What's for supper? (Thai Chicken and Poppyseed Cake)

Thai-Style Curried Chicken
Rice, Oriental frozen vegetable mix

Clementines
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins, baked in a 9-inch pan instead of as muffins. I used 1/2 tsp. of lemon extract instead of lemon zest, and thinned yogurt instead of buttermilk.

What's for supper?--Applesauce Chicken

We haven't had A Year of Slow Cooking's Applesauce Chicken for a long time--I made it tonight with bone-in thighs, and baked it in the oven instead of in the slow cooker. I thickened it at the end with cornstarch--there was lots of sauce.

Go-withs:

Baked butternut squash
Couscous
Peas

Banana bread, yogurt

What's for Dinner? (National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day)

Seriously, it is. CakeWrecks even has a (mostly) family-friendly post to prove it.

I didn't know it was cleaning-the-fridge-day...had no idea there was such a thing...until Ponytails informed me of that fact while I was in the midst of arranging leftovers in a casserole dish. So I guess we were on target, if not with the cleaning, at least with the using up.

Tonight's menu was:

Pork-and-sausage casserole, made from leftover pork roast, two leftover sausages plus the brown rice they were cooked with, two or three chopped potatoes from with the pork roast, mushrooms, gravy plus a little milk, margarine, and paprika. Baked till the mushrooms were cooked through, but not long enough to dry out the rice.

Peas

Mini pita breads that the supermarket had for 99 cents a bag

Baked apples with a bit of apple butter, plus yogurt.

What's for dinner? Slow cooker beef stew and Doughnut Muffins

I knew we would be going out sometime in the late afternoon, so stew in the slow cooker seemed like a good choice for tonight.

Beef Stew (from the Rival Crockpot booklet--I substituted water for the beef broth)
Reheated couscous or bread
Salad (lettuce and mushrooms)
Doughnut Muffins (recipe below), clementines and pears

Doughnut Muffins, from More Food That Really Schmecks by Edna Staebler

Ponytails and Crayons are on the second week of their Spice Studies; the spice-of-the-week is cinnamon.  I didn't want to make the cinnamon cookie recipe given in the lesson, but thought cinnamon toast might be a bit too basic; this was a good compromise.  These treats look like muffins but really do taste like Timbits.  Or like something grandma took out of the deep fryer.

This is a half-size version of the recipe from Edna's book; it makes 18 small cakes.  If you want you can double it back again to make three dozen.

1 ¾ cups flour

½ tbsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. nutmeg

¾ cup white sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup shortening, lard, or oil

¾ cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

For rolling:

About 1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup sugar mixed with 2 tsp. cinnamon (you will probably not need nearly this much sugar and cinnamon; we had some left over to save for other uses.  You can reduce the amount of sugar coating by sprinkling just a small amount at a time on the plate you use to roll them on.)

Combine dry ingredients.  (Don't omit the nutmeg; it really adds to the flavour.)  In another bowl beat the egg, oil or shortening, milk and vanilla.  Add to the dry ingredients and stir just enough to moisten.  Fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full (we used our smaller-size ones) and bake at 350° F for 15 to 20 minutes. (Don't use muffin papers.)  Tap the tins to dislodge the muffins.

Melt the butter and roll the hot muffins in it to coat them all over, then immediately roll them in cinnamon-sugar mixture.  (To make things more organized, have one person dip muffins into the butter with a slotted spoon, let any extra drain off, and then set them onto a plate sprinkled with some of the cinnamon-sugar.  Have another person roll them around and then put them on another clean plate.  Add more cinnamon-sugar if needed.) Eat them warm.

What's for dinner? Stuffed Peppers with chili sauce (or not)

Green peppers have been unexpectedly cheap at the supermarket lately.  Mama Squirrel bought five smallish ones on the weekend.  Tonight she cut them all in half, took out the seeds, and arranged them in a large glass baking pan.  She stuffed the halves with the following mixture:

Ground beef, somewhere between a pound and a pound and a half
1/2 cup frozen bread crumbs
1/4 cup milk
1 good squirt Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 egg

There was a bit of mixture left, so Mama Squirrel added two custard cups to the pan and made two no-pepper servings along with the ten pepper halves.  (Like mini meatloaves.)

