1. Mom’s Chicken w/ Swiss Chard Tart
2. Salty Sugared Salmon w/ Rice Cooker Lemon Rice
3. Bacon Swiss Quiche (Make 2, freeze 1.)
4. Chicken with Mustard Wine Cream Sauce w/ Rice Cooker Riz au Parmesan
5. Sesame Chicken with Garlic Sauce and Broccoli (tweaked) w/ brown rice
6. Out of Town (Pepper Mill!)
7. Out of Town (Leftovers, etc.)
Mock Tuna Salad

Last week didn’t go completely as planned.  We ended up eating leftovers for two meals due to my hectic choir schedule.  Thankfully choir is now back to once a week which should free up my schedule a bit.  Meal 2 is planned for choir night this week.  The salmon only requires a quick broil to cook and the rice can be put in the rice cooker in the morning. 

I had a number of goals this week with meal planning aside from accommodating choir.  Now that the market has started, I’ve got the goal of using up market produce each week.  This goal (and challenge) will be in effect until Thanksgiving.  This week gives me a slow start and I’ve only got to use up Swiss chard (meal 1), green onions (meals 3 and 5), and lots and lots of eggs (meals 1 and 3). 

In the hopes of adding more brown rice to our diet, I finally invested in a rice cooker so this adds another goal to my meal planning – use it.  I also picked up The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, so meals 2 and 4 feature recipes from that tome.  Both of those recipes will use white rice, I guess my goal of eating more brown rice isn't going so well yet! 

I’m also going to work on getting fish onto our dinner plates at least once a week and hopefully twice.  I suggested to Lance that we have a vegetarian meal a week and he counter offered with “can we just eat more fish instead?”  So we’ll be doing that while Art is away. 

The Mock Tuna Salad is a test recipe.  I’m going to be visiting my brother, the vegetarian, later in the month and I wanted to take some good lunch foods with me to share.  The “mock tuna” part of the salad is chickpeas, which I love, so I decided that I need to test the recipe out before making it for my brother. 

Last, but not least, I’ll be trying out sourdough bread again.  My last attempt, which I didn’t post, was to follow a tried and true No Knead Sourdough recipe from the internet.  And it didn’t turn out any differently than my not tried and true attempts.  For my next attempt I’ll be taking Lance’s advice and using a more bread-shaped vessel in which to bake the bread. 

Maybe it will be a busy week after all…

1. Grilled Flank Steak Fajitas
2. hamburgers w/ Mac and Cheese
3. Chicken and Broccoli Stir-Fry w/ rice
4. Sesame Chicken with Garlic Sauce and Broccoli (Tweaked.) Leftovers since there are a lot in the fridge and I'm super busy with choir this week.
5. Leftovers
6. Out with Mom and Dad!
7. Breakfast: Buttery Cream Cheese Coffee Cake w/ scrambled eggs We're opting to eat breakfast out.
Dinner: Chicken Parmesan Pot Pie

This week is a mish-mash of things.  We had planned to have company over last Saturday and to grill fajitas again, but then I got sick.  So we canceled our plans and ended up ordering pizza.  We’ll be grilling fajitas tonight instead, and then we’ll have infinite leftovers.  Meal 2 is also a holdover from last week. 

This week is normal in terms of Art’s travel but, if I’m feeling well and don’t actually have strep throat, I’ve got choir four nights this week which includes the concert.  My parents are coming for the concert and we’ll be eating out afterward for meal 6.  They’ll also be joining us for breakfast on Saturday so I’ve got coffee cake planned.  Edit: We'll be eating breakfast out instead of at the house. 

Meal 3 is from the How to Boil Water cookbook, meal 4 is an experiment to tweak a recipe I’ve made previously, and the dinner for meal 7 is Art’s request for the week.  While planning it didn't really occur to me that meals 3 and 4 are pretty similar, but oh well. 

Here’s hoping I’ll heal quickly and be able to do everything I need to do this week.

1. Swedish Meatballs w/ egg noodles w/ salad
2. Italian Baked Chicken and Pasta
3. Not a Slab o’ Steak Sandwich
4. Pan Seared Salmon with Sautéed Spinach and Crème Fraiche w/ Super Simple Oven Potatoes
5. Leftovers
6. Chicken Sancoche w/ salad
7. Grilled Hamburgers w/ Mac and Cheese We ordered pizza since I'm sick :(

My menu is delayed this week.  I blame SimCity 4.  I have the usual planning challenges this week.  Four nights without Art and two or three nights of choir. 

I did have a few other goals with meal planning this week.  I’ve been craving Mac and Cheese so it’s on the menu.  Art enjoys grilling at least once while he’s home, so we’ll be doing burgers on the grill.  I also have a bunch of steaks in the freezer that I want to make a dent in, so that’s the inspiration for meal 3.  I’ll also be making fish during the week, since we didn’t have any last week. 

Since the cookbooks I grabbed weren’t offering any inspiration this week I turned to the internet and my own recipe files.

In other exciting food news we ended up getting an additional chest freezer for future bulk cow purchases and also a rice cooker to make the transition to brown rice a bit easier!

1. Beef Wellington w/ salad
2. Slow Cooker Orange Chicken w/ rice w/ veggies
3. Chicken Dijon w/ rice w/ Parmesan-Roasted Broccoli
4. Pan-Glazed Chicken with Basil w/ Risotto with Peas and Prosciutto
5. Leftovers
6. Chicken Tetrazzini w/ salad
7. Grilled Fajitas w/ Mexican rice (This will probably be made with flank steak.)

Um, yeah.  As you can tell I haven’t gotten very far with my meal planning for the week.  Why?  Because I had to grocery shop on Saturday for Saturday’s dinner (meal 6 in last week’s menu) and I opted to get food for Monday of this week (meal 2) so I’m not shopping for the rest of the week’s food until Tuesday.  This means I get to procrastinate meal planning and, of course, that’s what I’m doing. 

I’m sure the rest of the week will include something with fish and perhaps something with the crème fraiche my grocery store just started stocking.  It's a pretty standard week - one night of leftovers due to the craziness of Thursdays and Art gone for most of the week due to business travel.  There will probably be another attempt at sourdough bread and more Chickpeas with Sausage and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. 

For what it’s worth, I do have meal 1 of next week planned already, since it will be another Game Day.  I’ll be making Spinach and Artichoke Dip, Slow Cooker BBQ, Potato Salad, and Spinach Bacon Salad.  All things I’ve already posted here and all things that include bacon.  That wasn't planned, it just happened, I swear. Game Day was canceled :(

In other food news, I’ve started looking into buying cow in bulk. I’ve found a farm in the area that sells 1/4 cows and I think, maybe, that I could fit 1/4 cow into my freezer.  Maybe.  I’ve contacted the farm to get a cubic footage estimate and then I’ll go from there.  This is very exciting to me, I’d love to get locally and humanely raised cow! 

I’ll edit this post later in the week with the rest of the meal plan.  Maybe tomorrow.  When I’m done procrastinating.

Edit: Meal planning ended up taking no time at all.  Why?  Because I decided that, in these few weeks left before market season begins, I should revisit some of the earliest recipes I’ve shared here. Not only because we enjoyed them and it would be nice to feast on their deliciousness again, but also to take new, better pictures with my mad skillz.  (Okay, so I don’t have mad skillz, but I do have a much nicer photography setup than I started out with!)  Sadly this means I won’t be posting many new recipes during the week, but I will be posting many new photographs!