{Not} Living Vicariously

June's Meal Plan (Eek!)

So, I have the month of June all planned out. However, I realized that it would not be smart of me to tell the world when we might not be at home. So I've come up with a solution in which I tell you everything we plan on eating, but I don't tell you when. I feel a lot better about this.

Some additional background before I get into the meals we have planned this month. We are omnivores. We eat meatless and we eat most types of meat as well. I hope you won't be offended by some of our choices, I'm not offended by what you choose to eat (or not eat). Also, I'm only mentioning the "main" dish here. There are always side items of fruits and veggies that don't get written out in advance. Mainly because (especially this time of year) we frequent the farmer's market and our garden and those side dishes are planned by what looks good.

More background: I also like to vary up what we eat so I have this elaborate spreadsheet that lays everything out and I move things around so we aren't eating three cow recipes one week, and five chicken dishes the next. Balance is good - everything in moderation. However, because there are just two of us, leftovers are very much an actuality in our lives and sometimes a recipe makes more servings than we realize. If it is not freezable, and not everything is, we are not always as varied as I would like. Such is life.

Now, while I do have all of June planned, in order to balance my meals, I have worked in a four week rotation. Luckily, with June 1 being a Friday, it wasn't too hard to know June 1-2 last week, and then I created my rotation around June 3-30. These are the plans:

Breakfast for dinner (1)
Cow (2)
Lamb (1)
Leftovers (8)
Meatless (4)
New recipe (2)
Pig (2)
Poultry (2)
Restaurant (2)
Seafood (2)
Wiggle (2)

That adds up to 28 dinners. As for what they are, I'll let you know in just a moment.

So, backtracking to Friday . . . you already know we had French Dip for dinner. That was served with balsamic onions, roasted potatoes, a fabulous salad brought by the stupendous company, as well as chocolate chip cookies upgraded with layers of peanut butter and/or nutella. Yum, nutella. Last on the menu was wonderful conversation that lasted quite some time.

Saturday, the weather was fantastic, so we headed up to Centennial Park for music, dancing, and a picnic. We'd picked up some sourdough bread and prosciutto at the farmer's market and supplemented that with good cheese, melon, and almonds/cashews for a simple meal on the lawn.

Now for those meals. We will have:

Bar Louie (new restaurant in town)

Beef and Bok Choy

Black Bean Burgers

Black Bean Burritos

Cheese Ravioli with Pesto

Chicken Korma (new recipe)

Cottage/Shepherd's pie

Lamb roast

Leftovers

Pesto Chicken Pasta

Pork Carnitas with Cranberry Chipotle Sauce

Tortellini Salad with Zucchini and Tomatoes

Scrambled eggs with minced ham (cheating a little bit here, my second "pork" meal is also my "breakfast meal" which gives me 3 "wiggles" this month - we need it due to the fact we'll be with family this month which makes planning in advance difficult)

Seafood recipe of family's choice

Spicy Chicken Wraps with Basil Pineapple Salad (Aaron can't wait for this one, we've been waiting for our basil to come in)

Tequila Lime Shrimp with Cilantro Brown Rice

??? (new recipe)

??? (restaurant of family's choice)

Three Wiggle Nights

Wow! this is a really long post. If you read all the way through, good for you. Anything catch your eye? Let us know.

 

Meal Planning Week of May 27th

I'm finishing up May today, but not heading into June yet. My goal is still do all of June at once. Eek! Last week changed (as usual) which will make my June experiment even more interesting . . .

Thursday: leftovers from the cheese enchilada stack (I was not impressed)

Friday: it was our Greek date night and a huge success!

