Friday, November 06, 2015

What's for Dinner?

It was a busy week at our house. Between the in-laws & Halloween, I'm lucky the kids ate anything with any nutritional value whatsoever.

Next week I might try photographing some food. Or not.

On Halloween we usually combine with several other families, and this year it was here. I made hot dogs and beans, and everyone else brought stuff. Like a potluck for kids. Except that the beans never. Finished. Cooking. I'm not kidding. I used a recipe that specified "no soaking" but I DID soak them because I was using a different bean than specified. They needed to cook in the crockpot for eight hours. At 7.5 hours I moved them onto the stove and cranked up the heat. They still weren't ready after TEN hours. There were enough sides that no one suffered, but sheesh! Finally, before Clint & I turned in, I put them back in the crockpot on low, added a little more water, and left them for the night. They were ready in the morning. (The last time I used the same recipe, which has a caution & I had no problems--but don't try it with pintos maybe?) For dessert there was, what else? Candy.

Sunday for dinner, we had BEANS! And Beer bread (thanks, Simcha!) made from this recipe, doubled. And there was more candy.

Monday I took some initiative (and a massive can of tomatoes from Costco) and doubled this recipe for marinara sauce. I really like the Budget Bytes blog, in case you can't tell. For dinner we added frozen meatballs, pasta, & bread and called it a day. Maybe some candy was eaten. I was looking forward to leftovers for lunch on Tuesday, but I wasn't fast enough.

Tuesday we stayed on the pasta and beef theme and had ground beef stroganoff. This recipe comes from my old BH&G cookbook, only I sub ground beef for whatever cut they call for. We had it over egg noodles and with broccoli on the side. Just plain old steamed broccoli.

Wednesday was "Kids eat leftovers, Mom & Dad grab something after dance class" night. What we grabbed were burritos from Freebirds. Their mild salsa was spicier than I was expecting(or else I didn't have the mild salsa), but it was otherwise very tasty.

Thursday was yet another adventure in beans, with Bacon, Bean, & Potato Soup, served with Sweet Potato Cornbread.  Wow, these were yummy, even after I boiled all the water out of the soup (yikes!) and had to move the unburned portion to a fresh pot. We were all put off more by the burned smell than by the taste, which was just slightly smoky. I didn't turn the heat down enough after I brought the soup to a boil, completely my fault. Other than that, the only thing I'd do differently is crumble the bacon before adding it back to the soup, because bacon in every bite, right? Even with the mishap, this meal was a hit, and the kids LOVED the cornbread.

Tonight will be Vegetable Enchilada Casserole and salad, maybe chips & salsa, too, since I haven't had enough of those this week. I really haven't--there were some on Saturday, but the chips ran out before the salsa, which is a party foul, and I didn't get any.

Have a good week!

Yes, we still have candy. Part of the reason our friends like to come here is because this neighborhood is crazy loaded with kids & candy. It's insane. I usually send my kids' candy to work with Clint after the first week because we need to detox.