Menu Plan -- November 24-30, 2015

Tuesday:  dinner with in-laws
Wednesday:  take-away night
Thursday:  Ham & Mac Bake, Green Peas
Friday:  Cheesy Egg Wedges, Chips & Salsa
Saturday:  Butter-Baked Chicken, Cornbread Dressing, Green Beans, Very Berry Frozen Yogurt
Sunday:  Tostada Pizzas, Very Berry Frozen Yogurt
Monday:  do-it-yourself dinner

Passing Through

This past weekend I attended a memorial service.  I had never met the deceased.  That's not unusual; I've been to funerals and/or memorials for parents or other relatives of friends or co-workers I never had the pleasure of meeting.  But in this instance I had met neither the deceased, nor anyone else there, before the service.

For a shy, sensitive, introvert like myself, it was an etiquette minefield -- meeting friends and family at a memorial service for the first time.  What do you say?  What can you say?  Letitia Baldridge and Miss Manners let me down in this instance.  Everything you can possibly say at these kinds of gatherings is hollow and empty, not because you want it to be, but because there is nothing to say.  This weekend, everything I could say felt wrong, hollow, and empty.  Listening to everyone sharing stories and memories of someone who sounded like a great person made my words of condolence sound cliché and meaningless.  I had nothing to offer, nothing to share, and nothing to add to the conversation, and as a result it felt as though saying anything would almost certainly be the wrong thing.

So, to the loved ones at the memorial service, this is what I wanted to say.

I am truly sorry for your loss.  I never had the pleasure of meeting your friend, and being there, listening to you all talking with such love and delight made me feel an emptiness in my heart because I will never get to.  Thank you for sharing your friend with a complete stranger.  I'm sorry if my words, here, there or anywhere are wrong.  Sometimes words are simply inadequate to convey what I really want to say.

It is said that everyone who passes through your life leaves footprints.  Some people leave footprints even if they do not realize they have done so.  And some people leave footprints long after everyone else thinks they possibly could.  I feel so very special for being able to share with you what was, to this outsider looking in, a joyful celebration of someone's life.  It feels incredibly self-indulgent to say, and I feel as though I have no right to say any of this, but your friend definitely left footprints on the brief pass through in my life.

Please know I honestly mean it.

Menu Plan November 17-23, 2015

Tuesday:  Navy Bean Tabbouleh, Deviled Eggs, Parmesan Pita Chips
Wednesday:  Salisbury Steaks with Mushroom Gravy, Baked Potatoes, Green Beans
Thursday:  Baked Potato Soup, Dill Bread
Friday:  Scrambled Eggs, Dill Bread Toast, Fruit Salad
Saturday:  Saucepan Mac & Cheese, Garlic Toasts, Glazed Lime Cake
Sunday:  Ham & Cheese Biscuit Pockets, Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Glazed Lime Cake
Monday:  do-it-yourself dinner

My Week in the Kitchen -- November 10-16

This was my plan for the week in the kitchen:

Tuesday: Lentil Burgers, Tater Tots

Wednesday: Savory Chicken Squares, Green Beans

Thursday: Fried Eggs with Pesto Polenta, Fruit Salad

Friday: Sweet & Sour Noodles, Spring Rolls

Saturday: take-away night

Sunday: Cheese Enchiladas, Spanish Rice, Chocolate Pudding

Monday: do-it-yourself dinner

This is how the week actually went.

Tuesday:

I made the Lentil Burgers as planned.  I think they came out very well, even though I had to add more water than the recipe called for.  They weren't quite as soft as usual, so maybe the additional water did something unexplainable and unexpected to make the resulting patties firm.  I found some cheese rolls for the burgers and that was an excellent choice.  I had a small Roma tomato, which I sliced thinly for the burgers and I added some Dijon mustard and homemade pickles to mine.  The Tater Tots were frozen and fairly standard, though they seemed to have a slightly different seasoning blend.

Wednesday:

Savory Chicken Squares are a Pillsbury Bake-Off winning recipe.  The original recipe uses Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough to make pocket sandwiches.  I can't get the crescent roll dough, and don't really like how rich the squares are when I use puff pastry.  So I make Savory Chicken Cups, by lining muffin cups with a few layers of phyllo dough and then proceeding with recipe as instructed.  I think they actually turn out better than the Bake-Off Squares, and certainly more crunchy.  I paired three rich cups with a serving (give or take) of Frenched green beans, which was a very nice meal.

Thursday:

Dearest had to work late on Thursday, and since he's the egg frier, I switched Thursday & Friday in my plan.  I've made the Sweet & Sour Noodles several times before.  This time I had to substitute my preferred kind of Chinese egg noodles, and I was not really pleased with the noodles.  I think I overcooked them as they were starting to turn a bit mushy and the whole dish was a bit on the glue-y side.  I tried a new brand of frozen spring rolls and was very disappointed with them.  Even after baked for twice as long as the instructions indicated, the tools were just barely warm and incredibly greasy and soggy.  I re-heated dearest's serving in the oven for an additional 20 minutes and I think they were marginally better.  On the whole, though it is one of my favorite meals, this particular night's Sweet & Sour Noodles and spring rolls was frankly, disappointing.

