menu for two

{the menu}

monday: meat pies

tuesday: leftover meat pies and Chinese food (ginger beef, deep fried shrimp/egg rolls, mixed vegetables with shrimp and pork, sweet and sour ribs, and stir fried rice)

wednesday: leftover Chinese food

thursday: tuna pasta salad

friday: pizza

saturday: roasted chicken

sunday: peanut noodle slaw

what really happened

{monday} OMG this recipe is to die for! I'm so glad I didn't ditch it out of laziness. Some notes, though. I didn't realize it was instant yeast, so I had to adjust accordingly for my traditional yeast (which really only meant adding all of the water instead of a quarter of it). I also didn't have the pomegranate molasses which was really annoying, because it's not like it's some strange ingredient I couldn't find. I've seen it. I know where to get it (the Italian market). There's no reason I couldn't have it other than that I forgot it. I also didn't add any parsley or pine nuts, and I used only one tomato (one tomato each day, otherwise I run out too early. I have to ration those babies). I'm sure Idle Husband would have been really happy with some red pepper flakes, but I don't have them seperate from salt. Also, I'm not going to listen to the part where you use parchment or a silpat on the pan again. I used my stupid silpat, and I totally didn't think about the hamburger juices flowing everywhere. So the juices ran under my silpat and burned up the corners of both my (beautiful brand new nonstick) pan and the silpat. That's going to take some cleaning (and silpats are a total pain to clean). Had I used my brain a little more, I would have used tinfoil with a spritz of nonstick cooking spray. And I rolled out 15 dough balls, but I only got 12 meat pies (and I used a whole pound of ground beef). I'm thinking three tablespoons of meat per pie is over-doing it. I cooked the last three just as pitas/dough circles. The meat pies taste delicious just as they are with some plain yogurt (as instructed). Idle Husband wants these weekly.
{tuesday} I was gone, so Idle Husband was on his own for dinner which is why I planned to make the whole meat pie recipe on Monday. There were still six leftover for him to eat and they were easy for him to prepare since he just had to pop them in the toaster oven for 10 minutes to heat them up again. I had take-out Chinese food. I always have Chinese food of some sort when I'm with mom and IH is not around. I originally just wanted some ginger beef and maybe some noodles, but mom insisted on ordering a dinner for four which was ridiculous considering she wasn't eating it either. So I had it for dinner and I had it for breakfast the next day.
{wednesday} And then I drove that Chinese food home, and we had it for dinner. I'm proud of Idle Husband for giving Chinese food a second chance. He really loved the ginger beef (which is sad for me since that's pretty much my favourite thing ever). He actually ate quite a lot of it, and what was left was starting to taste a little old (blech green peppers in the ginger beef and soggy sliced onions and celery), so we ate what we could and I froze the rice (why do they give you so much rice?) and tossed the rest (it was mostly sauce, don't gasp).
{thursday} tuna pasta salad: good; idle husband not particularly hungry (and completely disinterested in a non-meat meal): bad. I had cooked the last of the rotini but didn't use all of it for the salad, so I put it in a freezer bag and froze it for some other day. And good thing, too, cuz I pretty much ate this whole thing myself between this dinner and tomorrow's breakfast and lunch. I did. I hate it, but I did (I keep telling myself it was mostly salad with a sprinkling of noodles).
{friday} Always well received. Always good. I did have a ball of frozen dough in the freezer, but I opted to make fresh dough. I thought I'd be happier with two frozen pizza doughs in the freezer instead of one and besides, I had the time. I did, however, use one of the two tubs of cooked ground beef and bacon I had frozen from the last pizza (I had a lot of meat topping leftover since half the pizza was vegetable).
{saturday} I chose to do a roasted chicken only because I wanted leftover chicken for Sunday's meal. It also just happens to be one of IH's favourite dinners. So... win/win, I guess. Same as usual with salt and pepper, but I also added some lemon juice to give it that flavour and I diced some potatoes to go around it. I hoped that they would soak up the little pool of lemon juice and turn into delicious lemon potatoes (a Greek specialty), but they kinda didn't bother and chose to adhere to the pan instead. Oh well. The pieces we could pull off were pretty delicious, and I got my leftover chicken!
{sunday} I was on my own for dinner, so of course I wanted to do something asian (that's my go-to alone food!). I didn't use leftover spaghetti. Instead I used some of those cheap itchiban-type noodle packages (Double Happiness brand, Dongguan rice stick, in the red package). For the salad, I chopped up some lettuce, threw in a few handfuls of spinach, and added some carrots and green onions. The dressing for this salad is so delicious and with the noodles thrown in there, it was just so good. I think I'm going to have to start a recipe card just for delicious salad dressings. I'm totally making this one again.