Sunday, May 24, 2009

Menu Plan Monday 5/25/09 - Our Stocked Pantry Saved the Weekend!!

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Our stocked pantry saved the weekend!! We found out on Friday morning that we would have weekend guests starting Friday night. We were so excited about entertaining and it was especially nice that I did not have to run out to the grocery to be able to feed a crowd. Here's how we did it.

On Friday, I pulled out the ingredients for Baked Oatmeal and baked a pan. That took care of breakfast for Saturday and Sunday. I also realized that I had the ingredients for a cheesecake, so we baked one of those as well. It made a nice dessert on Saturday night. That's all the prep work we did on Friday. Our guests arrived late Friday evening. We visited for a while then when everyone was too tired to stay awake any longer, we said good night and everyone went to sleep.

Saturday morning, after breakfast, I traveled to the next town over to pick up our grass fed beef order. Great timing! We were planning to have burgers that evening anyway, so we just thawed out a little more and feasted with our guests. For lunch, we all pitched in to make pizzas. We made 3 different kinds using this food processor pizza crust recipe. The first pizza, was cheese and olives - half black olives and half green olives. This was the kids' pizza. The second pizza was a caramelized onion pizza. We've seen this on menus at upscale pizza restaurants, but have never had one. This pizza was beyond delicious and will be in our regular rotation from now on. It was so easy to make. We just caramelized 2 medium sweet onions in butter and olive oil. When the onions were nicely browned, we poured the whole thing, oil and all, over the prepared crust and topped with mozzarella and baked. That's it. No pizza sauce. It had a nice subtle sweet onion flavor and we polished it off completely. The third pizza was a Muffaletto pizza. We had about half a jar of olive salad in the refrigerator that needed to be used before it went bad, so we took that and some sliced ham and put that on a crust brushed with olive oil. We topped it with mozzarella and baked. Another huge hit that we'll be making again soon! In fact, that one was such a hit that most of it was gone before I got a picture, lol.

Our guests have a garden, and were kind enough to bring new potatoes, cucumbers and purple hull peas from their garden. We had them as side dishes with the burgers made with our grass fed beef making Saturday's supper a completely local/ home grown meal.

Today, we had leftovers from Saturday. That was THE easiest entertaining I've ever done!! What a blessing it was to have a stocked pantry.

This week, we will be eating from the pantry again, except for milk and fresh produce. Here is the menu:

Breakfasts:
Baked Oatmeal (we still have some left from the weekend!!)
Maple Pecan Waffles (got the pecans at the farmers market!!)
Eggs and grits (pastured eggs from the farmer's market)
french toast (using those pastured eggs again)

Lunch:
Turkey Sandwiches
Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwiches
Broccoli and cheese Baked Potatoes (grown by our weekend guests)
Leftovers

Snacks:
Homemade bread with honey butter
Coconut/ Macadamia Nut cookies
Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies
Hummus and Bagel Chips
Homemade soft pretzels
Blackberries
Strawberries

Supper:
Monday - Oven Toasted Sandwich on homemade French Bread with oven roasted summer squash, zucchini, onions, peppers and eggplant.

Tuesday - Grilled Chicken Feta Salad

Wednesday - Pizza & a movie night. We're making a Ham, Bacon, Olive and Pepper pizza with Asian Broccoli Slaw and eating it while we watch a movie together.

Thursday - Leftover Buffet.

Friday - Toasted Turkey Pesto Sandwiches with a garden salad (hopefully with our homegrown tomatoes - some are starting to turn red!!!) and fresh berries for dessert.

Saturday and Sunday we will be eating with family and friends.

Hopefully, we'll be able to pull this off without a trip to the grocery store. I'll try to update at the end of the week.

Check out lots and lots of menus at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

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