Friday:

I love eggs and grits, and while I have grits in my pantry, I actually needed to use up the last of a jar of prepared pesto, so I thought I'd make the pesto polenta and serve it under the fried eggs.  I think that, with a fruit salad would have been a good, complete meal in and of itself, but at the last minute I decided it needed something more, so Friday morning I whipped up a loaf of whole-wheat crumpet bread.  That was a good choice because the polenta didn't absorb as much of the yummy, runny egg yolk as I thought it would and I needed something to use to sop up the last bits.  I had planned a salad of apples, mandarin oranges, nectarines, and banana, but my banana was sporting a coating of hot pink furry mold so I decided to skip the banana portion of the salad.  And that meant there would be more nectarine than dearest would prefer, so I decided to make two separate fruit blends.  I made mine with diced nectarines and mandarin oranges and dearest's with apples and mandarin oranges.  I think it was a good decision.

Saturday:

I had planned this as take-away night because I scheduled Saturday as the day we would deep clean the kitchen in preparation for our upcoming rental inspection.  And after getting the kitchen all bright, shiny, and deep down clean, I did not want to mess it up by cooking a meal in it.  We headed to a local take-away where dearest was keen to try the veggie burger.  As it turned out, the take-away was out of the veggie burger patties, and the proprietor was not overly impressed with them anyway.  Dearest ended up having a corn jack (kind of like a cross between a corn fritter and an egg roll).  I had a cheese burger  and we split an order of fries.  After dinner, which was far less satisfying and filling than take-away dinners usually are, we had the last two chocolate-malt ice cream bars for dessert while watching, and laughing through, Nicholas Cage's conspiracy theory movie, National Treasure.

Sunday:

Ohh my these were wonderful!  It was just like being at a Mexican restaurant, except I had to do the work.  I could seriously have drunk the entire two cups of chili gravy.  I resisted, but I did lick the last bits from the pan before I washed it.  The enchiladas were just like restaurant ones.  I was really surprised how easy the recipe was, and how very much like restaurant food it was.  I am definitely adding those to my regular rotation.  The Spanish rice was quite nice as well.  I added half a red onion and half a green bell pepper to the rice while it was cooking and then added the tomato sauce blend.  It was very good, and I'll have to remember that variation in the future.  I found the chocolate pudding recipe a while ago in my Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book and after making it the first time wondered what had taken me so long.  The resulting pudding is so much better than the instant stuff and so much easier than egg yolk-based puddings which are finicky.  This one is a cornstarch pudding and practically fool-proof.  It made for the perfect ending to a fantastic meal.  And there are four more servings for later.

Monday:
Dearest works late most Mondays so I almost never plan a cooked meal on Monday.  I usually use the day to finish up leftovers or just cobble something together that sounds good when dinner time rolls around.  If I'm doing anything that would make enough for two, I'll usually let dearest know so he can choose to opt in if he so desires.  For this Monday, I had leftovers from Sunday's dinner.  The corn tortillas had absorbed a bit of moisture from the sauce and the crispness was not entirely returned when I reheated them in the oven.  But they were still excellent, and tasted just like leftovers brought home in a doggy bag from a Mexican restaurant.  I will say my leftover rice was way better than restaurant rice. It was moist and just about like fresh cooked, where restaurant leftover rice tends to be dry and crunchy, when if sprinkled with water and reheated covered.  So the enchiladas were great on the night they were cooked and they were good as leftovers.  Yep, that's a keeper of a recipe!

On the whole it was a pretty good week in my kitchen; not the best, and there were some disappointments, but it was a pretty good week.

Tex-Mex for a Homesick Gal

One of the message boards on which I post regularly has a monthly challenge.  The idea is to pick one (or more) recipes from a cookbook or cooking blog, make it and report back.

This month the chosen book/blog was The Homesick Texan.  This was a pretty good choice for me, because I am often homesick for Tex-Mex, and most recipes have ingredients I can't get easily here.  I thought this choice would be good, if only for figuring out what I could make with what I can get.

I flipped through the index at the blog and found Cheese Enchiladas and knew instantly that was my test recipe for this month.  I planned them for dinner tonight.  Even though I had read the recipe, I thought the process was more involved and complicated than it turned out to be.  Sometimes that is the way, though -- it takes much longer and is much more complicated to describe a process than it is to actually complete the process.  But I think it might have helped that I had a rough idea of the process being described.

I made a few changes to the recipe.  Firstly, I added half a bell pepper (simply because I had it and it needed to be used) to the cheese & onion mix.  Secondly, I did not fry the tortillas before rolling them; I brushed them lightly with vegetable oil and heated in the microwave for about 45 seconds.  And thirdly, I cut the amount of chili powder in the chili gravy by half.  Even then dearest said it was just on the safe side of too spicy.  In fact, he would not object if I make the recipe again (and there is no question that I'll be making these again) if I cut it back a bit more and/or offer sour cream at the table to help neutralize some of the chili heat.

