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Weekly Check In

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Here we are, another crazy week finished. I'm really looking forward to a snowy weekend tooling around the house. But first, let's take a look at the week and see if we stuck to our meal plan this week...


Meal 1: Rutabaga and apple soup, picked beet and goat cheese sandwiches
This was my first time cooking with a rutabaga (I actually don't know if I had ever laid eyes on a rutabaga before moving to NY). It was a little intimidating, but with a bit of cookbook and internet research I felt pretty confident going in. And really, soup is the easiest thing to make with a new vegetable. I was pleased with the results and I'll post the recipe later in the week.

Meal 2: Seared tofu with spinach, ginger-sesame slaw
Blech. This was my least favorite meal - it didn't taste all that great and 15 minutes after eating I was hungry again. The ginger-sesame slaw was good, but never again will I make this stupid tofu dish.

Meal 3: Creamy mushrooms over polenta, green salad
This meal made up for the tofu and spinach! And it's really easy to make, a perfect mid-week winter meal. You'll see this on the meal plan a lot more through the winter.

Meal 4: Pasta with bacon and cabbage, green salad
Yes, yes, I know. This is essentially a version of the roasted cabbage with bacon I made last week. But it's winter! Fresh, local greens are hard to come by. And it's hard to beat the combination of cabbage and bacon.

Meal 5: Rice with onions, bean croquettes, green salad
Both the rice and bean croquette recipes are from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. We've made the rice before and it's slowly becoming a regular on the meal plan circuit. The bean croquettes on the other hand, weren't that great. They were overwhelmingly dry and tasteless (they did provide an excuse to open a pint of the corn salsa we put up this summer. For that, I am thankful). I like the idea of bean croquettes though, especially since we usually have a pint or two of beans in the freezer. We'll keep playing with the recipe to see if we can find a version that we really like.

Meal 6: Sauteed fish, roasted potatoes and green salad
Nope, didn't happen. I did say it was an ambitious meal plan. And I don't know why I try to plan meals on Fridays, I usually don't feel much like cooking by the end of the week.

There we go. All in all, not too shabby. 


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