Lately I’ve been almost obsessed with mealtime. Whether it’s meal planning, baking bread, or delving into more old-fashioned cooking, I’ve been putting a lot more thought into our meals. It’s not just quarantine related either, although it may be a little more at the front of my mind because of everything going on around us. I feel like I’ve been spending my weekends focused on food in one way or another. Today for instance… I’m planning to prep loaf #3 of sourdough this evening. Right now I’ve got a pot of beans on the stove. And I mean a pot of ‘real’ beans – as in dried from a bag, nothing out of the can – simmering in homemade beef stock . A fresh skillet of made-from-scratch cornbread just came out of the oven. I even walked it through the living room so the boys could get a good whiff. Not that they could probably smell it over the six cloves of garlic that are in beans, but it got their attention none the less. Those’ll be paired up with smoked BBQ pork chops and fresh veggies for dinner.
Since I was flipping through recipes looking for inspiration for tonight I went ahead and meal planned the rest of the week out. With all of the COVID precautions going on, both my husband and I’s work schedules have shifted. Starting Monday he’ll be working seven 12-hour night shifts while I work until 5:00 each day so dinners need to be fairly quick and easy this week. Tomorrow is the last chance we’ll have for awhile for anything slow smoked on the pellet grill so the hubs pulled a brisket from the freezer to thaw out. Leftovers will be used one night (maybe Wednesday) for a nice “steak” and potato salad. The younger one has requested tacos on Tuesday which is hard to deny. Spicy (or not so spicy) Chinese Chicken & Noodles and Swedish Meatballs Pasta seemed like good recipes to try for the first time. I’ll make the meatballs tomorrow so it’ll save time later in the week, and they’ll be a good use for the half pound of leftover ground pork that’s in the frig from Thursday night’s German Meatballs with fried taters and sauerkraut. To round out the work week we’ll have some cubed beef and gravy with mashed potatoes. I’ll save this meal for whichever night we run shortest on time. The beef is already cooked and canned stew meat just waiting in my “pantry” space atop the the kitchen cabinets. All it needs is to be heated up with a little flour and water added to make gravy. Some potatoes in the Instant Pot with some sweet peas and voila!
And I can’t keep my mind off of preserving produce! I’m sure it’s because I’m ready to plant my garden but waiting for that last frost date to pass. So I’m thinking ahead on what my harvest will be like and I’ll what I’ll do with it. Pickling and fermentation are on my list for this summer. I thought I’d start with some pickled red onions. I really really dislike onions, but a few months back I had a salad with some on it and they were delicious! It just so happened that a red onion ended up in my grocery basket this week so maybe I’ll get that started tomorrow too.
Looks like pork chops are comin’ off the grill so catch ya’ll later! Mmmmm…..