Menu Monday

I’ve decided to dedicate Mondays to my family’s love of food as well as knowing as much about the “Plan” for the week as possible. So our weekly menu posting is my way of keeping the kids in the loop about one of their favorite daily activities, eating!  Fortunately my kids love eating a home cooked meal as much as their father and I love preparing them.

Every Sunday we sit down and come up with the menu for the coming week. A lot of factors contribute to our decision: after-school obligations (piano and voice lessons on Mondays, archery practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and choir on Thursdays), what’s in the refrigerator, what’s on sale that week, and what’s coming out of the garden. Yes, it’s the middle of November and we still have vegetables in the garden. Amazing, right? We try to come up with meals that are quick to prepare or can be prepared in advance for days we know we’ll be really busy.

This week we are overrun with tomatoes, eggplant, and cucumbers out of the garden as well as a few green beans. Thursday is a really busy day this week so that’ll be our easy meal, prepared in advance and defrosted for dinner.

Monday: eggplant lasagna made with homemade marinara sauce, ricotta, basil, and fresh mozzarella with Dave’s garlic bread and salad

This is actually a new recipe for us, but there’s only so much you can do with eggplant so we thought we’d give it a try. It also fits perfectly with “Meatless Mondays” which we try to do at least once a week if not always on Monday.

Tuesday: Grilled pork cutlets with Turkish seasoning, quinoa, and oven roasted tomatoes, onion, eggplant, and Poblano peppers with Harissa Sauce, and pickled cucumber salad

The perfect “bite” is a slice of pork, veggie, and quinoa all dipped in a dab of creamy spicy Harissa sauce. The cucumber salad provides a perfect cooling effect if you use too much Harissa.

Wednesday: Fish Tacos with avocado slices, and cabbage “slaw” dressed in oil, vinegar (or lime juice), salt, and pepper.

The girls prefer “po’boys” to tacos so their fish goes on a toasted bun with tartar sauce with slaw and homemade potato chips on the side.

Thursday: Freezer beef stew with portabella mushrooms over creamy polenta

This is also delicious over mashed potatoes or egg noodles if you have more time.

Friday: Spaghetti Carbonara, garlic bread, and a salad

We actually call this Bacon and Egg Spaghetti, which somehow makes the girls more excited about eating it. We also prefer to use Bowtie pasta because it picks up the little pieces of bacon better than long noodles.

This is usually as far as we go with our menu because life inevitably interferes and meals have a tendency to get rearranged, pushed back, or canceled.  As I said before, our girls love to know the PLAN for the week but it doesn’t really bother them if plans change.

We hope you enjoy reading our Menu Monday  and we hope to include some of our favorite recipes in the future (I’ll let you know how that lasagna turns out). Please let us know if there’s a specific menu item or recipe you would like us to describe in greater detail. We look forward to your feedback!