Chicken stew and cornmeal dumplings {everyone@thetable}

With Reuven now an entity in his own right at our  (admittedly overflowing) table, I am loving watching him dive in to new flavors and textures. I am a big proponent of not "dumbing down" food for children.  Their palates deserve to be delighted just as much as ours. Here's a favorite recipe from the Blandings kitchen needs only a few quick dices with a butterknife to be served to everyone at the table, from Daddy to babe.

Chicken stew with cornmeal dumplings

(adapted from Diabetic Living Online)

2 lbs chick thighs

1 bag baby carrots

2 sticks celery, diced

1 1/2 cups frozen corn

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 tsp. minced garlic

2 tsp. dried rosemary

1/4 tsp. pepper

2 cups chicken stock

1. In a large pot, add chicken. Cook thoroughly, debone. Discard water unless you used stock for this step. If so, retain 2 cups. 

2. In same pot, combine stock, carrots, celery, corn, onion, garlic, rosemary, and pepper. Add chicken. Bring to a boil and let simmer until carrots are almost tender.

1 cup flour

1 cup cornmeal

2 tsp. baking powder

4 egg whies

4 TBS milk

4 TBS vegetable oil

3. Combine above ingredients in mixer and beat until smooth. Using a spoon, drop Cornmeal Dumplings dough into equal-sized mounds on top of hot chicken mixture. Cover and cook for 20 to 25 minutes more or until a toothpick inserted into a dumpling comes out clean. Serve.

HOMEschooling, HOMEmaking: Let's Do Lunch

I had such a good thing going with lunches. Really, I did. I didn't even appreciate it. The good times are always like that, aren't they?


Lunches were so easy because of one little word: leftovers. Every night, I simply set aside the leftovers from the supper I'd created. The next day, out came the tubs and bowls of good stuff. The microwave did its duty. And voila ... lunch!


But as I shared nearly a year ago (has it been that long already?), those days are long gone. We've moved into a new era of lunching here at Casa Blandings ... one that I'm not always thrilled with, but one that is making do, at least.


Our new "plan" often feels a whole lot less "planned" than I'd like. About half the time, Jo is in charge of lunch. She loves it. I'm all in favor of this--except, I admit, when she makes something that I'm not too fond of and I have to eat it anyhow. Takes me right back to the days of Not Being the Mom. Now thankfully, Jo has no idea how to make some of the yuckier, 70s cream-of-XYZ nightmares that still populate my personal cooking list of Thou Shalt Not. But still. Every once in a while I find myself choking down yet another grilled quesadilla and cringing--hopefully just on the inside, so that she doesn't feel underappreciated.


The rest of the time, I've taken to relying on a pretty well stocked fridge and pantry to get us through. Lots of nibbly type foods, some salads, platters of cut veggiesm fruits, and nuts. The menu ideas that I listed last year are still very much in rotation, and yes, I finally dove in and bit the bento bullet. While I'm only just now amassing the "fun" stuff to accessorize or DIY bento noshes, I admit that delving into the more creative end of serving up lunch has brought a little bit of sunshine to our otherwise dull routine. I recently entered the world of silicone baking cups and fruit kabobs on little animal picks. As if I need another obscure obsession. 

Bento-style Taco salad

I'd been feeling pretty uninspired by the whole thing recently, though. I've gotten breakfast back under control (it had become pretty much a seek-and-find meal for a couple of months after Seven joined us), and dinner is a snap thanks to meal planning and whatnot. But lunch? It's a no man's land pitstop of a meal. Dare I say--boring?


And then I saw this blog, and boy, did I feel ashamed of myself. Check out this momma's lunch repertoire! This is a woman who does lunch. I have no idea what the rest of her life looks like, but I can guarantee that her girls are going to remember that Momma loved them enough to invest time into sweet little creations ... just for them ... every day. 


Probably not now. But you know ... someday they'll remember. Like when they have kids of their own, right?


