Dinner Voyeur: Round up week of November 1

I’m lovin’ the menu plan. It helps keep my brain from exploding while try to juggle the 50 million projects, la kid, le husband, les pets and this crazy rock n’ roll lifestyle that I maintain.

Sunday: Mexican Pumpkin Soup with Tamale Meatballs (tamale meatballs made from  Halloween’s California Crockpot Tamale Pie leftovers – soup loosely adapted from this Mexican Butternut Squash Soup recipe from Cooking Light). The soup really needed more flavor but was tastier the next day. The pumpkin lacked sweetness or the interesting flavor of butternut squash. Too bad…

Meatless Monday: Asian Tofu Pancakes (Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian), sauteed mushrooms/pumpkin and roasted garlic with a bit of soy sauce and salad with kimchi style vegetables. These were an easy and fun to make dinner that I’m going to try several different ways now that I got the hang of it.

Tuesday: Taco Carbalicious Casserole. Making a comfort food casserole is easy peasy, so I made three and brought dinner to two friends. I’m going to start this tradition of at least once a month bringing dinner to someone, since it was totally fun to cook for someone else without having to clean for company! Layers of brown rice, homemade maya coba/pinto beans & cheese, mild salsa, light sour cream, chopped olives, seasoned lean & local ground beef. Served with low glycemic R.W. Garcia Spicy Flax and Soy chips. No vegetables were harmed in the making of this dinner.

Wednesday: Balsamic pork steak with roasted Brussels Sprouts with apple and dried figs. I was blown away by the flavor of this pork steak. It was fairly lean and bursting with flavor. I panfried the steak, took it out, added a bit of allspice, 1 TB honey, 2 TB or so of balsamic vinegar and a splash of whole milk. Placed it over a bed of raw spinach with the sauce. The flavor was awesome but since my milk was raw and unhomogenized, it kind of curdled into a fresh cheese when it hit the vinegar! Unappetizing strings of dairy glop in the sauce, but yummy nonetheless.

Thursday: Fennel Apple braised pork steak with Horseradish Cheddar Turnips, a dish inspired by a Bittman potato recipe. Again, the pork steak was fab! (The cat absconded with part of it…) The potato recipe was potatoes, cheddar, beer and horseradish and those flavors just yelped “FALL!” to me. I chopped turnips and panfried them, added a mixture of milk/cheddar/horseradish and a few tablespoons of sherry. Extremely tasty!

Friday: Vacation in Sun Valley!  Sadly, this lovely burger and onion rings made me ill… my G.I. tract is not used to being so liberally greased with oil and mystery ‘fry sauce’. I know better so it serves me right!

Saturday: Sun Valley Chili for a crowd with gluten-free cornbread.  Chili was a bit of fresh pumpkin, pre-soaked & cooked beans and lean ground round, I tweaked two recipes to make the cornbread, swapping out some coconut flour and fava/garbanzo flour to try to lower the carb count. It was coconut flour, full carb gluten-free bake mix (Bob’s Red Mill), fava/garbanzo and corn meal (plus stevia extract and erythritol). Frankly, I thought it was a bit odd with the fava flavor but the kids absolutely loved it and devoured the whole pan!

Another week of meals bites the dust!