Monday, June 9, 2014

Sunday Game Plan Cooking - 6-8-14

This Sunday's Game Plan cooking involved trying a new recipe and making lots of old ones.  I find that repeat posting these on my blog is a good thing.  Sometimes its nice just to see what I'm cooking and it's always good to have a reminder of successful recipes.

As always, my mission for Sunday cooking involves making ahead some freezer lunches for the coming week, getting a game plan for breakfasts, and browsing the contents of the freezer so that I have a menu in mind for supper ideas.  

This weekend was especially successful at avoiding restaurants and saving money.  I find that weekends I am the most tempted at eating out but I made most everything we ate all weekend.  

Friday night I helped my sister-in-law and her family get ready for a garage sale.  They ordered Casey's pizza (which is my favorite take-out pizza these days) so I did have that for supper but it was their treat for all the work we hammered out that night so it didn't cost me anything.

Saturday morning I was up before the sun headed out to the garage sale.  Before I left the house, I baked two batches of muffins - one chocolate chip and the other blueberry. 



 I used my favorite Plain Muffin recipe.  These went over great!  It poured down rain for our sale and so we had to shut the doors.  We were entertained by my niece's new baby and toddler son (as well as by  by muffin eating) while waiting on the few garage salers who were brave enough to shop in the rain.

My daughter got me a yogurt maker in a thrift store and I gave it a try on Sunday.  I tried my hand at making a few jars of plain and blueberry flavored, sweetened, yogurt.  I'm not sure I have the flavored yogurt just right.  I used my small batch yogurt recipe found HERE.  Here they are!  I had some with a little bit of Perfect Granola this morning and it was pretty good!



  
I made homemade pizza for lunch with some 5-Minute-a-Day dough that I had in the fridge.  I made a half recipe of the dough.  With that dough I made a large pizza:



(This time I prebaked the crust for about 10 minutes before adding the sauce and toppings.  Delicious! ) 

And I also used the remainder of the dough to make four Homemade Pizza Pockets for the freezer (to pack for lunches).  This is not the picture of the hot pockets I made but is the picture for the Hot Pocket post  (my husband LOVES these for lunch):



I made a batch of sandwich bread dough in my bread machine for making Homemade Pigs in the Blanket.  We LOVE these for packing in lunches.  They took hardly no time at all to put together since the dough came from the bread machine and I was able to freeze 12 Pigs in a Blanket from one batch of bread dough:




My husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary yesterday.  I usually make Parmesan Chicken on our anniversary but since we had pizza/saucy for lunch, we grilled some chicken.  I decided to make a marinade for the chicken and used my Homemade Italian Dressing recipe for this.  I included the mayo called for in the recipe to give it a little bit of body helping it cling to the chicken better.  It turned out awesome!  I only used a portion of this so I have the rest to use on salads this week (maybe make pasta salad with the leftover grilled chicken?).  Double plus!




My husband only wants potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes as side dishes.  He doesn't really care for noodles and flat refuses to try rice.  But I LOVE RICE!  I decided to try a recipe I saw for Homemade Chicken Rice - A - Roni!  It turned out terrific so I mixed up another set of ingredients for another day and put it in my pantry.  I'll post the recipe later this week.  This was a complete success and I will never again by boxed Rice-A-Roni:



For dessert, I made a small Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake.  I cut the recipe in half and made it in a casserole dish since it's just my hubby and me at home.  I replaced the water in this recipe with cold coffee which gave the cake its dark, rich color!  I'll probably post this half recipe sometime because it's mighty handy to have around.  This cake is a snap to mix up and is our family's favorite!




It seems like I spent all day in the kitchen, but I didn't!  I got some weeding done outside, washed and hung my sheets out on the clothesline.  Did some more laundry, and played a LOT with my daughter's new kitty (who spent the weekend with us).  This is Cami on her way home.  Isn't she funny?  She looks out the car window just like a dog:



Have a good week!




Gina