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Busy week! Let’s get to it:
SATURDAY
Creamy Sausage Spinach Pasta
Damien and I thought this was great. The kids were not impressed, not even the non-jerk ones. It basically follows the Liz Lemon kitchen tip of using cheese instead of water, so you can’t lose; and it’s one of those wonderful one-pot recipes, where you don’t even have to cook the pasta separately.
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Recipe is from Budget Bytes. I used Italian sausage instead of smoked sausage, and didn’t pay attention to the proportions at all, so mine turned out with a lot more broth than the original recipe, but it was just a different kind of delicious, that’s all. I’m flexible.
I also skipped the scallions, because they hadn’t had sufficient times to gather their powers from their previous incarnations yet. Here’s how they look today, after growing all week:
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This is the fourth iteration of these scallions. Looks like they are slowing down a bit. Next thing you’ll know, they’ll be shopping for high-waisted pants and classifying 79% of everything a shame.
***
SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, cookies
Nothing to report. A child requested frozen, chocolate-covered bananas for dessert, but I forgot to make them. I did remember to buy chocolate chips from a different store, because I learned the hard way that Aldi chocolate chips don’t really melt. Isn’t that weird?
For Sunday lunch, one of my lovely teenagers made apple-cherry griddle cakes from her Hobbit cookbook. Here’s the recipe:
[img attachment=”120586″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”recipe-1″ /]
[img attachment=”120587″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”recipe-2″ /]
Very well-received.
[img attachment=”120588″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”benny-pancakes” /]
***
MONDAY
French toast, roast apples
Monday was the day I was going to go right home and get a nice dinner made. Instead, I was driving along and a yellow jacket stung me in the back, so I pulled over and started waving my shirt around, which made the bee fall into my pants and sting me again directly in my cleftal horizon.
Somewhat flustered, I continued on my rounds, delivered kids to where they needed to be, and then picked up my daughter from work and continued on to get the others from Girl Scouts, where they were learning Beginner’s Remote Material Participation With Evil and Do-si-dos, and the fuel pump broke.
It was kind of downhill from there. Not literally. It was literally uphill. This particular car is named “Tortuga,” but it ought to be Blanche, because it always depends on the kindness of strangers. Anyway, we had french toast and roasted apples when we finally got home.
I had bought tons of extra hot dog buns, planning to tear them up and make french toast casserole, but there was no time, so we had french toast oblongs.
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The roast apples: quarter and core a bunch of apples, mix them up with sugar and cinnamon, and put them on a buttered tray at 450 for . . . okay, I don’t remember how long. Maybe 25 minutes? Until they are soft all the way through. Yummy.
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***
TUESDAY
Oven fried panko chicken sandwiches with tomato and avocado; spicy fries (frozen)
These panko crumbs I got on sale one time have been clogging up my cupboard forever, so I used them for the chicken. I have it in my head that making breaded chicken is just insanely complicated, messy, and time-consuming, but it’s really no harder than making a marinade for grilling, which is what I usually do with chicken breast.
I sliced the breasts in half the long way, dipped them in an egg-and-milk mix, and then rolled them in panko (which is bread made into flakes, rather than crumbs). Then I laid the cutlets on a greased broiler pan and put them under the broiler, turning once, until they were browned up. They turned out really nice. The chicken was moist and the coating was fluffy.
I had my sandwich with sliced avocado and tomato and ranch dressing. I think next time, I’ll do chicken parm sandwiches this way.
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I don’t know how to take a picture of a sandwich without making the insides escape.
***
WEDNESDAY
Pizza and salad
I made four extra large pizzas with various combinations of black olive, pepperoni, red onion, sliced garlic, and fresh basil.
[img attachment=”120578″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pizza” /]
Fresh basil is great on pizza if you put it under the cheese layer, so it doesn’t just shrivel up.
***
THURSDAY
Sweet and sour pork stir fry, brown rice, ice cream pie
Birthday! This is what the dear girl requested for her special dinner. After taking a squint at my mental state, I bought bottled sauce (two bottles, which I’ve been using as hand weights all week). I also bought Aldi’s Asian veggie mix, because even Aldi can’t make raw vegetables taste German, right? It was a pretty nice mix, including broccoli, red pepper, water chestnuts, baby corn, and mushrooms.
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It also came with a little pouch of reddish sauce marked “Asian,” but I took a stand and threw it away. I love Aldi, but they need to stop with the Asian stuff.
I made the ice cream pie the night before. I crushed up a bunch of graham crackers and mixed them in a pot with butter and the chocolate chips I forgot to use earlier in the week, until they made a paste. I pressed this into the bottom of a tray.
It’s easier to get the ice cream into pie form if you mash in it a bowl with a potato masher until it’s the consistency of soft serve. I alternated blobs of different flavors of ice cream, then added marshmallow fluff (because I forgot that I had bought Cool Whip), chocolate chips, and cherries, then put it back in the freezer until it was all solid.
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They informed me that I am the best baker in the world, which I am.
***
FRIDAY
It says “tuna.” Looks pretty authoritative.
[img attachment=”120580″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”tuna” /]
I think I was hoping the world would come to an end before I had to make dinner on Friday. Instead, the baby is bathed in a mysterious, radioactive, yellow-orange glow.
[img attachment=”120583″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie-orange” /]
As you can see, it’s affecting her personality and making her lethargic and docile.
It’s not marker or paint or food coloring. My husband figured it out. Any guesses? It is food-related!
