Month: January 2024

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1412: Spatchcocked

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Chill day! I had my guild meeting but it’s far and I didn’t want to come home in the dark and cold so I zoomed in instead. It’s great that we have hybrid meetings! Two new people were there in person so it will be interesting to see if they come back.

For lunch we both had a can of soup and then a goldfish cracker snack. Matt didn’t feel great so he ran to the store and wanted to get ground chicken to make instead of the ground lamb but they didn’t have it so he got a whole chicken instead. The store was apparently pretty empty!

We had a spatchcocked chicken with lemon slices under the skin and on a bed of onions, peppercorn bread made in the bread machine and green beans. Lots of chicken left!

We tried out the hard boiled setting on the egg cooker we bought.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1411: Longsilog

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Matt made us longsilog for brunch. It’s been a long time!

Trying to think of some goals for the winter. The weather makes it difficult to do some of the things we enjoy since we obviously aren’t eating in restaurants and we have to eat. It’s not pleasant to eat in the car in the cold.

Other years we’ve concentrated on perfecting homemade pizza and soup. I did a temperature blanket and we have been working our way through the knitting book since not long we took knitting classes last February. We are on the final project now. Ideas so far: making more bread in the machine and out, playing a game every weekend. I feel like the weekends go by and we haven’t done much and it’s too long of a time to do nothing.

For dinner Matt made a pork loin and roasted zucchini and we had the leftover lemon muffins.

Moved on to German mysteries with SOKO Potsdam.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1410: Snow Day (again)

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We were expecting snow but we really got a lot! Another 7 inches or so. It was coming down all day, way into the evening.

I made the most amazing lemon poppyseed muffins today. I had two for lunch and nothing else. Matt had a muffin and some (canned) soup. Truly the best lemon poppyseed muffins I’ve ever had.

For dinner Matt made a tomato-pancetta sauce and we had it with refrigerated spinach tortellini. We are doing pretty good food-wise. I still have a pork loin and some ground lamb in the fridge. It feels like it’s been longer than a little over a week since I shopped. Making every single meal will do that!

Matt made some rice tonight to prep for garlic fried rice tomorrow. I had bought some frozen tocino and longanisa at H Mart a while back so we are going to have some sort of -silog tomorrow.

daily recap · planning · what we ate

Day 1409: Popcorn

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How is it only Thursday!

I was going to make muffins but the pan was missing so I gave up. It turned up at dinner. We do not have enough storage! We are going to try to organize the pans and put more of the less used ones in a bin in the basement. I don’t make daisy cakes and mini bundts as much as I do a loaf or muffins!

Had the leftover strata for lunch. It reheated well. For dinner we had the leftover kimchi stew over rice and I had some popcorn.

I really wanted to make the muffins today since I knew the rest of the meals would be leftovers. We have no leftovers left so that means actually making meals tomorrow. I really like to line up baking/recipe development with days I don’t have to make other meals. Maybe I’ll make muffins and we will just have canned soup for lunch with them?

Matt was able to leave to go to the pharmacy a couple miles away at the height of the afternoon sun but it’s all frozen again. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow so I’m assuming we will be stuck here all weekend?

daily recap · repurposing leftovers · what we ate

Day 1408: Strata

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I had a lot of bread and eggs so I made a strata for lunch with the salmon, spinach and mushrooms I prepped last night. I like getting the big effort meal out of the day early! We will probably have it again tomorrow for lunch. I don’t think it keeps well for too long.

It is still super cold and icy here. Only big trucks have made it down the street and while I think they finally plowed, I don’t think they salted. Luckily I did shop with the idea we might be stuck here for a week or so with the snow days they were predicting. We will see! We are still in pretty good shape with fresh food and I bought some frozen fish and shrimp we can dip into. It’s like the early pandemic days! We are so lucky we can work from home.

Did some writing and then we had our leftover cauliflower and potatoes jazzed up with some bacon and the last of the rotisserie chicken for dinner.

Watched the Fargo finale and I don’t know how I feel about honey buttermilk biscuits and chili!

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1407: Potatoes

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Lots of snow today! We got more overnight and the low today is supposed to be like 12°.

I did some community cookbook work and Matt worked from home and shoveled us and our neighbor out. The roads are still really bad.

For lunch I had ugly leftover pasta because I didn’t finish my dinner the other night.

Matt had finished his so he heated up leftover sauce and made fresh pasta.

For dinner I made these herby bratwurst from Aldi with roasted potatoes and cauliflower. I also prepped salmon, spinach and mushrooms for tomorrow’s main meal. We have a lot of potatoes and cauliflower leftover; I didn’t realize how big it was until I was cutting it up! I probably would have made something else with it.

More French tv and knitting. I finished the body of the bear and now it’s on to the arms.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1406: Snow Day!

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It’s King Day and it snowed! Some how we didn’t do much beyond put up new smoke detectors again. I don’t know where the time goes; I feel like I am in some weird vortex.

For lunch we had leftover lasagna and then Matt made a kimchi tofu beef stew that was good! We had a lot of stew meat so we used that instead of the usual pork.

PBS has season 3 of Astrid et Raphaëlle up so we watched that and knitted. You’d think they’d make an announcement or something? Now we are only one season behind the French.

We are lucky the girls don’t mind the snow and can get around on it pretty well. They don’t love the cold but they willingly go out.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1405: Salmon

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We were thinking of going to the conservatory this morning for the orchid show but it was a little snowy and I had a migraine last night and didn’t feel great.

I really don’t know where the day went! We had chicken sandwiches and then started to warp up my new loom but realized it would require too much moving around and stopped. Then somehow it was dinner time? Matt played the piano and did a tiny bit of work but what did we do for hours??

Matt poached some eggs and sautéed some fennel, broccoli and coho salmon for dinner.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1404: Fennel

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We continued our grocery shopping spree. Matt went to Costco after Dottie’s vet appointment and got some things we needed and some ice cream bars and garlic parm bread.

I made some broccoli slaw and we made sandwiches with the rotisserie chickens and bread. We hadn’t tried the bread before. It was really good!

For dinner Matt made a fennel-beef-porcini sauce served over fresh tagliatelle from Lidl.

We had so much tagliatelle when we were in Belgium years ago! It was the default quick pasta/lunch choice. We don’t see it here as much.

Funny Woman the show is better than I remember the book. I hear it’s been picked up for another season so it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

daily recap · what we ate

Day 1403: Pizza

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Went to Aldi this morning and they had tangerines! Fingers crossed they are good. I did a really big shop in case it is as cold and snowy as they are suggesting it will be next week. I got whatever had the best dates and some frozen shrimp, cod and those wild caught fish sticks.They didn’t have boneless skinless chicken breasts for Lulu or yellow onions bizarrely.

I ended up getting a take and bake pizza for lunch. Some how Matt will eat them despite being super picky about pizza normally. We do bake it on some fancy pan.

It’s not bad. A step up from frozen.

Matt ended up running to Lidl, it’s so nice to have it near by. He ended up getting the chicken and onions and a bunch of Italian and German food.

Meanwhile, I made the pork chops I had defrosted and roasted some broccoli, potatoes and Brussels sprouts that were on the verge. It was good! My favorite cooking is using up odds and ends.

Started Funny Woman on PBS. It’s cute!