothly! Thanks to everyone who came and helped out.

Here is my favorite photo of the evening: