A week of new recipes! Meal planning w/b 13 Sept 11

I had left this week's menu planning a bit late - largely owing to being a bit busy, alternating with a marked tendency towards falling asleep at short notice.  Consequently, Monday had rolled into play without any forward planning - or any shopping list - having been done.

Your time will come, my beauties!

Fortunately, I had a fair old selection of recipes that I'd accumulated from my ramblings across the internet.  I'd collected them into a folder entitled "Untried" - which is an intriguing title, I find.  *chuckle*  So, hubby and I went through the folder, chucking out those which I was either dreaming about being suitable (such as those utilising things like brussels sprouts) and those which were just unachievable for whatever reason - usually price-based.

From the wreckage, we managed to accumulate the required six nights of meals (allowing for the fact that Son & heir was demanding Macdonalds with menaces, for one night).


So here's how it's all looking :

Tues : Son - pizza, adults - Goat's Cheese & Squash Risotto

Weds : Cheshire cheese frittata with salad

Thurs : Macdonalds (*sigh*)

Fri : Mediterranean Chicken Stew with Mashed Potatoes

Sat : Chicken & Mushroom Filo Pie with carrots, swede & broccoli

Sun : Beef stroganoff with rice

Mon : Ham & cheese pasta.

Hmmn.  There seems to be a bit of a cheese and chicken bias going on there.

Last night was Pizza night for Son & heir, which gave us the opportunity to indulge in one of hubby's gorgeous risottos.  This one was born of the fact that we still had half a butternut squash left from Sunday's dinner, with no home to go to.  So, he made a risotto with roasted butternut and goat's cheese.  I'll blog about it next, so won't go into detail here - suffice to say, it was gorgeous and I recommend it to you.

Tonight is Frittata, which I've been yearning to make for aeons but hubby has always been dead against it because of the potato content.  This frittata, however, contains no potato!  I found it on www.food4two.wordpress.com which is a source of some fabulous inspiration.  The original recipe included Feta cheese which is regrettably a no-no where Son & heir is concerned.  So I've bought some lovely creamy Cheshire cheese to use instead, hoping that the flavours won't be too far distant yet acceptable to the young sir.

I've also indulged in some of Clarence Court's gorgeous Burford Brown eggs, just to make it a bit more special.  We'll have the frittata along with some salad.  Typically, today the weather has chosen to throw it down with rain (and hubby's out on his electric bike! Yikes!) and it's more like a stew or sausage & mash day, but there we are.  You just can't anticipate what the weather will do - apart from rain, that is.

I think perhaps we should skip lightly over Thursday nights excursion to Macdonalds.  Least said, soonest mended.

This last weekend, because we were having distinct trouble finding a piece of bacon to roast, hubby picked up a chicken to use as a fall-back position.  Consequently, I've got a chicken sitting in my freezer, needing to be used up.

Friday's Mediterranean Chicken Stew, I found on The Kitchn blog.  I will roast the chicken in the day and use half of it for this stew, then the other half for Saturday's Chicken pie.

The original recipe for the stew recommends pairing it with Cinnamon Couscous, but - amazingly - hubby suggested it might be better suited to our palates (with more than a nod towards Son & heir) if we put it with some mashed potato.  I may even include some green vegetables such as broccoli with it.  It's a tomato-based stew, with onion, garlic, oregano, chick peas and olives.  I thought it sounded like a lovely comforting Friday dinner.

Saturday's Chicken & Mushroom Filo Pie has come from Hollowlegs' blog.  I noted this one when she first published the recipe what seems like ages ago now (last January, in fact!) and have taken this long to give it a whirl.  I'm not exactly a one-woman whirlwind, let's just accept it.

Except with me, it's Stroganoff rather than ice cream.

The recipe for the Beef Stroganoff booked in for Sunday lunch, is another one from The Kitchn.  I have tried a couple of different stroganoff recipes just lately but neither of them have satisfied the Stroganoffs of memory.  This one, with its red wine and sour cream, may just be the one.  I'm hopeful, if nothing else!  I'll be making it with shin of beef and I suspect it may well find itself chuckling in the slow cooker.  Well, it's out now - I might as well make use of it, eh?

Hubby is responsible for Monday's Ham & Cheese pasta and, to be honest, I'm not really sure what he's got in mind.  The whole idea is to use up the remains of the pot-roast bacon from this last weekend, which I have consigned to the freezer.  However, he's having kittens about the odd colour the top surface has gone and may well opt to bump this one in favour of something different.  If so, then I'll have a whole heap of ham to use in whopping great doorstep sandwiches over the weekend.  Hmmmn, or ham omelettes.  Or maybe ham and eggs.  Or how about ham & tomato bruschetta?  The possibilities are endless.

.