As I was licking the last bit of chili gravy out of the pan while cleaning up, I told dearest that this dish was one I would be happy to serve to company.  That lead me to dreamily planning a "Combo Platter" dinner night with friends.  I could see serving the enchiladas on a plate with rice and refried beans, and perhaps a crispy taco, the way they are served at American Tex-Mex restaurants.  I'd make a roasted tomato salsa and have that and tortilla chips on the table.  If I liked guacamole, I'd have that as an optional topping for the enchiladas, but I don't, which means leftovers of that item would be wasted, and I really hate food waste, so no guacamole.  But there will be a bowl of sour cream, should anyone need it.

Yes, I'd be happy to have a "Combo Platter" night.  Especially if it were followed by a dessert of creamy pudding, panna cotta, or fried ice cream, and a spirited game of Trivial Pursuit or Clue(do).

Doing Something

Yesterday, when the news of the attacks in Paris broke, I was, like many people, glued to the tv for a while, trying to get information and hoping to make sense of the situation.  And like many people, I was frustrated because neither goal could be accomplished.

The media didn't know anything new or helpful to report so they resorted to speculation to fill what would otherwise be dead air or anchors, announcers, and/or as-close-to-the-scene-as-possible reporters endlessly repeating what little they did know.  Dearest has a rule that with breaking news stories, he watches until he has learned nothing new for an hour and then turns off the tv.  We implemented that rule yesterday.  We watched for about three hours when we first woke up, and when we stopped learning anything new, we turned off the tv in favor of podcasts while we deep cleaned the kitchen.  While kitchen surfaces were drying, we checked the news and finding there was still nothing new to report, we turned off the tv and put on another podcast.

I began to wonder if that was callous and unfeeling.  After much thought, I decided it was self-preserving.  A person can only absorb so much horror.  Three hours into coverage of breaking news, with nothing new to be reported, the images and words began to wash over me and become part of the background.  Either that or as I had done last year with the attacks on Canadian Parliament, I become so involved in the story that I cease to function entirely and absorb everything.  For my own sanity, I had to stop.  I had to turn it off.

This morning, I woke to find the world is still talking about the Paris attacks, with good reason.  But I also woke to find controversy had broken out as a result of individual responses to the attacks.  People were now fighting with each other over whether the tributes are actually doing any good.  People were questioning the motives and effectiveness of prayers.  People were becoming targets of social media attacks because they changed their profile pictures to the Eiffel Tower or the French flag.  The story became less about the attacks, victims, and survivors and more about innocent, but removed people's responses to the attacks.

In times when we can do nothing else but pray, we must do what we can.  And in the era of social media and instant access, many people feel the need to make an overt show of support, simply because it is all they can do.

Personally, my response was to post a picture I took when I was in Aruba in January.  It was immediately after the attacks in Paris on the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  I had taken a sightseeing tour of the island and at a stop to see a natural bridge formation, I noticed someone had written in the sand "Nous Sommes Charlie."  I took a picture of it, both because I felt the sentiment at the time, and because I thought it was a worthy tribute.  In response to the attacks yesterday, I posted that photo.  No one commented on it.  I am not sure if that was because everyone forgot that 10 months ago we were all Charlie, or because I don't have that many Facebook friends.  But either way, the post and tribute was not for the world to see and comment, but for my own personal reaction to the events unfolding.  It was my own personal acknowledgement that it was all I could do.

In the overall scheme of things, my posting of a picture I took 10 months ago in the wake of a different, but all too similar, attack on Paris did nothing.  It did not take away my feelings of overwhelming helplessness.  It did not help bring the perpetrators to justice.  It did not ease the suffering of victims, survivors or their families.  It did, make me feel as though perhaps my thoughts and prayers were not falling on deaf ears.  And for one brief moment, it made me feel as though I was a part of something that might do some good.

Nous Sommes Charlie.

Nous Sommes Paris.

Nous Sommes le Monde.

Menu Plan November 10-16, 2015

Tuesday:  Lentil Burgers, Tater Tots
Wednesday:  Savory Chicken Squares, Green Beans
Thursday:  Fried Eggs with Pesto Polenta, Fruit Salad
Friday:  Sweet & Sour Noodles, Spring Rolls
Saturday:  take-away night
Sunday:  Cheese Enchiladas, Spanish Rice, Chocolate Pudding
Monday:  do-it-yourself dinner

November Morning

This morning dawned grey, drippy, misty and foggy -- a true November morning.  It really felt more like coming fall than coming spring.  The fog took most of the day to lift the little bit it did, though it never truly dispersed above the tree line on the golf course I can see from my back porch.

It was a very Lynn kind of day.

Stating the Obvious

If you have to make a comment to someone about their news, which has not been shared with the general public, do it as private message.

Or, in simpler terms:

If it's not your news, don't say anything!