What’s on the menu this week? [NOT 9/2/21]

9/2/21 brightersideoflife 47
overhead image of several bowls of different soups

Hi friends! Happy Tuesday!

Today was a delightfully boring day! But I never got to food prep last night, so I gotta get my casserole baked tonight so I can be the leftover queen for the rest of the week.

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47 Comments

  1. We’ve been having traditional New Mexican chicken enchiladas this week.  Never gets old.  Not sure what’s next on the main course menu, but I do know what’s next on the dessert menu:  Key Lime Pie.  Mrs. Butcher did some baking of her own and had five egg yolks left over, so the first thing I thought of was that I also have a can of sweetened condensed milk, and here we are.

  2. I made a curry last night (16 meals) and chili tonight (20 meals) with a few weeks worth of rice over the past two days. I just have to slice up some lime and AVOCADO for the chili.

    I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how much I love avocado or how amazing and universal it is around here or not?

    Tomorrow night I will spend blanching and freezing various things for future meal preps before the Leafs game.

    • WHAT?

      I should have googled this before! I have always not done that.

      I guess now I can be really lazy and freeze avocado slices in the meal-sized chilli containers. It will probably lack taste but it will save 26.37 seconds of avocado slicing time each chilli meal. It will also save over half an avocado that is unnecessarily mowed down before each chilli meal.

          • I don’t really like to talk about it much.  It was 1942.  I was lost in the jungle.  Food was gone and water was running low.  I could hear my pursuers hacking through the choking vegetation nearby.  All I could rely on were my wits, my machete and my Mickey Mouse watch with built-in compass. 
             
            Suddenly, I heard a voice whispering to me:  “Psst.  Hey, buddy.  I can save you.  This way.”  I didn’t know whether to trust this stranger that I couldn’t even see, but my pursuers were getting closer and I felt as though I had no choice.  I headed in the direction of the voice, simultaneously hoping and dreading what faced me.
             
            I came into a clearing.  After so long in the jungle, the light of the bright sun hurt my eyes and made it difficult to see.  After a few minutes, I could see the shape of my rescuer.  He was short and squat, his skin looked like leather, and…I thought…maybe a little green.  He was probably quite sick–sicker than I felt at that moment.  He was behind a large, stone table; a curious–and somewhat menacing–grin on his face.
             
            “Can you help me?” I asked, almost pleaded.  “They’re getting closer and I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”
             
            “Oh, I can help you, alright,” his voice suddenly taking on a darker tone.  As blazing hot as I was, my blood ran cold.
             
            In my exhaustion and terror I hadn’t noticed the small figure that was tied down on the stone table.  I think I was suffering the effects of heat exhaustion and extreme hunger, because I could have sworn that I was looking at a green chile pepper.  It was roasted, stuffed with Monterrey jack cheese, covered with batter, and deep-fried.  My mouth–dry as the Gobi Desert–had started to water.
             
            Suddenly, the terrifying figure behind the table raised up a bottle of avocado mayonnaise.  Before I could react, he brought it down and smothered the chile relleno with it.
             
            “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”, I shrieked.  I knew my hunters would hear me but I didn’t care.  The sacrilege of what I was witnessing had become too much to bear.
             
            “HAHAHAHAHAHA!  EAT IT!  EAT IT!” the horrifying figure screamed at me in sadistic delight.
             
            I blacked out.  The next several weeks were lost to me.

      • Aldi sales run Wednesday to Tuesday, so that won’t help you now.  🙁

        But yeah every year avocados get cheap for super bowl! Pretty much everyone has them as the loss leader that week (the other grocery store I go to had them for 59 cents each, normally 94 cents each).

  3. We have an ice storm forecast for tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday. So meals will depend on whether or not we lose power. If we do it will be peanut butter sandwiches, and Girl Scout cookies. If not then whatever I have in the freezer – salmon, jambalaya, veggie burgers. 

  7. Allllll the leftovers here, this week😉
    I forgot to cook over the weekend, so HAD to cook the chicken (boneless/skinless chicken breast–2 packages total) I’d gotten late last week.
    Baked them with olive oil & a bunch of spices, and had one last night.
    The roommates had a couple, and they’ll help me clean up some of the rest, too.
    I had one tonight, chopped up in a bag salad–those were on sale last week, too, so I grabbed 4 bags. Suppers for the week will be salads with chicken, just like tonight.
    Lunches the next two days are brownberry-stuffed porkchops from the grocery store. I got two on clearance Saturday night after my shift. They got cooked with a can of french-cut green beans, a can of Cream of Mushroom soup,some milk, sour cream, & spices.
    Not fancy food, but warm & cozy, for this shitty cold weather. (Our daytime temps have been staying below 0° F the last few days… to use a phrase coined by some ollllld buddies–It is Butt-Ass Cold out there” lately!🥶🥶🥶
     

      • Good takeout (that you can call ahead for, then grab on your way home!), butt-warmers in cars, garages/underground parking, and remote-start😉
         
        Also LAYERS.
         