Saturday: we ended up at the lake, and enjoyed a shrimp boil

Sunday: leftovers from the Greek meal

Monday: the Mediterean Pasta with Zucchini we were supposed to have last week - this time with the addition of Hearts of Palm (Aaron keeps messing with my recipe, luckily he improves it each time)

Tuesday: leftovers for me while Aaron enjoys a movie night with the guys

Wednesday: tacos or taco salad

Thursday: beef burritos - to use up the rest of the taco meat and yet it feel like a different meal ;-)

Friday = June 1 (although I know we are having company and serving French Dip)

Meal Planning Week of May 20th

While I must be honest and admit that once again meal plans changed towards the end of the week . . . I'm considering taking on a new meal planning challenge. I have found that we are getting into a bit of a rut by planning weekly and I'm going to actually try to plan out the month of June all at once. Now with that, I also intend to give us a bit more flexibility. So, if we change our minds and swap Monday's meal for Tuesday's . . . that will be ok! So "this week"

Thursday: too hungry to make burritos when we got home from the gym so we threw together this salad from the bag of Publix black beans - it included cucumber, tomato, cheese, and vinegrette along with the black beans. It was also supposed to have carrots however we didn't have any in the house. It was very tasty!

Friday: stayed with the grilled chicken salad

Saturday: "peasant plate"

Sunday: just a simple salad, it is hot and we've been working out in the yard so want nothing heavy

Monday: grilled sausages with peppers and onions (and while this might be weird, we have some aspargus that needs to be eaten so incorporate that as well)

Tuesday: cheese enchiladas in the slow cooker which will be quite an interesting experiment

Wednesday: last church dinner until the Autumn

Thursday: Mediterean Pasta with Zucchini (YUM!) with pita and fruit

Friday: "date night" with some friends, they are coming over for Greek food which will incorporate several of our favorite recipes

Saturday: Probably C.O.R.N. because there are sure to be leftovers from this week

United Way Putt Putt

We are in the midst of our 2013 (no that is not a typo - we really are working on 2013) United Way Campaign at work. As an ambassador, one of my duties is to bring awareness to others of a UW agency and increase enthusiasm for donating to UW. Today was our big activity in which departments signed up to create golf holes in honor of a particular agency. Due to the nature of our job, we chose Friends of TN Libraries as our agency and create a hole with items we could donate to one of the libraries in our state who suffered quite a bit of damage recently during one of our tornados. Not only did we create a golf hole for the event, we decided we would be the "nineteenth hole" and added a tiki bar for effect. Complete with margarita machine (serving frozen lemonade) we were definitely a hit throughout the company. In the interest of preserving some anonymity, I have chosen to only include pictures here with no people. However, a great time was had by all.

Needing a theme, we decided to focus on the time of year and include "beach reading" as well as "summer reading" for our decor.

As you might be able to tell, we used the shape of a question mark, after all who best answers your questions? the library!

Talk about creative - the husband of a co-worker created a page lined ramp for our ball to roll up before going down the hole in front of our "library" birdhouse.

At the end, we had a murder on the beach with a towel provided by a publisher. Surrounded by other beachy items, we had beach reads down pat.

Our sand trap was a work of art, created by sandpaper so as to ensure easy cleanup.

Non-story hour took place in this corner. Yup, we made it happy hour instead!

The tiki bar was the place to be, especially as it reminded everyone of our agency of choice: Friends of TN Libraries.

See the margarita machine at the tiki bar? It was kept busy serving that frozen (lemonade) concocation - why yes, I am a Jimmy Buffet fan ;-). Also being served was "overdue blues" a lovely (non) alcholic mix of blue raspberry mixer with Sierra Mist.

While I was the ambassador and nominally in charge of this activity, my committee totally ran with the idea and created an amazing hole. Not biased at all, I do think we had the best golf hole in the activity and it is all due to their extremely creative minds. The only thing I can take credit for? Is getting the right people on the committee, and even that was completely volunteer so really I take no credit at all. I work with some amazing folks!

Meal Planning Week of May 13th

backing up a bit here . . . and I'm late!

Friday: we had date night at Jim 'N Nick's

Saturday: leftovers b/c restaurants serve too much food!

