So Sunday after church, the Hubs hurt himself… he managed not to break his foot, but has a deep muscle sprain and is in a boot and a fair amt of pain… thereby making my restful weekend not so restful… so another slap-bash meal as I didn’t want to cook and the kids were upset about how daddy’s foot put a cramp in their plans and cried and carried on about every piddling thing imaginable… so I needed it to be simple but happily eaten, since at the time I had high hopes of getting them to bed early… HA!

a yummy soup when you are the only physically capable of fetching more for the entire family, not the best laid plan... plus your soup goes cold as you do so...

Ravioli Soup
1 lb ground meat (again, I used veal because it was on sale cheaper than beef)
seasonings (salt/pepper, dried herbs–rosemary and other italian type seasonings, garlic pwd)
1 lb frozen green beans
1 lb can campbell’s tomato soup (slightly bigger than usual size)
2 (15 oz) cans diced italian style tomatoes
2-2.5 c frozen cheese ravioli
grated parm (opt)

Brown the meat with the seasonings and stir in the frozen beans… Add the tomato soup and 2 canfuls of water, and the tomatoes… bring up to a boil and taste for seasoning, and adjust… reduce the heat to med-med low, add the ravioli and simmer until they float… top with parm to serve…

[Quick Reminder: Make sure to scoop low to get meat as well as it sinks while the pasta and veg float...]

brown the meat and add the frozen beans...

step two add everything and bring to a boil...

when the raviolis float to top it is done...

See making soup can be almost as easy as 1, 2, 3… and the slight guilt I felt making another slap dash so soon after the last, passed quickly as everyone started needing this and that and I realized I couldn’t sit down long enough to think let alone eat… and in the midst of all this flurry, I also forgot to start the washer so I had to stay up another hour after getting everyone to bed… : (

First off, sorry for being such a slacker… second of all, this will pretty much catch me up as I now only have a couple of outstanding recipes to post…

Sept 13-19:
* Black Bean Lasagna, salad
* Fast Food Takeout: Bill and the kids had Backyard Burgers (the kids had free meal tickets), I had Quizno’s…
* Southwestern-ish Lasagna Roll ups, salad? (can’t remember for sure)
* Pulled chicken sandwiches (made with leftover Mandarin Chicken filling and caramelized onions), Asian Five Spice oven fries
* Tired mommy day + scouts = frozen battered fish and frozen onion rings with ketchup (sad I know, but it gotten eaten so quickly so we could get everyone out)
* Chicken, Spinach, Apple and Grape salad-all, grilled cheese–the kids, portabello lasagna–us
* the pitty pat turns 1, as his treat I make a dinner which he can fully partake and not feel jealous of the siblings: an all in one polenta (not only the perfect finger food but quick and simple too), roasted green beans with shaved parm (turns out he LOVES parm, who knew… I mean it’s been in things before, but this time he fished out every scrap of cheese he could find before starting on the beans and he loves roasted veggies so that’s kinda big love to trump them…)

Sept 20-26:
* Paprika Chicken, Scalloped Potatoes, green peas
* bluejay turns 6: Birthday Cod (it’s got bacon and fish!! the boy was in heaven), Cheesy Risotto, and boiled green beans–just beans, bacon grease, onion and water really, spiderman cake (aka. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and we topped it with a small spiderman cake from the store as it really was only $3-4 dollars more than they’d sell us the topper alone)
* Store bought, due to the 6 yo’s Community Helper project being largely unfinished: fried chicken, mac and cheese–me, potato wedges–others, salad
* another quick meal for facilitating the CH project wrap up: burgers (which I “grilled” in the oven on the cast iron grill, preheating it before putting the burgers on it, around 400-425 I think… and it totally worked!!! making me a rock star in a propaneless house… the grill did look a bit of a sad state by the end… so I might have to check with the spouse how hard it was to wash before making it a habit, though for now I’m a happy happy girl at the discovery), potato chips, salad
* campbell’s tomato soup with mini wagon wheel pasta cooked in it and some WG goldfish for the kids, Quick Fish Chowder for us
* Hubs called needing to work late, so: hot dogs, tator tots, carrot sticks (salad for the non-”hard” carrot eater)
* Hubs, home, cooked while I crashed on the bed weak with a probable hypoglycemic spell (he even brought me gorp while I was there) and made: sausage pasta, and a tomato, olive, fresh mozz salad that unfortunately 2 out of the 3 kids rejected (but they all fished out the cheese, LOL)…

Sept 27-Oct 3:
* Daddy’s Red Beans and Rice, salad
* “Grandma’s Chili” (Hubs), Grandma’s Rolls (mine)
* Spicy Chicken Tortelini Soup, the last of Grandma’s Rolls
* Lentil Hodge Podge
* Open House/Report Cards at Bluejay’s:bought CD’s fried fish, hush puppies, green beans, and made mac and cheese (lazy lady started before we left for the school) at home…
* Homemade Lunchables: meat (bologna and ham), cheese (mozz), and crackers (wheat townhouse and garden veg ritz), snapea crisps (aka. “pea chips”), dried apples and dried figs–the kids; a big eggy cheesy baked mac and cheese casserole for us (I think bill had a salad but I just ate more mac and cheese and pretended they were green peas…)
* Breakfast for Dinner: Cottage Cheese Pancakes with Pineapple Orange Coconut Salad, fried turkey spam (aka. not really spam at all but sacrilege)