So I'm now officially back on the hunt for more lunch ideas to stir into the Blandings pot. Stuff that both Jo and I can make in a relatively short time--like the taco salad above, which takes all of five minutes thanks to pre-browning the ground turkey, mixing in black beans, seasoning, then freezing it in batches of 3/4 lb. 


More pasta salads, more pre-cut veggies, more dips. More variety.


Less quesadillas. 


Can I get an amen?

HOMEschooling, HOMEmaking part 3

We'll call this Advanced Meal Planning 201.

At this point, you've already got your master list, and you've completed at least one menu. Your feet are wet, and you want more.

Happy to comply. :-)

My personal favorite part of meal planning is that it frees me to do only the parts of planning that I enjoy. I actually love to cook. Having a plan in place allows me to indulge in my passion for cooking knowing that the ingredients I need are on hand and there's variation already built in (chicken three nights in a row? Ugh!). Plus, I can spend the bulk of my day just doing whatever I'm doing, without pondering what I'll need to pull out of the freezer or whether I'm running out of time to whip something together to put on the table. This is a win-win: a little investment of time spent in the planning stages has paid off in literally years of hassle-free meal plans at my fingertips.

Now that you've got a meal plan in place, you're about to see what I mean.

If you have two weeks worth of meals laid out right now, you've got a leg up. But in order to really reap the benefits of meal planning, you're going to need to log a few hours in the kitchen. Why? Because you're going to want to have a solid base of meals to draw from; while your family isn't going to mind some things on repeat (most people can hand spaghetti, pizza and tacos twice in a month, for instance), you don't want to cause burn-out. So, I hereby give you license to do something crazy: go on a meal hunt. YES--keep that two week plan in place, and work like crazy to jot new things on your list as they pop into your head. Maybe you've forgotten about Aunt Linda's favorite pork chop bake until just now. Go ahead and add it to your list. But keep looking, too. Add as many things to your list as you can by trying out new recipes. Hit your favorite blogs, haunt allrecipes.com, whatever you have to do to get that number of meals up.

It's fun stuff, actually. No doubt they'll be some absolute misfires. But who knows what kind of new favorite you're likely to stumble on? Get out there and explore!



For the next step, I'm assuming that you have at least 35 separate meals listed. Using the same random assigning process that you used back in your original plan, go ahead and sprinkle a couple of empty slots in over the course of the month. You decide how many--personally, I use one every two weeks. And what do I do with this vacant box? Fun, ladies. :-) This is my Try a New Recipe Night. Keeping that little spot open allows me to plug in something that's caught my eye, whether I've torn it from a magazine or spotted it on the Internet. It also keeps me from feeling like I'm in a rut, and gives my kids the opportunity to try new flavors and textures. Call me crazy, but this little injection of flexible creativity does so much to keep the joy in cooking for me.

You can, of course, bypass the Try a New Recipe Night altogether. Your choice. But can I give you a gentle nudge in that direction, anyway? Not only am I partial to experimenting in the kitchen, but I can't tell you how many of those once-new meals have since become standards on our menus. This is the key to how our menus have grown over the years. While I started out with those 40-odd meals a while back, I now have a rotation of nearly 70 meals at this point. That's 70 nights, automatically planned out for me. No worry, no stress. Just another menu created, stored in my computer, and pulled out when I'm in the mood for what I see.

Another advanced step in menu planning involves cuing in to the seasons. One of our favorite warm-weather dishes is broiled, sliced chicken breast over a bed of spinach and raspberry vinaigrette. One of our favorite winter warm-ups is my grandmother's chicken and dumplings. Obviously, the two shouldn't pop up on the same week. By sorting through and creating separate menu files on my computer, I've been able to rotate seasons as easily as I rotate weeks. I even have a Thanksgiving time menu; I've already scheduled in our family's favorite meals using various leftovers ... why create that from scratch every year?