Then she took half a jar of chili sauce--about a cupful--and poured most of it into the bottom of the pan, trying to distribute it evenly.  She poured a bit of it over a few of the peppers, but not all of them, because not all of us like or can eat much chili sauce.

The pan, covered with foil, went into the oven for about an hour; the meat was done when Mama Squirrel checked, so she took them out and sprinkled some of them with Parmesan cheese.  We also had a butternut squash, cut up and baked in a covered casserole with a bit of water; and couscous (add boiling water and let it sit covered for ten minutes).

What's for dinner?

Slow-cooker beef goulash
Mashed potatoes (instant)
Baked sweet and sour cabbage (chopped cabbage with a bit of brown sugar and vinegar, baked in a casserole)
Peasant Bread

Apple slices baked in apple juice
Voortman's Ginger Kids

What's for supper? (for those who feel like eating)

Breaded chicken wings (from a frozen package)
Baked butternut squash (sliced thin and baked in a casserole)
A bit of leftover Beany's Beans
Gayle's Peasant Bread

Peaches
Last night's cookies

Favourite Fall Supper

Sausage Pasta
Baked Sweet Potatoes
Carrot sticks, crackers

Snickerdoodle Blondies
Pears

Life outside of homeschool posts: thinking dinner as you cook

Dewey's Treehouse has always been somewhat eclectic--we go through seasons of posting mostly frugal stuff or food stuff, and other times when we're more about homeschooling or something else. If you're not into reviews or Charlotte Mason, thanks for your patience.

Yesterday we got home from an errand at shortly after four; I had an hour to get dinner on the table and I wasn't sure yet what I was going to do with the pound of ground chicken that I had left thawing in the fridge. I started it browning while I preheated the oven and mixed up a large pan of brownies, since we didn't have even one cookie or anything like that in the house (well, there was some Jell-O in the fridge, that I'd made up from the other package I bought for the disastrous Gummy Worms experiments). I also cut up some sweet potatoes and put them in a casserole, sprinkled them with pepper, drizzled them with olive oil, and added water to the bottom of the pan; they went in with the brownies. (I should have cut them even smaller because they were still a bit hard at the end; I had to finish them quickly in the microwave.)

When the chicken was pretty much cooked, I added part frozen green beans, one chopped-up cauliflower, and this combination of sauce ingredients: 1/4 cup white salad dressing (what we use instead of mayonnaise), 1/2 cup of cottage cheese (because the recipe I was thinking of calls for sour cream or yogurt and I didn't have either), a bit of garlic powder, and a teaspoonful of chicken bouillon powder. I put the sauce stuff on top of the vegetables, and it didn't look like much, but I was figuring there would be some liquid from the chicken and the frozen beans. In the end I did add a bit of milk: not enough to be soupy, just enough to keep it moist. I just let this cook for awhile on the stovetop until the cauliflower was cooked and it smelled done. I also added in the measly bit of cheddar cheese we had in the fridge. (We are not starving, we just need some groceries.)

And I cooked a potful of Basmati rice.

So: Cheesy Chicken Cauliflower Un-Casserole; baked sweet potatoes; rice; brownies; and the remains of the Jell-O. That was dinner, and the Squirrel family approved it.

A ketchup kind of meal (What's for dinner?)

Dinner's from the freezer--we're low on fresh things.

Frozen cabbage rolls (a small package--they were on sale at Giant Tiger)
Frozen mini-sausages
Baked potatoes (last of the bag--they were getting soft)
Carrot sticks, sour cream, applesauce etc.
Fruity Oatmeal Muffins and Mango Freeze (recipes below)

Fruity Oatmeal Muffins, because the oven was already on at the right temperature:

2 scant cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 cup milk, swished with the bottom bits of two jars of peach and strawberry jam

Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients. Correct flour if needed (I added a bit more.) Combine gently, scoop into muffin pan and bake 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Mango Freeze:

Part of a bag of frozen mango cubes (frozen fruit was on sale a couple of weeks ago)
3 small fruit yogurts

Run through the food processor until smooth and fluffed up. If you do this ahead of time, scoop into small dishes or one larger bowl and put back into the freezer until you want them.