MENU: 4/23/15 - 4/29/15

We had a few changes to last week's menu. Lentils & rice  got skipped because Tim and the bigs caught a salmon, which he cooked up and we served with some leftover pasta and broccoli. Rice, kale, & eggs got skipped because the bigs ate at a church event while Teebs, Tim, and I ate bargain Papa Murphy's on the front lawn. Those two missed dinners are getting bumped to this week.

I also busted out a couple spontaneous loaves of lemon bread, one for a group I was hosting and another for the fam, as they wouldn't have been happy if they'd had to smell the loaves baking and not had some for themselves. The bread and the lemon bars we'd already planned on having made my lemon-loving taste buds pretty happy for a few days!

Here are the two new recipes we tried and liked last week.

* restaurant-style prime rib roast - We were given some prime rib that we didn't know how to cook, so I hunted down a few recipes for ideas and had Tim take charge. He made this one and it was really good!

* apple & fig granola - There was a bit of a learning curve with the apples,which I mention in the notes after the recipe, but this tasted great plain or over a bowl of yogurt.

ADVANCED COOKING (These aren't always planned, so they'll often be things I did the previous week.)
* I'll make peanut butter and crockpot beans, just like I do once or twice every week.

BREAKFASTS
* yogurt with pears/English muffins
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix as optional toppings x5

DINNERS
* rice, kale, & eggs (chopped garden kale from the freezer)
* chicken & roasted veggie soup (from the freezer)/toast
* tropical salad/teriyaki chicken (raw in marinade from the freezer, crockpot)/rice
* lentils & rice  
* pasta with lemon tomato sauce and feta/new recipe
* tacos - seasoned meat from the freezer, crockpot beans, and some other toppings served in a tortilla or bowl, as a salad over a pile of greens, or with mound of rice

* leftovers 

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* new recipe
* produce
* Crunchy Flax cereal (We've scored a few cases of 12 for $4.99 at a local discount store over the last few months, so we've been using it as a snack. We either eat it with milk as a cold cereal, over yogurt with fruit, or mixed into homemade granola.)

* popcorn with seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post. )

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