The other element is that last week was a scrounge week where I didn't make meal plans and we just tried to make meals from what we found in the house, or eat out. I truly missed making real meals and having a balance of protein and vegetables.
So, when I started to plan meals, I stepped away from the typical "go to" recipes and searched out for perhaps longer, more involved, but definitely higher scale meals.
First up was Easy Garlic Chicken and a Sunburst Carrot Salad on the side. Both were tasty, but the carrot salad was exceptionally good.
On Sunday we had a chicken cacciatore that we made in the crockpot.
Monday we made our own red pepper hollandaise sauce that we enjoyed over salmon. We also had a citrus salad on the side.
Tuesday was another crockpot meal. We made a bison and barley soup.
Wednesday we ate out, and on Thursday we made our own ravioli. We tried a new flour this week that was advertised to make better pasta because it is stretchier. The taste was fine, but it was a lot harder to work with in some ways, even as it was easier in other ways. We think that next time we will do half of a regular flour and half this kind. The filling was great though, cream cheese with chives and parsley. It reminded us of the filling of cream cheese wontons.
(Not as pretty as our previous ravioli because of the different kind of noodles).
Friday we made our most involved meal of the week- braised artichokes and peas over polenta. We both agreed that it was our favorite tasting meal of the week, though not my favorite picture.
After a week of higher quality meals, we agree that we enjoyed both the cooking and the eating of this level of food, and I will probably continue to incorporate at least a few of these kind of meals as I make meal plans.
We did decide that at some point we should get a non-stick pan, because it seems pretty important for the sauces. Also, we need to learn more how to make the food look nice on the plate, besides just making it taste good.
There really are two main problems about cooking like this that limit our ability to make it the normal kind of meals in our house. One thing is that it does take substantially more time to make and prep each of the steps, and most nights we don't have that time to spend.
The second problem is just price. My shopping list really wasn't that much longer than a normal week, but the bill was higher by probably about 20 dollars. It was things like on a normal week I might get sour cream, but this week I needed creme fraiche, which was a dollar or two more than the price of sour cream. We regularly buy onions, but this week we needed shallots instead, things like that.
It was a great week of food, that I will top off with my birthday dinner tonight at Montage's Loft restaurant!
No comments:
Post a Comment