Menu Plan Monday 6/6

Okay, as I posted earlier, this week is going to be easy meals.  A lot is going on and I don't want to have to spend time in the kitchen on recipes I have not made before.  I had planned on starting with some left over roast that I was going to turn in to shredded beef, but there wasn't any left.  This is what I plan for this week.

Mon. - Chicken & dumplings
Tue. - Beef Stroganoff
Wed. - Chicken fried steak
Thu. - Sloppy Joe

The week end is supposed to be spent camping.  I will post the out come.

Be sure to check out the other postings on MPM over at I'm an Organizing Junkie. Alway interesting to read through.

Sunday - Another week

Some how Sunday has become the start of my week instead of the end.  Not sure how, or when, it did, but it did.  At any rate, here we go with another week of cooking, cleaning, chores ... the same old rut.  Maybe I should look at it from a different perspective.  I should make a list of task that should be done this week.  Then, pick a day to have it all done by.  Decide on an inexpensive treat that I can give myself if I accomplish it.  The rest of the family has been treating me like I don't exist beyond their personal needs so why not give myself a treat, heaven knows they are treating their self often at my expense.  I know, enough whining, I will pray about it when I cleanse my heart at church today.

We didn't go camping this past week end, plan to go this coming week end.  So...I am changing my planned menu for the week and going to pretty much cook off of left overs and quick meals.  I am thinking I can make it until we get back from camping for my twice a month grocery shop.  However, I am going to take advantage of some really great sale prices to do some stocking up.  Tomorrow's MPM post will reflect my planned left over meal plan.  Shh, don't tell the family they are getting left overs.

I had a really disturbed night last night.  Trying to read between the lines of a text message I got.  I know that I am overly sensitive about such things, but I just can't help it.  Have past experience on my side with this one.  So, a little before midnight I took a shower and went to bed. I woke up at 1:30 to realize that no one bothered to see that the food was still out from supper.  I put the left overs in the fridge and put water on the dishes to soak them.  Rest of the morning from then on was spent trying to get a little more sleep, with out much success. Too much over thinking of the text.  At 5:15 I gave up and got up.  Did the dishes, made the coffee, took a roast out to thaw, gathered up the trash, took it all out, put the dumpster on the curb, played alarm clock for mom so she can wake up and get ready for church, took another shower and washed my hair (didn't do this last night because it always dries funny when I sleep on it wet), fixed my hair, prepared the roast in the crock and started it cooking, am now dressed and waiting for church.  Started this posting.

Whew.  I am already worn out.

I have said this before, but after last night and this morning am even more determined, this WHOLE house is getting cleaned and purged.  Since no one but me can even clean up a dish around here, then I am going to get the house set up for easy quick cleanings.  Actually, two days of cooking and cleaning dishes to prepare two weeks worth of meals is looking pretty good about now.

I pulled out some old cookbooks that I have collected along the way for some inspiration.  Funny thing, those older books, like the one from 1944, doesn't have a lot of beef recipes.  Has lots of chicken though.  Have done nothing but look at recipes all week end.  Funny thing, kind of got my mind in overload mode.  Everything just blends together so nothing makes sense, sounds good or even interested in trying.  I would really just like to go to sleep a while.  Can't do that though, if I went to sleep this early would end up waking up at ten tonight and not being able to go back to sleep.  Part of this...doldrums I am in...for lack of a better term, may be due to the fact that I have been watching old westerns yesterday and a Walton's marathon...on two channels.  I would dearly love to be able to back in time and live on that mountain.  Those characters, the life of the 30's and 40's, that house, would really love to have a little of that simplicity.

Speaking of houses, if I ever win the big lottery I am going to find the designs and build me a house like the boarding house in The Shootist.  What a wonderful old house with glass front cabinets in the kitchen, dinning room, parlor, all over the place, each and every room along with built in shelves and drawers.  I remember when my husband and I were looking for our first house we found this small home with carved molding and the bed rooms had built in drawers, big closets and built in shelves.  Such workmanship.  How I wanted that house, but it just needed way too much work to be livable.

Well, off to work on some household planning.  Thanks for stopping by.

Thursday - School is out.

Today is the last day of school for my youngest daughter Miss J.  I have no idea where the school year went.  We don't get much of a break as summer school starts up Monday.  Miss J. will be practicing volleyball early in the morning, one class for 6 weeks, and has also taken on an online class through her high school.  We will see how the summer goes.  I am skeptical.