Alright, one last thing on meal planning: when you get to the point when you are fairly well-established in your actual menus, make the jump to creating a grocery list to go along with them. This is by no means essential, but it's just another of those little touches that allow you to save time. A base list, outlining all of the ingredients you need for a set menu, is easy to set up as a word file, and alter as needed. Have a whole pantry full of dried black beans? Strike them off the list. It's a whole lot easier than realizing at the last moment that you needed 2 tablespoons of orange juice concentrate for a dish ... and you forgot to pick it up.

My menus and lists are labeled in a similar manner (ie, FallMenu3 goes with FallList3) and placed in their own folders, which are ultimately inside a main folder I've labeled MEALS. (Creative, aren't I?) I've been using this overall method for over a decade now--since very early in my marriage, in fact. I'm convinced that it makes my life--and homeschooling--much easier. Hopefully, it will do the same for you!

HOMEschooling, HOMEmaking part 2

Got your list? Does it have more than two dozen potential meals jotted on it? If not--do not pass go, do not collect $200! No, seriously--you really have to come up with at least 24 meals to make this process work. Get creative! Even your picky, picky eaters surely have almost a month's worth of meals in them. Think hard. Grilled cheese can count as supper. Write it down. You like to pull off the occasional breakfast-for-dinner, right? Write it down. No matter how ashamed you are to admit that it's part of your repertoire, it's in there. So write it down. (And how do you think I feel about having "chili dogs" on my list, anyway?)

Next step in making a meal plan that will work for you is filling in the blanks. Yep--it's really that easy.

There is a small part here that requires knowing yourself. Are you more of a straight list person, or someone who likes a day-by-day calendar format? Both will work just fine in the long run, but you'll help yourself along in the process of getting used to the whole mindset if you pick the format that makes the most sense to your brain. Then, decide how many blanks you want to fill in. A week? Two? A whole month? There are a lot of variables that lead people to pick a certain schedule. A dear friend of mine does a month at a time because her husband is paid on a monthly basis, so she does all of the "big" shopping just once every four weeks. I go with a two-week schedule for the same reason--Mr. Blandings' payday rolls around twice a month, so that's what we work around.

One of my menus:

Because I am addicted to my Mac, I have cute little menus designed for my 14 days. There is no magic to these menus, though--a plain text file will do just as well. I give each day a heading, and alongside that I include our evening plans, if any. This is a very, very important step--if you skip it, you may find yourself lined up to make lasagna on the same night you're heading out the door at 6 p.m. to get one of your children to violin practice, or find that a stew was supposed to have been simmering for a full two hours while you were at your Bible Study. This is a recipe for stress, and stress is not what meal planning is about! It's supposed to be the antidote to stress ... so take a minute to note the recurring activities that pop up in your life. Plan accordingly.

(We'll work on customizing menus with non-recurring events in our next session.)

Now that you've outlined the when, it's time to throw in the what. Simply start dropping meals in on days. Don't think too hard about it unless for some reason you have a strict aversion to the idea of a tuna casserole on a Monday. Some people have certain meals on certain nights (ie, Sunday is always spaghetti night). Go ahead and make those accommodations, but otherwise, willy nilly is really, truly fine.

Have more meals than slots? Good for you! You are now in the realm of the rotating menus. Here's how it works:

You decided to do a two week menu. But you have 24 meals. You've filled in 14 blanks, and you have ten meals left over. Create a NEW 14 week sheet, and randomly toss your four favorite meals onto that new schedule. Fill in around them with the meals you haven't written down yet. Voila! You now have an entire month's worth of meals planned. Simply use one, then the other, then go back to the first ...

And these, essentially, is it. The very basic meal planning technique. There are, of course, more advanced tools ... and we'll get to those on Friday. That ought to give you plenty of time to have a couple of menus under your belt. :-)

HOMEschooling, HOMEmaking part 1

The thing about homeschooling is that, ideally, you do it at home. Which means that you (and your children) are dirtying the floors, adding to the laundry, using dishes, and generally cluttering your house all day. Pretty much every day.

It can be a real drag.

Sure, there are seasons where mom feels all Holly Hobbie and keeping things tidy is just Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Had I not experienced these odd, cozy stirrings myself, I'd swear they didn't exist. But they do. There really are times when nothing satisfies the soul quite as much as a stack of freshly laundered cloth diapers and the scent of Pine-Sol on the floors.

