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.