Sunday, January 16, 2011

Week One

After the Beijing Noodle success on Monday, we had a bit of a flop on Tuesday with Miss Dahl's spelt pancakes and squash-goat cheese-orange filling, but the rest of the week progressed well, and we're ready to go this week and the next.

Monday - 'Beijing Noodles' (well, sort of

Tuesday - Spelt Pancakes with squash and goat cheese filling. Decidedly a flop.

Wednesday - Definitely a mid-week day. 

The dish I'm serving up - Artichoke heart, spinach and feta 'sauce' with Charles' sheets of pasta (he made and froze them over the holidays), inspired by a dish from Simple Suppers. This one was a definite mid-week hit and I've already purchased another jar of artichoke hearts.

Thursday - Chicken curry made in the slow cooker, with saffron rice, samosas and naan from Origin India. So we cheated a bit...

Friday - The end of the week was slated for Moroccan spiced trout, but my parents called Friday morning to invite us for dinner so the dish has been moved to another week. I did take over the carrot salad, however, and it was a welcome fresh side along with the roasted vegetables my mum had made.


Saturday - We wandered up the street to Leva for a pizza and spinach salad, and subsequently found our friend and site volunteer, Doug, playing the blues all evening.

The pizza was thin crusted and topped with a thin layer of sundried tomato pesto, chicken, mozzarella and basil (Chris' recent post had left me with a craving). The whole thing was a bit bitter for me, even a little dry, and I gravitated towards the salad - baby spinach, roasted pear (sweet, soft, caramel-y - what an excellent thing to do with a pear mid-winter), blue cheese, balsamic vinegar and vanilla candied pecans - perfectly comforting and excellent for watching the snow fall and listening to some good acoustic blues.

We're beginning week two this evening with pulled pork ragu and polenta, and some spinach on the side. The pork shoulder has been in the slow cooker for a couple hours now getting friendly with tomatoes, garlic, sage, fennel and rosemary, and it's starting to smell pretty lovely in our apartment.

Have a good week everyone!

PS. The post below has more details on the week's recipes. Feel free to e-mail me if you're interested, and I'll send them on. Alternatively the EPL has all the cook books we used in their collection.

6 comments:

Rachel said...

I've been planning my meals for the week too - I don't want a repeat of last semester where I would either go all day without something or cave and sustain myself with vending machine/HUB trash. But your meals are definitely more impressive! This week I am doing steel cut oats with blueberries for breakfast, squash/lentil/goat cheese salad for lunch, beet & carrot soup with a small sandwich for supper. I realize that it is immensely boring to eat the same thing every day for a week, but it gets the job done...and at least it all still tastes good. But I think I'll be taking some ideas from you in the future...

It's too bad the spelt pancakes didn't work out; but everything looks great :)

Marianne said...

Totally understand, Rachel. HUB is the worst. I was at La Pasta a ton last semester and it got ridiculous. So it's been leftovers for lunch so far.

Yum! I've got to start getting into oatmeal. That sounds like a great breakfast. Same with the salad. Did you have that one at work one day? I think as long as you're still enjoying it, don't mess with a good thing. I've been making a green salad with parmesan and a dijon vinaigrette for about a month and it's still going strong.

Let me know how it works out! Thanks! Hope to bump into soon!

Maki said...

I keep telling myself I will meal plan but then i toss the idea aside. I think we'd eat a whole lot better (more overall nutritionally rounded) if I did plan. It's called lazy (in my case).

Everything looks great. The "flop" sounds amazing though. hehe.

Marianne said...

Lol! Definitely understand, Maki. I've always put meal planning aside too, although I think my reasons were more to do with good old procrastination than anything. But seeing the benefits this past week, I'm hoping we can keep at.

Thanks! I know. I was expecting so much from it - what could go wrong with those amazing ingredients? It just didn't seem to work, but maybe it's due for another try one day.

Sharon said...

I was hoping you'd post an update on how the meals went! The chicken curry looks really good - and it's not really cheating when you've made the base of the dish :).

Marianne said...

Thanks, Sharon! Lol, I've definitely come to think the same - that wasn't the easiest dish in the world to pull together. Plus, Origin India's naan is soooo good.