A week of dinners

[Grog]

We also plan our meals for the week on Saturday and shop on Sunday usually. We also decide who cooks when at the same time. Usually on Thursday I go back to the grocery store to pick up a few missing items or produce that I want to be more fresh, or to the meat shop for fresh chicken. We usually cook 5 or 6 nights a week and either eat out or go to his parents' place on the other 1-2 nights.

Usually we do a combination of:
one meat dinner (usually beef)
one or two chicken dishes
two vegetarian dishes
one or two pasta dishes
one slow cooker meal
one fish dish

Of course it doesn't add up because the chicken can be a slow cooker meal etc.

We sit down with the cookbooks and make our picks and write the grocery list. I'm thinking of getting our "successful" recipes on index cards or in some sort of a program to be able to quickly prepare a week of meals if we're too busy to do it from scratch on a given weekend.

The slow cooker meal and the pasta dishes usually yield lots of leftovers.

[roadie gal]

I LOVE my crock pot. I make a lot of stews and chilis. No matter how little I try to make it always comes out to a full pot. We munch on that for a few days and then freeze the rest in meal sized portions. Works great.

[Smilie]

Roadie Gal, post one of your favorite crock pot recipes please! I love my crockpot, but need to use it more for things besides roasts!

And you need to get off your # '666' post. Or not, as Halloween is coming up.

[Andrea]

I LOVE my crock pot. I make a lot of stews and chilis. No matter how little I try to make it always comes out to a full pot. We munch on that for a few days and then freeze the rest in meal sized portions. Works great.

You have any vegetarian recipes? I'm trying baked beans this weekend.

[Raindrop]

OK...two things that are easy (I'm typically a 4 ingredient cook) and tasty and pretty healthy.

Crockpot pulled pork:

a 4lb pork roast (lean)
2 cups of apple juice
1 capfull of liquid smoke
salt to taste
* optional is a teaspoon of crushed red peppers (we like HOT!!)
put everything in the crockpot and cook on high for about ten hours. The pork will be falling apart so just separate it all with a fork and serve by itself, on buns, or tortillas. Ymmmmmm....


Roasted pepper hummus:

Take a large red bell pepper, slice in half and get rid of the insides.
Smash it (by hand)on a tinfoil lined cookie sheet and blacken it under the broiler for about 8 -10 minutes. Put the blackened peppers in a plastic zip bag for about ten minutes and then peel.

Meanwhile drain a can of garbonzo beans and put that in a blender or food processor along with a tablespoon of tahini (sesame seed butter), two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, a little salt, four sliced garlic cloves and for a little zip, several jalepeno slices. When the pepper is peeled, throw it into the blender or food processor and blend till smooth.
Serve on pita bread, chips, or eat with a spoon like me.

[OakLeaf]

Oh yeah, hummus! Chickpeas (for hummus and falafel) are pretty much the only thing that goes into our food processor. That's another thing that's really inexpensive if you pressure-cook the beans. Plus, you can cook the garlic along with the chickpeas so you don't have to use raw garlic or roast it separately (not that there's a single solitary thing wrong with roasting garlic! - just if you don't happen to have any on hand). And you have the cooking water to adjust the consistency (and use any left over for your next batch of bean soup).

I like my hummus with a lot of parsley (pulse it in the food processor before adding the cooked chickpeas) - some recipes use mint, but I don't much care for that myself.


ETA: since you mention baked beans, one thing about beans in the crock-pot, DO NOT put any tomatoes, ketchup or other acids in until the beans are fully cooked. Acid toughens the bean skins and keeps them from absorbing water, so they will never cook. That's true whatever your cooking method, but it's easy to forget in the crock-pot where you're used to throwing all the ingredients in at once. Doesn't work with beans. Learned that one the hard way

[roadie gal]

Very easy vegetarian chili:

I used dried beans that I soak for about 24 hours. Last time I used one package of pintos and one package of mixed beans. Throw into crock pot and cook until almost done. Add 1-2 cans of diced tomatoes, with the juice, one well chopped onion and 1-2 packages of chili seasoning depending on your taste. Cook some more. VERY easy. You can also brown some turkey or beef hamburger and then add to the chili. My SO voted for vege, so I didn't.