Of course, the rest of the time, we're all just trying to keep our heads above water. By necessity, school comes first. There will always be dirty dishes ... but the times when your 7 year-old longs to feel your arm around his shoulder while you re-read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ... sacred stuff, that.

To that end, I try to be (semi)organized in my housekeeping duties. This frees me up for my first love: educating my kids. I have a schedule for doing household tasks, the kids have a chore routine and, all things being equal, we keep the place in decent shape. I subscribe fully (and enthusiastically) to the "many hands make light work" concept, so any given day might find Atticus corralling all of the little one's board books back into the proper basket, Logan dragging the trash to the curb, Oliver and Manolin taking turns helping me load the clothes dryer, and Jo browning ground turkey at the stove.

Now, even with all of this "all for one, one for all," planned-out full-court press, no one has ever walked into my house and declared, "You homeschool? Why--this place is so spotless, I never would have known! How do you do it?"

You know what gets people's attention? No joke--it's my meal plan.

Of all things, people really dig my meal plan. Whether they've heard me mention it or have spotted a two week-menu on my fridge, people ask a lot of questions about my meal plan. So you know what? I'm going to post about it here. And that way, the next time someone wants to know more, I can just give them my blog's address. How's that for killing two birds with one stone?:-)

So here it goes. My big secret to meal planning, shared for those who want to embark on the journey to organized meal planning. Ready?

Master list.

Yep--that's it.

I started with a master list of meals that my family loves, loves, loves. I literally pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and a pencil, and started jotting down meals as they came to mind. Just entrees, mainly. A nice, long numbered list that I added to over the course of several days. Whenever I had an idea spring into my mind, I'd jot it down. When I had the chance to flip through some of my favorite cookbooks, I'd write down our favorites from them, too.

Then, I culled the list. There were a couple that, for one reason or the other, just didn't stay on the main list. A couple were so heavily "dairy-ed" that they had to be removed for the sake of our dairy-free eaters. A few others were just too pricey when adjusted to serve a crowd rather than a small-ish family. (We have a strict grocery budget.) And others were just not universally loved enough to crop up in a regular rotation. (They went onto a separate list that I'll mention in another post.)

In the end, my Master List has 46 meals. I'll share my list (with a few recipe links) here to give you an idea of what I'm talking about in case you're ready to start compiling your own:

Mary Grace's Master Meal List

1. Bean Pilaf
2. Lasagna
3. Three Bean Stew
4. Turkey Meatloaf
5. Corn Flake Chicken
6. Chicken and Noodles
7. Potato & Carrot Stew
8. Chicken and Dumplings
9. Pot Roast
10. Taco Soup
11. Swedish Meatballs
12. Spaghetti
13. Black Bean Tortilla Stack-ups
14. Arroz con Pollo
15. Fried Rice
16. Stir Fry
17. Orzo and Chick Peas
18. Turkey Casserole
19. Chicken & stuffing casserole
20. Homemade Pizza
21. Black Beans and rice
22. Lentil Soup
23. Tacos
24. Black Bean Burritos
25. Kidney Bean & Macaroni Casserole
    
26. Chili over Spaghetti
27. White Chicken Chili
28. Mostacelli
29. Roast Chicken
30. Chicken-fried chicken
31. Chili-Spaghetti Casserole
32. Grilled Salmon
33. Salmon patties
34. Mexican Veggie Pasta Bake
    
35. Chicken Tortilla Soup
36. Open-Faced Turkey Sandwiches
37. Lentils and rice
38. Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie
39. Quesadillas
40. Turkey Stroganoff
41. Tuna Casserole
42. Fried Fish (tuna, cod, whatever)
43. Broccoli & baked potatoes with cheese
44. Chili Dogs
45. Boca burgers
46. Sloppy Joes

Your homework--should you choose to accept it? Make your own master list. And meet me back here tomorrow, when I tell you what in the world to do with it. :-)