Mid-May Meal Plan/Recipe Reviews

I tried several a bunch of new recipes last week with a great deal of success.  Yay!  I love when that happens.  :)

For Mother's Day brunch I tried making sausage.  A first for me.  I took a pound of ground chicken thighs, added half of a large apple, finely shredded, along with 1 Tablespoon of maple syrup, a teaspoon of salt, some pepper, 1/4 tsp. allspice and 2 tsp. rubbed sage.  It was based on a recipe I had found online.  Easy, quick and delicious, healthy to boot, though you'd never guess that from eating it.  Matthew took seconds and Matthew has never been a big meat eater here.  Right away he asked me to make them again soon, a sure sign of a successful recipe.

I also tried Momofuku's Compost Cookies.  Oh my goodness!  Wonderful, weird, but awesome tasting cookie.  Potato chips, pretzels, butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, toffee, coffee, graham cracker crust crumbs, you get why they're called Compost Cookies.  Matthew and Jacob declared them the best cookies ever.  Mark, when he first heard about them, decided they sounded disgusting and that he'd pass.  Then, after all the blissful exclamations from the kids he decided to try one...and then another, and another...so, so good!  Matthew drew me a picture of him eating the cookie, then, after another chunk of one, wrote me a letter about them.  What a cutie!  I can not wait to make more treats from their cookbook.  (Sorry Rebekah, it only made 19, after serving them for brunch and sending some home with Matty there weren't enough to send.  :(  Bad Mommy.  I'll make them again when you're home.)

Nigella Lawson's buttermilk roast chicken was delicious and easy.  We all loved it.  There's a little, little hint of sweetness from the maple syrup combined with good, juicy, roasted chicken.  Nice and tender, I'll definitely be making this again, and I'll probably try it on the grill as well.

Smitten Kitchen's green bean salad was so unusual and so exciting.  I was surprised at how much I loved it, seeing as I'm not a huge veggie lover.  Green beans, fennel, celery, red onion and roasted almonds.  Yum!  It was exciting to see Jacob's palate expanding, he tasted the fennel and knew there was lemon juice on it as well as sensing the red onion in the vinaigrette.  Actually, the red onion is pickled in a vinaigrette, then tossed with the green beans and other veggies for the salad.  Too much red onion flavor in the dressing for me as well.  Next time I'll make a separate batch of dressing to tossed the salad in, but I will definitely still pickle the red onion.  So good and fresh and different.

The Yakitori was really good as well.  This one worked great on the grill, I'll be doing it again soon too.  We're supposed to be upper 70's lower 80's for a while and things that can go on the grill will be perfect.  I did not cook the chicken on skewers, nor did I use the scallions, just threw the marinated chicken on the grill.  Next time I'll double the marinade and set aside half so I can baste throughout the grilling time.

Finally, remember the Macadamia Crusted Cod with Orange-Butter Sauce that's been hanging around my meal plan forever and ever and not because I keep making it?  It was one of those dishes I kept putting on my meal plan and kept bumping right back off again.  I think I was intimidated by it.  I shouldn't have been.  So easy.  Very quick, maybe 30 minutes or so, and absolutely delicious.  Jacob, Mark and I loved it.  I think Julianna would have if I hadn't warned her off about the possibility of bones in the cod.  (There weren't, the only one I found was the one when I was breading it.  Go figure.)  Jacob was starving at dinner time and immediately grabbed the biggest piece.  I cringed because I didn't think he'd take more than a bit or two, he's not much of a protein eater.  Was I wrong!  He ate all of that big piece and took another piece as well.  I'll definitely be making this one again.  If you try it, do not skip the orange sauce.  Yes, it has a decadent amount of butter in it, but holy cow is it awesome.  We were all drizzling it on anything and everything on our plates.  Yummy!  I served the fish with a homemade brown and orzo rice pilaf with apricots and browned butter.  Soooo good too.  Next time I'll definitely forget about the browned butter (*sob*) too much butter in the meal to be healthy and I wouldn't want to give up the orange sauce, but for last night it was perfect.  I did not realize you can saute shallots, onions, garlic, whatever, right in the rice cooker.  I just sauteed shallots in the cooker, added brown rice and orzo and toasted that for 10 minutes or so, then added chicken broth and let it do it's thing.  I love my rice cooker and it's fun exploring what it can do.
 
Here's the meal plan for this week:  

Thursday:  spaghetti & meatballs, salad, baguette
Friday:  Homemade pizza
Saturday dinner:  steak, baked potatoes, mushrooms & onions, asparagus
Sunday lunch:  Egg Tarts, hash browns, fruit
Sunday dinner:  out
Monday:  Chicken wrap sandwiches (PW's crispy chicken strips, mustard sauce, julienned carrots, lettuce)
Tuesday:  Southwestern Chicken Salads
Wednesday:  salmon, rice pilaf, sugar snap peas
Thursday:  BBQ sweet/spicy bacon chicken, rice, baby broccoli


I'm curious about the sweet/spicy bacon chicken as well as the egg tarts that got bumped from last week.  I'll let you know how they are.


Have a great week.

Check out Organizing Junkie's for more meal plans.