We are going on a week end camping trip up the mountain this week end.  Taking the dirt bikes out to ride mountain trail for a change instead of the desert.  I am a little nervous about this trip, first time on these trails with the my new quad.  It is not that there is any thing wrong with the quad, it is just that I am still getting use to the change, and it is a big change from the old one, and when I am riding on flat desert where you don't have to worry about staying on a trail it is a very different type of riding on steep rocky terrain where you must stay on a designated trail.  I am sure I will be sliding down a few places.  I am also use to having a brake control on my handle bar and not using my foot control.  This quad is just opposite, not even having a hand control on that side. It will sure be an interesting week end to say the least.  We are also having unusually mild weather which means that it will be pretty chilly up the hill, especially in the evenings.  That should be nice campfire weather at least.


On the home front, I need to change a few things up in an attempt to smooth the flow a bit.  I am trying to get the house really cleaned, deep cleaned, so that all I have to do is a little light house keeping each morning.  I know that there are people out there can clean, cook a great meal, cook ahead meals, preserve seasonal produce and still have time to pursue their hobbies or passions.  I tell you, it has been months since I used my paper craft supplies for anything but trimming coupons.  My desk is still in such a disarray I couldn't even make a card if I had to much less even attempt to create any scrapbook pages.  I even bought this binding machine, which I thought was like a bind it all that created a book bound with a spine, and it still sits in the floor with the plastic wrap on it.  I have no idea what to even really do with it.  It binds with heat and glue apparently, oh and also laminates.  I just really need to find the manual and see how to do it.  Laminating a weekly menu plan that I could wipe off and use over would be a pretty neat thing to have. I had planned on trying to bind up some of my personal recipes, but that will be on the back burner.


On that note, I am toting my planners, a few recipes, paper, pencil, and my lap top up the mountain with me and see if I can come up with a plan of action.  Here is what I need.


List of cleaning, by room, that needs to be done.  Then I am going to assess how often I realistically need to do that.  I mean I don't want to replace one set of task for another.


I need to tweak the menus.  My current planning system is great in concept, just not so great in execution. I have the best of intentions, and the planning is working as far as having the proper ingredients in my pantry, but it just seems to fall apart for one reason or another during the week.


Each week I post my menu plan on I'm an Organizing Junkie's blog for her MPM (Menu Plan Monday) and spend a lot of time visiting all the other blogs of the group that post their plans as well. I have noticed that several of the postings are for the meals for the past week instead of the week to come.  I am thinking that I may need to do that.  At least it would be a little more honest.  I post my menu plan on Monday, then about Wednesday am already off of it and winging it.  The reasons are several.  I am unorganized for one, keep loosing myself in other task or projects.  For another, I keep getting surprised with last minute announcements of meetings or activities.  Given this a lot of thought, I have concluded there are a couple of choices.  One is to just plan the menus as always, shop accordingly, and then just post what actually hit the table.  Another choice, one which I am leaning toward, is to just plan the menu, cook the menu, and whoever is hear gets to eat, otherwise they eat it as a left over later in the week.


I am really tired of trying to figure out what to fix when I have such picky butts to feed.  I grew up on casseroles and left overs.  Kind of think that some dishes are actually more tasty the following day.  My husband didn't have left overs and they rarely had a casserole.  I don't know why, they are so economical.  I guess it is part of that "meat is the star" thinking.  Why they never had pasta either is beyond me.  Give me a great plate of noodles, casserole with noodles, spaghetti, I am set.  I can make spaghetti and meatballs, hubby eats the sauce on bread, no noodles.  He is a meat and potatoes kind of guy, most of my family is.  THEY ARE JUST SPOILED. I admit, when I get like this, it is very tempting to just start cooking for me.  They never tell me until the last minute they have a meeting or such, so I plan a nice meal and end up eating it alone.  So why not plan and cook for myself?


Okay, enough of the pity party.  I have to go to the store and run by and check on my mom.  There goes half the day. I started a batch of Spanish Rolls yesterday, part of it has to sit over night for the flavors to come out, and will finish those up today.  Whether they like it or not we are taking them with us on the camping trip, just like I did when I was growing up. I think it is time for this momma to take back over a bit.  In a lot of ways.  


Thanks for stopping by and come visit again.

Midweek - Apple Dumplings

Have had so many request for the recipe for the apple dumplings I made Memorial Day so I  thought it would be easier, quicker anyway, to just post it to my blog.  First, let me tell you the story behind this recipe.


