Menu Planning

My husband doesn't know this yet (hi honey!), but I've made it a goal this week to not eat out for a single meal. Our finances, while ok, aren't where I'd like them to be, and eating out is getting cut from the menu for the next 6 days (yesterday was Day 1). I have a lot of food in my pantry and fridge, and along with the new kitchen appliances I got for my birthday I think I can manage to use up all my ingredients creatively.

Did I tell you about my new appliances yet? No? They are already starting to revolutionize my cooking. My new slow cooker helped me make my own chicken broth last week, and the ice cream maker has produced a beautiful batch of honey ice cream. The food processor is the only one I haven't tried yet (there are so many attachments...) but I'm going to give it a whirl tonight to help make dinner.

This week has the potential to be culinarily unsatisfying (like the frozen pizza last night), but with a little bit of effort I think it will be great. To help me along, I'm working on developing a menu plan, at least for dinners. There are any number of menu planners available online, but I think my plan will be to work with an old-fashioned white board on the fridge. Simple, cheap, and completely editable. But since I'm not set up with that yet, I thought I would share my dinner plans with all of you!

Monday: Creamy Cauliflower Soup, from Annie's Eats, with homemade croutons (and maybe biscuits!)

Tuesday: Pork Roast with Apples made in the new slow cooker

Wednesday: Spaghetti with homemade sauce

Thursday: Steak, creamy garlic shells, and salad

Friday: Chana Masala, our favorite indian dish

Saturday: Our fake hormel-based cincinnati five-way chili

Many of these are our basic recipes, and I'll eventually want to break away from that. But for now, in my first week of menu planning, it's simpler to start with what I already know and can do without too much stress. From there I'll branch out to newer and exciting things. Like this Blueberry Brie Galette recipe. Or perfecting this absolutely yummy Orange Chicken recipe.

Or maybe I'll just forget about dinner and make this instead.

- Cait

Cranberry Season!

Hello dear readers. I have to say that things have been very busy around here, for any number of reasons, and that business has unfortunately taken away from my time to blog. But I wanted to share two things with you quickly while I had a moment.

The first is that, as many of you predicted, the benzoyl peroxide was the worst bleacher in my bathroom. But! It certainly wasn't the only one. My face wash and body wash both had some minor bleaching associated with them, which would explain the bleaching on my bath towel. The b.p. is certainly to blame for the discoloration on my hand towels though. Home science to the rescue once again!

The second is that, thank the gods, cranberry season is here! I told my husband that I had been day-dreaming about this day for weeks, which isn't an exaggeration. I love cranberries. I love them in breads and muffins and smeared on top of pork and chicken. I love craisins, though I usually think they're too expensive. But I know that autumn is here, and that Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, when the bags of fresh cranberries appear at the grocery store.

Today was that day, dear readers. Or, if it was earlier I hadn't noticed, so for me it was like the first day of cranberry season. I promptly bought two bags, and a few other things I needed for one of my alltime favorite recipes -fresh cranberry sauce.

I have to tell you, folks, my cranberry sauce is a killer. I've been making fresh cranberry sauce for years, though I'll admit to previously being obsessed with the canned stuff. I would eat whole-berry cranberry sauce like it was pudding (and it was probably a little healthier at least). One year, though, my mother came home with a bag of cranberries and said we were going to make our own for Thanksgiving. I was very skeptical, but went along with it. That first time we just used the basic recipe from the back of the bag:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 bag cranberries

Boil water and sugar together until dissolved, throw in the cranberries, boil for about 10 minutes until they've all popped.

Super simple. And pretty delicious, I have to say. But after making it that way for a few years, my darling mother found another recipe, and this is the one I've been working at for years now. The updated recipe looks like this:

1 cup merlot

2 tablespoons high pulp orange juice

1 cup maple syrup

1 bag cranberries

You can put in a little more or less maple syrup, depending on how sweet you like it. But the wine and the orange juice provide some sweetness as well, so I tend to do more like 3/4 cup maple syrup for one recipe.

Seriously, this cranberry sauce will have you eating the entire batch and licking the bowl when you're done. If you're responsible for any side dishes at thanksgiving this year, I recommend giving this a shot. It can be a little expensive, especially with the maple syrup, but I swear it's worth it.

There are other alternate cranberry sauce recipes I can think of. Using any number of juices would probably be delicious, and any sort of sweetener. You can do the whole thing with orange juice, and I bet it would be great. Let me know if you try any other combinations, I'll be happy to hear about them!

Happy cranberry season,

- Cait