Dinner this Week - 03.19.15

Home all week! I am looking forward to full days at the office and evenings at home, more or less.

Sunday

Make Your Own Takeout Green Chile Pork Burrito Bowls

Fresh Berries

Monday

Breakfast for Dinner

Scrambled Eggs

Toasted English Muffins with Homemade Blueberry Jam

Tuesday

Last Soccer Game of the Season - Dinner Out

Wednesday

Baked Salmon with Garlic and Dijon from Natasha's Kitchen

Grilled Potatoes and Green Beans

Thursday

Pizza Night

Fresh Fruit

Friday

Shrimp, Tomato and Spinach Pasta in Garlic Butter Sauce from Julia's Album

Fresh Fruit

Garlic Bread

Saturday

Dinner Out - Fundraiser for Church Youth Group Nationwide Assembly Trip

Dinner this Week - 01.11.15

It is cold here. Bone-chilling, I don't want to go outside cold so this week will feature warm things, comforting things.

I also want to point out that I realize I prefaced this as a craft, food, family blog, but up to this point, have only posted food. Much of my free time over winter break was spent cleaning and organizing my studio. G decided I could have one of his vintage standing, roll-around toolboxes and chaos ensued. This afternoon, I finally got all the pieces put back together and started my first block in Pat Sloan's 2015 Vacation Time Block of the Month Quilt. I also compiled a list of in-progress and in-my-head sewing tasks to do this year. I need to share at least one project I did last year, too, that hasn't been blogged. So, there are non-food topics to come. :)

Sunday

Leftover Chicken Fajita Casserole

Apple Pie

Monday

Breakfast for Dinner

Scrambled Eggs

Toast

Bacon

Tuesday

Creamy White Bean and Bacon Soup from Table for Two

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Oranges

Wednesday

Slow Cooker Lemon Rosemary Chicken

Steamed Cauliflower

Grapes

Thursday

Goulash

Oranges

Friday

Make Your Own Homemade Pizza

Saturday

Leftovers

Dinner this Week - 01.04.15

I am so excited to be back to a schedule this week! While the holidays and some time off have been fabulous, it will be nice for life to return to normal, whatever that is.

One of the big adventures of the week was the death of our downstairs chest freezer. A morning of cold sorting, discarding and rearranging ensued. The bright side is I now have a very clear idea of what we have to move forward planning the coming week's meals to utilize stores and cut the grocery budget for awhile. Since we have a smaller chest freezer on the main level, we have opted to not replace it at this time. All in all, the process made me feel a bit like a hoarder. Replacing the storage space will just allow for storing more food than we really need to have on hand at one time. I like to preserve fresh produce, especially fruit for pies, crisps and smoothies, as well as summer's sweet corn and tomatoes whenever said things are fresh and available affordably, but I've maybe gotten a bit carried away the last few years. How much freezer storage do you have? How full is it? We were lucky, my in-laws were only using about a quarter of their freezer so my three laundry tubs of frozen fruits and veggies are hanging out there until we can get our food supply under control.

One last note on the freezer thing ... fortunately G was in the basement when the freezer made the clunky sound of death. We were able to respond immediately without any concern for the safety of the food in the freezer. If this happens to you, only food that is still firm is safe to return to the freezer. Food that is 40° or colder can be refrigerated and used within standard refrigeration time frames. Food that has thawed and been warmer than 40° should be discarded. Your safety is more important than whatever the value of the food lost.

Finally, you'll notice we eat a lot of oranges these days. Not only are they in season, but we have a half a case to work through. It is a common fundraiser for local FFA chapters to sell fruit and this year we got oranges plus a few apples. Luckily, I knew that I had plenty of apples from a summer pick and freeze and had not ordered a case of apples to freeze as I have the last few years. :)

Sunday

Garlic Butter Baked Crab Legs

Farro with Pistachios and Herbs (I used a wild rice blend and a dried herb blend as they were in my pantry.)

Steamed Cauliflower

Oranges

Monday

Chili and Cornbread

Oranges

Tuesday

Leftover Chili and Cornbread

Oranges

Wednesday

Pork Chops with Mushroom Pan Gravy

Leftover Rice with Pistachios

Steamed Broccoli

Apple Wedges

Thursday

Breakfast for Dinner

Scrambled Eggs

Bacon

Toast

Oranges

Friday

Chicken Fajitas

Oranges

Saturday

Dinner out or takeout

Have a great week!

Dinner This Week - 11.17.14-11.22.14

It is finally cold here. Really cold. OK, not so really cold, but it seems cold because we dropped from 60's to 80's to 20 overnight. Normally, whatever normal is for Nebraska weather, we have a couple of weeks in the 40's to make the transition from fall to winter. No such luck this year.

In other news this week, I opened my Etsy shop. Right now it has an array of vintage Rand McNally maps with more vintage goodness to come. Check it out at etsy.com/shop/ArtsAndCraftsHome.

While on Etsy, I've managed to make a dent in my Christmas shopping. Hopefully those Barbie clothes from Hungary get here in time.

In my pre-Thanksgiving week, I'm trying to keep things simple. This week has one overnight for my department retreat in addition to my regular Monday sorority night so you'll notice pizza AND breakfast for dinner. :)

Sunday

Chicken and Dumplings
Fresh Pineapple

Monday

BFD: Breakfast for Dinner

Tuesday

Skillet Chicken, Zucchini & Green Beans over Rice

Wednesday

Pizza!

Thursday

Smoked Pork Loin Chops
Roasted Broccoli
Cheesy Garlic Bread
Grapes

Friday

Dinner Out!

Saturday

Veggie Beef Soup
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Pears

Dinner This Week - 09.28.14

Last week included a trip out of town for work and a trip out of town for fun so dinner plans were nonexistent. This week is a little crazy in our world, too. Monday is my sorority meeting. I'm super excited to be back advising the professional sorority of which I was in as an undergraduate student after a break. Sigma Alpha is a tremendous opportunity for young women with a heart for agriculture. I'm even more excited that for tomorrow night's sisterhood event, they opted for yoga! I need it this week. :)

Tuesday is a big work day. The Nebraska Department of Roads is building a bridge about 2 1/2 hours from the office with a lot of innovative technology meant to reduce the time and cost of building a bridge on a low-volume road. I'm hosting an open house for roads professionals at the construction site. In addition, we are broadcasting a live web cam with time lapse photography that has been a bit of a headache this week. Fortunately, we installed with time to fix before too much happens on-site.

The middle of the week is quiet, which is good as Friday is a licensure exam for my job ... a six-hour exam with a six inch stack of study materials to go with it.

The rest of the family's schedule is normal this week except that harvest is ramping up and and G is starting to get busier at work, too.

Dinner this week will hinge on our ability to plan and execute! Here goes ...

Sunday

Beef stew with fresh potatoes and carrots, garlic bread, watermelon, and apple crisp

Monday

Dinner out!

Tuesday

Breakfast for Dinner - Scrambled eggs and toast or French toast or Apple pancakes

Wednesday

Grilled bacon-wrapped sirloin filets, grill-roasted broccoli, fruit, and garlic bread

Thursday

Greek chicken, veggie TBA, watermelon

Friday

Dinner out!

Saturday

Sausage, potato and green bean skillet dinner and fruit