geek

Eat Like A Geek – menu planning and a wiki

hashbrowns with sausage and an egg on top

In my quest to organize my family and perhaps foster some independence among the male population in this house I’ve been planning my weekly menu and then posting it on my wiki and emailing it to the guys. My initial intent was to dodge those “what’s for dinner” questions that start the moment they stagger from their beds. But actually it has helped me more than anyone. When I come home from work I know exactly what we’re having for dinner and what I have to do. It is much less chaotic, more relaxing, and because of good planning I’m not letting any of my great CSA veggies go to waste. The other step towards less chaos is spending an hour or two on Sunday doing some of the prep work to make the weekday meals easier. My menu this week was:

Monday, Chicken pot pie and salad
Tuesday, pizza for the boys and minestrone soup for Dave and me
Wednesday, Spaghetti with my red sauce
Thursday, French Hash (aka hash topped with an egg), salad
Friday, Dinner out
Saturday, Puerco Pibil, rice, salad

My prep work on Sunday included making the crust for the pot pie and storing it in the refrigerator. I made the filling too and that entailed poaching 5 chicken thighs, steaming some carrots and potatoes, chopping and sweating some onions, and making a velouté from the stock that I made from poaching the chicken and then simmering the thigh bones for an hour. I purposely steamed 3 times the amount of potatoes I needed for the pot pies so that I could make tonight’s french hash. I also made the minestrone on Sunday, as well as the pizza dough. Everything got jarred or wrapped up and stored in the refrigerator and each day’s meal went off without a hitch. There was a ton of dishes on Sunday so Dave ran the dishwasher a few times but each night this week the clean-up chores have been slight.

French Hash is merely a batch of hash brown potatoes with a couple of Aidell’s sausages diced up and thrown in along with a couple onions. I serve it with a fried egg on top and that’s what makes it “French” (in Paris the egg shows up on almost everything). Some fresh minced parsley and a glass of vin rouge, a fresh salad with excellent olive oil and vinegar drizzled over it and all is right with the world.

September 11, 2008 | Filed Under Local, eggs, cheese, dairy, food, food storage tips, geek fast food, menu, quick and easy | 5 Comments 

The idea of a meal – dinner in a jar

Dinner in a jar

Fall is just around the corner here and it’s not too hard to imagine that the day will soon come when we no longer have such fresh, locally-grown fruits and veg available. This is the time of year that I usually start storing what I can in the freezer. This year I’ve frozen a dozen bags of green beans and 3 quart jars of steamed and pureed carrots for a spicy carrot soup that we love. I also froze a whole cabbage head because I was sharing storage tips with a new friend and she said her mom would always freeze whole cabbage heads to make Golabke (stuffed cabbage rolls); it makes the cabbage tender and malleable so it doesn’t need to be parboiled before stuffing and rolling it up. Thanks for that tip Deb.

Dinner in a jar

Today I added 4 dinner in a jar. Each one has a layer of green beans, a substantial layer of zucchini, a fresh roma-style tomato, and then it’s topped off with chard. I’ve never tried this technique before, although I have frozen each of these components separately with great success (without blanching), except for the chard. But honestly I don’t care too much about what kind of texture it has when it’s defrosted…I know the zucchini and beans will hold their flavor, texture, and color, and the tomato will have flavor, and all I really want from the chard is that almost dirt-like flavor… so I’m hopeful.

Dinner in a jar

I’ll use these to make soup and curry, two of my favorite cold weather foods. If I get the chance I’ll make more of these because they’re easy, pretty, and fun. I think my favorite thing about them is that I can get the proportion of each vegetable absolutely right because I’m not caught up in the actual preparation of a finished meal…it’s simply the idea of a meal and I love ideas.

Do you have any food storing techniques that you’ll share with us?

August 23, 2008 | Filed Under food storage tips, vegetable | 21 Comments 

Seeing red

tomatoes, canning tomatoes

I purchased 140 pounds of roma tomatoes and yesterday I processed them into 80 quarts of ground tomatoes and tomato halves to be used over the next year. Alex helped by riding with me to get the tomatoes and then loading and unloading them in and out of the van. GH helped me round up my supplies and made an emergency trip to the hardware store for canning domes. Powered by extra espresso and a well loaded iPod I managed to make short work of these babies and finished the job in 6 hours.

tomatoes, canning tomatoes

For those of you that haven’t canned tomatoes and are curious I’ll give you a quick overview of my technique*.

  1. Load dishwasher with jars and lids and run on the sanitize cycle with heated dry.
  2. Wash the tomatoes.
  3. Cut their heads off.
  4. If processing as ground tomatoes run them through the food processor, skin and all. Fill jars. Add a dash of lemon juice and salt.
  5. If processing as half tomatoes, cut them in half and stuff them into the jars and top off with a mixture of water, salt, and lemon juice.
  6. Clean the rims of the jars and place a hot dome lid on top of each. Screw on the ring.
  7. Using a steam canner load 7 jars in and bring to boil.
  8. Once you’ve got a good boil, set the timer for 30 minutes.
  9. When the timer goes off remove the jars, refill canner and process another batch.

*NOTE: my technique is not similar to the USDA or FDA methods or recommendations…I’ve done it this way for years with great success.

September 2, 2007 | Filed Under Local, canning and preserving, ethical eating, favorite products, food, food storage tips, fruit and nuts, humor, instruction, surveys, vegetable | 11 Comments 

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