More food and fun.

I started this blog as an attempt to keep a journal of sorts. I am terrible at the actual pen to paper, so I'm hoping this will last longer than one month (the longest journal kept). I am also going to do my best to write more about food and fun, so there will be weekly postings of my weekly menu, an original recipe if I'm using one during the week, and a post about my faves of the week or new findings.

This weeks menu starts tonight because we had Chinese take-out for dinner last night. After a trip to the grocery, I really don't feel like cooking since our grocery trips involve going to at least three shops for ingredients!

Thursday: Basic meatloaf with roasted sweet potatoes and roasted butternut squash puree.

Friday: Tandoori chicken, brown basmati rice, garlic nan, mushroom korma, and spinach and chickpeas spiced with garam masala.

Saturday: Mushroom lasagna with meat sauce.

Sunday: Football day- Husband's choice for game food

Monday: Hubby's favorite spicy oven baked crispy panko chicken with rice

What an ambitious menu. It's all fairly simple to make, really. Here's how I made tonight's meatloaf.

I got out my handy Cuisinart mini prep. Washed the following:

1 stalk of celery
1 small bell pepper

Then, peeled and roughly chopped one small onion and placed it in the food processor and pressed chop until it got to my desired size. No tears! Dumped the onions into a mixing bowl, then rough chopped the celery and bell pepper and tossed it into the food processor and chopped until the desired size was reached. Dumped that into the mixing bowl and added a handful of breadcrumbs, 1/2# of ground sirloin and 1/2# of ground chuck and 2 strips of smoky bacon that went through the same chopping process as the veggies, couple dashes of Worcestershire sauce, about a quarter cup of ketchup, and good ol' salt and pepper. Combine everything together with your hands, form into a loaf shape, place in pan and bake at 375 degrees until done. I check it after forty-five minutes with a thermometer. When it reaches 165 degrees it's done.

For the sides:

Roasted Sweet Potatoes
wash 2 large sweet potatoes, cut into 1 inch pieces, sprinkle on olive oil, salt, pepper and a little garlic powder.
put on a baking pan and place in oven. should take about 30 minutes to cook.

Roasted Butternut Squash Puree
Wash the squash and then cut in half length wise. Scoop out seeds, sprinkle some olive oil on it and put it on a baking pan cut side down. I added fresh sage leaves to these. So before you put the squash on the pan lay fresh sage leaves in the area that the squash will go, then top them with the squash. The two are a good combo and the squash gets scented this way.

Bake it for 30 minutes or until it gets soft. When cooked, scoop squash into a blender, add butter(as much as you like), salt and pepper and a splash of cream or milk, push the puree button on the blender. Voila it's done. pour it into a serving dish.

That's what we're having for dinner. I told y'all earlier that I'm not a professional chef so measurements and cooking times are approximated. If you really need exact times, temperatures, measurements, and a weekly shopping list so you can follow my menu, I can give those to you. Just ask.

Bon apetite!