I grew up in south east New Mexico, then moved back to West Texas where I married and started my own little family.  The towns were about 2 hours drive from each other.  At any rate, there is a chain of restaurants called Furr's Cafeteria.  When ever we would go to one of the near by larger towns to shop or for one of my parent's many square dances, we would go eat there.  Everyone could go through the line and pick out what you wanted to eat.  They have the most delicious apple dumplings.  That was my first introduction to this wonderful dessert.  This version of the dumpling, I say that because I have since found out there as many versions of a dumpling as there are cooks, is more like a cobbler.  The apples were chopped in rather large chunks.  Thicker than a slice, not as long as a slice, thicker pieces than a dice.  A dice?  Yes, the fruit pieces were about the size of playing dice.  The fruit was mixed in with a wonderful thick pastry dough and then covered with a thick syrup.


A side note about cobblers.  When it comes to cobblers, you are either a fruit person or a dough person. My hubby and sons have always been fruit people.  In other words, they liked to eat the fruit out of the cobbler.  My daughters and I are more dough people, preferring to have a lot of crust, especially the softer part that didn't crust.  I prefer the dough so much that I have always made my cobbler with a bottom crust as well as the top one. I know, sounds like I am making a double crusted fruit pie, but it is different.  Don't know what makes the difference, maybe the deeper dish, but it is just not the same in pie form.  This has always worked out well for our family, the boys dished theirs up first grabbing mostly fruit and the crisper crust strips on top.  This left the bottom half of the dish for us girls.  Sweet fruit and a softer crust from the bottom.


Back to the dumplings.  Once I moved to California, and there were no Furr's, I was on the look out for a replacement for this treat.  We have a local wild life exhibit called C.A.L.M. which stands for California Living Museum.  Each December they hold their annual fundraiser, the place is decorated up with Christmas lights, train rides, light shows and for a small fee you can come out during the night and walk through the park, looking at the lights, seeing any animals that are normally nocturnal, ending up with a visit to the snake house to warm up.  They have food booths and one of those booths sell Apple dumplings with this amazing thick, rich, almost ice cream like scoop of whipped cream.  HOWEVER...I was shocked when I bought one to split with my youngest daughter.  I had been telling her about the dumplings for about an hour while we walked the trail.  She was very young when we moved and did not remember us going to Furr's.  What shocked me was cutting in to the dumpling to find an apple.  A whole apple, well cored and peeled, but whole.  I know, apple dumpling, what else would be inside?  I had never seen one with a whole apple stuck inside it.  Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, we ate every bite of the one we shared.  BUT, IT WAS A WHOLE APPLE.


So started my searching the internet for a recipe.  Mind you, this was before Google, you would have Yahoo, or AOL search engines, among others, and you would get different results because they all read your request a little differently.  I never found one, even the copy cat style recipes for Furr's had whole apples.  Then one day I happened on an old issue of Taste of Home magazine.  OH I JUST LOVE THESE MAGAZINES. Originally it was published  in the Oct/Sep 2001 issue of Quick Cooking.  Quick Cooking was my favorite, it was revamped a bit and morphed in to the magazine Simple & Delicious.  Still a great magazine but not quite the same.  You can search all the recipes Taste of Home and it's sisters has published. Click on Simple Apple Dumplings for the link to the original recipe.  If you do a search on their site for "apple dumpling" you will get about 30 hits.  I really miss the Quick Cooking magazine.  The recipes were all made with few ingredients (most times five or less) and could be prepared in 30 minutes or less.  Cooking time that is.


If  you don't want to link hop, here is the recipe with my little changes in ( ).


This really is a simple quick easy dessert.
Simple Apple Dumplings - Quick Cooking Oct/Sept 2001 issue


1 tube refrigerated crescent rolls
2 med. apples, peeled and quartered (I have used left over pre-packaged slices that I peel)
1 cup sugar
1 cup orange juice (I usually use what I have on hand - Sunny D)
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 teaspoon apple pie spice (I don't have it so I just sprinkle on nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon)


Unroll crescent dough and separate in to eight triangles.  Roll up one apple wedge (I use two slices) in each triangle; pinch edges to seal.  

Place in a greased 8 in. square baking dish.  

In a small saucepan, bring sugar, orange juice and butter to a boil.  Pour over dumplings (dumplings will float to the top). Sprinkle with spice.  Bake uncovered at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve warm.

i double the recipe every time because the family loves this so much. (I don't know if I do something wrong, but I always have way to much syrup to use)  I am going to make a batch and freeze it to see how that works.  Am also going to make a regular batch and try the syrup with Splenda.  I usually serve with whipped cream.


I also thought I would post a photo of how my garden is growing.

As you can see, nothing has died.  The front container has lettuce and cucumbers, behind in center is two tomato plants, peppers and strawberries on either side.


Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment.