Menu Plan Monday

Monday Sweet and Sour Chicken/Pork
Tuesday Pizza
Wednesday whatever is on special while shopping
Thursday Chicken Pasta Bake
Friday Dutch Pea Soup
Saturday Homemade Sausage Rolls
Sunday Spaghetti Jaffles

Tomorrow I had a heap of doctors appointments, so it's takeaway (fairly usual for a payday anyway). Thursday's pasta bake I plan on making up as I go along. This week's soup is my mother's special recipe, I'm not a huge fan of pea soup, but everyone I know who's tried it likes this one, me included. I was too tired to remember to take the meat out to make sausage rolls last week, so I'll be trying again this week. We're off to DP's parents for lunch again on Sunday, so it's easy, light dinner night again.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Recipe here

I used a small leek instead of an onion, and a full two litres of stock, and 500ml of water as well. I also think I used about three times as much pasta as requested, but hey, the more noodles the better right? I also didn't have any parsley, and that made a big difference. I've never used this recipe before, but I could tell it would have been better with the parsley.

Personally, I thought it was a bit bland, though that could have been from the changes I made, but Master Four had two bowls full, and said it was as good as the stuff he got in the hospital (which was suprisingly good soup). I forgot to take a photo, but I might get one when our housemate comes home and has dinner, if he has dinner here.

Still looking for more soup recipes and suggestions. Anyone got one they want to share?

Baby Spinach & Mushroom Bosccaiola

Sorry for the particularly bad photo tonight, the flash glared off the cheese. And I did see this at the time, but I was too hungry, and it smelt too good, to stop and try and get a better photo.

Another very simple dinner tonight, and yes, I cheated again a little. I boiled up a full (500g) pack of fettucine in a large pot of salted water, as you do, and while that was cooking I made the sauce. There was some leftover chopped onion from the calzones yesterday, about 3/4 of one, along with 2 or 3 mushrooms that had been halved and then sliced, and the smallest handful of chopped green capsicum. I sliced up another 4 mushrooms, and lightly fried the lot. I had a packet of Continental Mushroom Bosccaiola sauce mix, which required 1 1/2 cups of milk to be mixed with it, and then I threw that in the pan too.

I thinned it out with a bit of the pasta water, since the sauce cooked faster than the pasta, and got a little too thick, but found upon tasting it needed something. In hindsight, I think a few rashers of friend and chopped bacon was it, but I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of french mustard, and got a passable result Add in about 3 cups (or maybe 2 - I don't know, I never measured it, just went, 'yeah, that'll be enough' in the supermarket) of baby spinach and there you have it. The kids ate it, the adults (as usual) had no comment, except for DP's remark of 'fettucine always needs bacon' when I finally figured out what was missing. Well, now I know don't I?

Chicken and Black Bean Sauce

We were supposed to be having Beef and Black Bean suace tonight, but I mucked up my shopping list, and ended up short on steak. Still, chicken works quite well with the sweetness of black beans, and it went down quite well. Master Four emptied his plate, and while Miss Two had a little left over, she is fighting off a cold at the moment. Besides, her comment was that the dinner in her mouth made her very happy. Can't ask for better than that can you?

Was a very simple dish to make too. I put some rice on to cook, and while that simmered away, I sliced some broccoli, bok choy, onion, and green capsicum, along with two chicken breast fillets. Browned the onion, and then the chicken, added the broccoli to fry a little. I used a whole jar of KanTong Black Bean sauce, but I could have gotten away with two thirds of a jar, if not as little as half. Then I added the bok choy stems and the capsicum, and cooked until the sauce was hot. I turned the heat off and stirred through the bok choy leaves, which cooked from the residual heat while I was dishing up the rice.

I'm supposed to be making Calzones tomorrow, but I have a doctors appointment tomorrow afternoon, so it will depend on how long they keep me at the hospital. They wanted me to stay and get induced yesterday, so I have to go in every few days it seems to get ultrasounds and heart rate checks. Bubs is moving heaps though, so things should be ok for me to come home again tomorrow.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday Chow Mein, carried over from Saturday
Tuesday Beef & Black Bean Stir-fry
Wednesday Calzones
Thursday Fettucine with creamy mushroom and baby spinach sauce
Friday Chicken noodle soup w/ home made rolls
Saturday Homemade Sausage Rolls
Sunday Bolar roast with roasted vegies

We're starting a new tradition for winter. Instead of fish and chips every Friday, now we'll be having soup and homemade rolls. It's nice to have a simple meal planned out, and once we are in a new place, and don't have to worry about moving the freezer again, I can make double batches of soup and freeze some for really busy days. Master Four discovered he really likes Chicken Noodle Soup two weeks ago while he was in hospital, so I thought I'd give that a try this week. I haven't made that since I was in high school.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

Super Triple Choc Berry Brownies

Based on the recipe used here, I thought I'd give Jazzie's brownies another go. I was planning on doing these yesterday, so they'd be perfect to eat tomorrow, but since I didn't get to buy chocolate, I guess I'll have to make do with having them to eat on Mother's Day.

Differences: instead of using 185g of dark chocolate melted in, I used 80g of Cadbury's Desserts - Tiramisu flavour, a block we tried but no one liked much on it's own, and 40g each of two new flavours I saw at the shop, both dark: Old Gold with Raspberry (mmm, crunchy bits!) and Nestle Club Mixed Berry (mmm, berries!). Then when it came to adding in the chopped up chunks of chocolate, I used another 20g of the Tiramisu, plus what was left of the two blocks of dark chocolate. That didn't quite make up to the amount required, so I added some choc coated sultanas as well.

Fresh from the oven

After sitting for a few hours, some of the chocolate was still molten. I expect a few hours (ie, overnight) in the fridge will sort them, but I don't expect these to really hit their stride until Sunday - if I can get them to last that long.

The Nestle Club Mixed Berry is a really good block of chocolate, and no, they don't pay me to say that. (But hey, Nestle, if you want to pay me to try out and review your new chocolate flavours, I'd be more than glad to! Cadbury, that goes for you too! lol) It made such an awesome smell while these were baking. Although I think I'll go back to the standard format of melted dark choc, and chopped milk choc, trying a different substitute for the white choc next time (DP doesn't like white choc) I'll probably use the mixed berry choc for the melting again.

Initial still warm taste test: A little chewier than I remembered, but it was a crust piece. Tiramisu chocolate didn't take terribly well to being cooked, went a little crunchy/crumbly/chewy. Good thing I didn't use a lot of it. The berry chocolate was still gooey almost five hours after being taken out of the oven, but as I said, the fridge will fix that.

Good Ol' Steak and 3 veg

I finally got my cooking groove back, but you'll have to wait till the next post to see why. Meanwhile, dinner tonight was simple, potatoes, carrots and half an onion steamed in one container in the microwave, broccoli steamed in a separate microwave container, pan fried steak, and gravy made with pan juices, potato steaming water, the other half of the onion, and a few sliced up 'shrooms. Nothing complex, just good old fashioned cooking, that took around half an hour to put together, and smelt like a million bucks. Didn't taste bad either, if I say so myself.

The picture above was DP's serve, which is why there is no gravy. The kids and I ate ours too quickly for me to think of getting a photo, and there DP's was, on the bench, waiting for him to finish some work he was doing.