Soooooo there’s a wrench in the plan! My worst nightmare. Right now I’m actually not home, nor will I be until either Tuesday night or Wednesday, because someone sprung a little surprise on me. Not naming names Steve. I got wind of this surprise on Saturday, just enough time to pack and mildly scramble to see if any of the piles of food in the fridge could be preserved via freezer. My dinner preparedness message is coming to life, though, because I think we’ll be just fine based on pantry and freezer meals, for when we return! If I’m screwing up my past/present tense just ignore, please. I’m writing this on Saturday night/Sunday morning (to be posted Monday in my absence) so it’s all very confusing. Complicated by the fact that my internet has been down for the last twelve hours so I’m hoping for the best when I Ctrl+V this baby from Word into the blog system. Above all, just know that I am not trying to trick you into thinking I wrote this post today. I’m all for planning ahead and having something exciting for you to read, but I hate internet blog trickery—not my thing.
Pasta always comes with both an exclamation point and a question mark.
To get to the point, here’s the plan:
- Monday: Gone
- Tuesday: Gone
- Wednesday: Brown rice penne (pantry) with chickpeas, basil pesto (both freezer), lemon, and toasted pine nuts (pantry)
- Thursday: Nacho cheese squash and black bean hot dish (freezer), pickled red onion (from the eBook), romaine salad with lime vinaigrette (have fresh limes and other vinaigrette ingredients)
- Friday: If home, beef stew (freezer) and Brussels sprouts, possibly with my secret freezer bacon stash.
- Saturday: Cook at Hassani’s new apt—maybe mac and cheese?
- Sunday: For brunch/midday, D.G. red flannel hash over corn tortillas (freezer) w/eggs. If dinner needed, leftovers from blog recipe testing.
Speaking of recipe testing, I have two new posts in the queue which exceeded my expectations: a beef stew (the one in the above plan) and entrée veggie and tofu fried rice.
I’ve really been trying to slow down and take in this time I have to learn and be creative, so I think you’ll enjoy the variety and improved photography technicalities in the pics. I hope! What did you all make this week? I wanna hear about it via Insta, the comments, or an email! And that’s not a fake request—I love the complexity and endless variations on dinnertime (or baking time) at everyone’s individual table (or couch, or desk, or car). Hey, if you ate a great takeout meal, I want to see it! Obviously to decide whether it tops the coconut lemongrass chicken (gasp! I ate chicken.) soup and avocado and sweet potato tempura sushi I had Friday night. I also made these gluten-free pecan shortbread cookies, with some Pinot Noir gratine–now that I know you can make wine into a slushy, that’s going to be my life next summer.
The nacho cheese squash and black bean hot dish from the freezer was awesome the first time I made it (original recipe by me), so I’m excited to test that one and get it to you soon! As I said, it tasted amazing, but to be honest, it was a little ugly visually, so I need to rethink the presentation. Don’t be surprised if it ends up in my favorite format—individual sized ramekins—in the final version. I like to make serving sizes and decisions about seconds as difficult as possible. In other words, no seconds unless you go after another whole 1 ½ C serving size…and you better finish it, because no one wants a half eaten dish of someone else’s food as leftovers. Ramekin leftovers are a point of great contention here—there was almost a war when I ate the last one of bacon mac.
Have a great, and maybe meatless, Monday. More recipes and news of the mystery getaway coming soon.
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