Sunday: pizza casserole with green salad

Monday: Crispy Herbed Shrimp with Chive Aioli served also the recommended roasted aspargus, tomatoes, and shallots

Tuesday: leftovers from Sunday

Wednesday: dinner at church

Thursday: black bean burritos because I made up a batch of spicy black beans this weekend

Friday: grilled chicken, probably with Cavender's Greek Seasoning - we might also do one of those grilled salads I keep reading about

Saturday: if all goes as planned, I'll be doing some freezer cooking so whatever smells best that day

I should also mention there has been fruit salad almost every night as we went strawberry picking, and have some wonderful melon and kiwi . . . I love this time of year.

Garden Visitors

So someone has discovered our bird feeder and enjoys visiting us now . . .

These pictures were taken through the window so I apologize for the poor quality . . .

However, is he not the most gorgeous creature you've seen in a while?

Just look at that tail!

The extra expense in bird seed is well worth it when we get to enjoy visitors like this!

Miss Cranky Paws

I'm very behind in my blogging and wanted to spend some time this evening catching up - creating multiple posts that could be staggered - be very creative and productive. And I can't get any of my photos to upload. It is probably me . . . but I've tried all the fixes I know and nothing is working. So I'm going to crown myself Miss Cranky Paws and go do something else instead. Hope to be back soon with creative output.

Updated: Typepad finally put out a statement that they were having issues with their new version and Internet Explorer. I tried their suggestions of deleting cookies and removing the compatability mode, that didn't work. So I downloaded Firefox at their suggestion and that seems to hve done the trick. I'm not thrilled with having to change browsers, mainly because I'm required to use IE at work and I'm lazy enough that I like to use the same programs between home and work (if that weren't true I'd so be on the Mac platform at home!). At least I like the Firefox browser. And I'm very glad to know that my issues were not due to my ineptitude. The last few weeks have been very frustrating on the blogging level due to the images not uploading. See you soon with pretty pictures!

Meal Planning Week of May 6th

I'm trying to concentrate on a few things going forward.

One, the go-withs. Choosing the main dish is almost second nature, trying to decide what we're going to eat with it? Can cause quite a dilemma. Two, meatless meals. We've backslid here and meat is creeping back in. While we will never be vegetarian, we definitely don't need to eat as much as meat as we do. Third, quick meals. Our lives have gotten no less busy, however we've stopped having as many meals "ready to eat" or "twenty minutes or less" when we get home from a busy day late. This has caused us to cheat more or eat later, neither of which we enjoy. Therefore, I am reminding myself of these details while we plan our meals for the week.

Sunday: grill with friends

Monday: chicken divan and fruit salad

Tuesday: rojo pork blade steaks(from the CSA) with spicy rice

Wednesday: church dinner

Thursday: leftovers

Friday and Saturday: we haven't decided . . . and that's okay

Garden Vignettes

Even though I've been sick with allergies, life has gone on without me, especially in our garden.

First, our peas are blossoming which should mean good things are in the future!

Next, our raspberry vines are also blossoming. We weren't even sure they would take so this is exciting news.

And our fruit trees? The ones we planted only about 18 months ago and were tiny sticks when they came? Well one of them actually fruited this year. The peaches on there weren't edible yet, but maybe next year they will be!

Last. Remember those crazy birds? Well, I snuck a peek and we have eggs!

What a strange week it has been.

Meal Planning Week of April 29th

I got sick this past week, allergies hit me with a vengeance, so meal plans changed. Instead of making meatloaf for Aaron on Thursday, he decided he wanted to go out to eat . . .

Thursday: P.F. Chang's

Friday: leftovers before going to a scrumptious dessert and coffee wedding shower

Saturday: Aaron created some delicious fish tacos from ingredients found around the house

Sunday: grilled chicken on a bed of salad

Monday: Aaron's meatloaf dinner (finally)

Tuesday: burgers (b/c the chub of ground beef was 2 lbs)

Wednesday: dinner with church

Thursday: grilled chicken

Friday: homemade pizza

Saturday: Cinco de Mayo party