Bonuses:
* Peach Bread, folllowed up by the Peach Blueberry Bread that served as baby’s b-day cake (but he tuckered out so we did it in the morning instead)
* the Hubster slept in, so I made breakfast: French Toast
* the I am a cow/I need to make something for Eat to the Beat special: Buttermilk Love Pie (another Grandma dish for the grandma fest on Family Favorites night…)

So I could find my recipe last second and the one in my go to breakfast cookbook, SL Breakfast and Breads, was made from wheat germ (I had none), so I had to scramble and googling a bit and rejiggering slightly from what I can remember of the ones we used to make and this is what I made…

it makes a larger batch but I only remembered to snap the pic before giving the kids more... so this is the much picked over stack and several of them turned out better than these, but they'd been eaten by this point...

Cottage Cheese Pancakes
1 (24 oz) container lowfat cottage cheese (1%), about 3 c
6 lg eggs
2 c flour + 1 T bkg pwd (normally I make them with ww pastry flour but tonight I had none so it was the white lily instead)
2 T oil
1/3 c + pineapple juice (reserved from the canned fruit, could have used the orange juice or just milk or water with a bit of sugar)
pinch of salt
2 capfuls of vanilla
butter and oil as needed

Blitz together in the blender and add the pineapple juice as needed to reach pancake batter consistency… (this was just slightly over 1/3 c so I’m guessing 6 T would make a nice round estimate to start from if you want to tinker it up or down… but pour it in as needed as the wetness of the cottage cheese and the humidity affecting the flour, etc can change how much liquid you want to add…) then just fried them up in a bit of butter and oil as one does the pancake dance (watch for a bubbled surface to flip and let them get golden on the second side to finish cooking thru)…

They weren’t bad, but as usual I would have sweetened them a bit more to eat them plain but knew the fruit was coming. And this is what the lovely branny directed me to: a cottage cheese pancake that uses oatmeal(you have to scroll down)… no less than 5 min from my asking, and I wish I’d found it before cooking them but I was starving and impatient so I quickly moved on to google (and when hubs went to check if anyone gotten back to me, my Papa called so he had to get the phone) so I do plan to try these soon… and then there was this jillian michaels number which I may consider as the simplicity of it is very appealing…

as for the fruit salad, I had the 4 yo and 2 yo mix it up to distract them while I finished cooking…

what you need... pineapple, orange segments, dried unsweetened coconut... (plus two ornery children who are chasing each other around the house in need of something reasonable to do with themselves while you finish cooking...)

what you end up with/top the pancakes with...

Pineapple, Orange, Coconut Salad
1 (20 oz) can pineapples in juice, drain (reserve juice)
2 (11 oz) cans mandarin oranges in juice, drain
1/2 c dried unsweetened coconut

Thoroughly drain the canned fruit. Put in a bowl along with the coconut. Toss/mix all together.

[You really want the fruit drained as dry as you can, and you don't want to make this up before you plan to use it as it will juice up and you lose coconut in the juice... you can of course do this with fresh fruit as well, but you still have to drain the excess juices...]

The baby’s finger food b-day dinner (from last month’s catch up, obviously)…

Pitty Pat’s B-day Polenta
1 lb ground pork + lots of seasonings (if you aren’t concerned about the salt/sodium you can just use a ready made sausage–but I you know babies/salt)
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1/2 c finely snipped or diced dried tomatoes (dried but a bit moist, like raisins, and preferably not in oil)
1 roasted bell pepper, skinned, seeded, and diced (I did green but if you aren’t making your own, the red ones are fine)
2 c cornmeal
about 2 T sea salt (might be a little shy of this really, as I don’t officially measure, but the point is it’s kind of a lot… if you undersalt it before you cook it you won’t be able to redo it and hence will never have the chance to bring out the flavor of the cornmeal again… but if you’re a learn-the-hard-way type try boiling cornmeal in unsalted water just for kicks, and when you’re ready to eat you’ll know what you should do next time…)
2 qts – 9 c water (I reckon you could use some broth if you want, and if you use canned or salted broth you can obviously cut back on the salt a bit… but frankly salt water is cheaper, and you’ll have plenty of stuff in this so flavor won’t be a problem…)
1-2 jars of italian marinated mushrooms, drained (or undrained the liquid can replace some of the water if you’d like, but add the liquid at the same time as the water)

Mix up the pork and seasonings and test a pinch of your sausage (ie. cook it up a taste it)… if it’s ok, finish cooking the rest with onion (otherwise tinker and test another pinch, etc…) once all the sausage is well browned and the onions translucent… add your liquid and let it start to come to a boil… meanwhile, chopped and add the tomatoes and peppers… when the liquid is boiling, reduce to medium low and mix it the polenta S L O W L Y and let simmer stirring as often as you can until it thickens up and pulls from the sides, around 20-30 mins… Then add your drained mushrooms, butter and parm and turn out onto a pan or into a casserole dish and let cool a bit to set up and then slice and serve (or slice and fry/bake/grill and serve)…