        And tbh, the mask thing is TOTALLY something i’ma keep up, after Covid too–because a good NorthFace/Columbia fleece jacket layered under a Columbia windbreaker winter coat, with the hood pulled up works WELL to keep you warm–and then the Mask covers up basically everything *else* on your face, except for your eyes….
        It’s actually a LOT better (and warmer!) than trying to wrap a scarf securely & trying to keep *that* in place & de-icicled!😉
        And a LOT less bulky, too!😁
         
        But the butt-ass levels of cold SUCK, ngl!
        The old folks in my grandparents’ generation used to say the cold “kept the riff-raff out” buuuuuut that’s a lie… everyone just holes up *inside* is all😉
         
        There is a REASON why MN has LOTS of very tall & large people…. imo, LOTS of that is related to the fact that so many of us just stay in, eating (or drinking!) most of the cold months….
         
        You NEED a good fat-layer to keep ya warm, in THESE temps😉😂🤣🤣🤣
        (Or to help ya “bounce” if you go down,on the icy days, too!😉😁🤪)

  8. There was a shooting today, out in Buffalo, MN. At the clinic that was my Urgent Care location, back when I lived out in the exurb.
     
    Five people were shot & flown in to some of the Level-1 hospitals in Minneapolis & Robbinsdale (a first-ring suburb on Mpls’ northwest side). Four folks went out(in?) to North Memorial in Robbinsdale, one was released, the other three are all critical but stable.
    One person was flown to HCMC here in Minneapolis–and word broke tonight, that that patient didn’t make it.
     
    My Nurse Practitioner works over at that clinic every so often, so I’m SURE she knows the folks who were hurt today, and my heart just aches for her & the rest of the Allina staff. 
    Buffalo is a small-ish town, and there is a TON of overlap, in the staffing between the “hospital building” clinic site, and the new building that also holds the Urgent care, where the shooting happened today.😕💔🙁
     
    There are a lot of REALLY great folks who worked in that clinic, and it just sucks rocks, that they’ve lost one person, and have so many more who were wounded.
     
    Apparently the man who did it is well known by the local PD, and by the clinics & hospitals over there, too.
     
    Allina—and one Doctor in particular—had a restraining order against him a couple years back, and if I understand correctly, the man had been charged with some stuff, too a couple years ago, but the charges were dropped after he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
     
    It sounds like there is a long history of unstability, and also a long history of medical problems, pain, and perhaps drug-seeking because of what started as pain-related issues…
     
    It’s a mess, and a sad one.

  9. welp…i have a sachet of lemsip (or whatever its called in the states…paracetamol and lemon powder…meant to be a hot drink) and a fuck load of snow outside
    so im making a lemon snow cone
    band on brothers style
    i will probably regret this decision

      • its for sore throats n shit normally…hot lemonny painkiller
        anyhoos..predictably i regret that decision….thats some foul flavoured powder
        and the snow gave me brainfreeze…lol
         

      • Similar to Theraflu here, if I understand right😉
        Paracetamol is acetaminophen–the main active ingredient in things like the  Theraflu powder you mix with hot water😉
        (I only know about it, because a few years back I ran across someone talking about “Paracetamol” and fell down an interwebs rabbit hole trying to figure out what it was… only to find out, basically Tylenol😉)

        • I know paracetamol = acetaminophen = tylenol (and yes it is very strange that we refer to the generic differently), that’s why I wrote that it seems crazy to make tylenol into a hot drink. I guess I’ve heard of theraflu but I’ve never had it and didn’t really know what it was. Still seems weird to me. Like… dosing for tylenol should be controlled and a hot drink feels like it’s not good for dosing? You may not finish it as it cools, and then you haven’t gotten the desired pain relief, but you don’t know how much of a dose you did get… 

          • it is a controlled dose tho?
            1 drink is 1000 mg of paracetamol…(or two pills minus the hot soothing lemonnyness)
            and you’re sposed to drink the whole thing before it cools
            failure to do so means you are using the medicine wrong

  10. I have some frozen mac and cheese that will definitely be putting in an appearance this week, plus I have potatoes and cheese curds and plan to give vegetarian poutine another go tomorrow.
     
    Incidentally, I was inspired by Cousin Matthew to finally use the fondue set that’s been languishing in my kitchen cabinets for years. It went… ok. It was tasty, don’t get me wrong, and we ate until we were stuffed, but the texture could have been better. Apparently using broth instead of wine does present some challenges, and the splash of lemon juice I added was supposed to counteract that, but it may not have been enough. I’ll try again sometime soon with some tweaks.
     
    It has been and will continue to be a cheese heavy week. At least tonight was just pasta with marinara and peas. 

  11. Sunday I cooked black beans and rice and made a pork roast in my crock pot on Monday. That in various configurations, with guacamole and shredded radishes for garnish, will get me through the week. Ugh, even food is boring me now.

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