A plan for the week ahead.
Feb 23rd, 2008 by Dani
Generally speaking, I am a weekly meal planner. It simplifies life and helps me keep to a reasonable food budget. The occasional spontaneous foray to a slow food market, as happened this morning, can throw such noble aims to the wind. Other factors currently interfering with my standard planning process are the presence of my Father in Law who lives in the USA and my recent purchase of the Australian Gourmet Traveller Annual Cookbook. The former means a lot of impromtu meals out and extras for dinner and the latter means lot’s of new recipes calling my name on a daily basis.
I will however attempt to be virtuous and plan my week to come around both the Cookbook, my market purchases and the food that I already have in the house. To keep me honest, I will blog the plan. Not something I would ordinarily bore you with.
So, in no particular order, here are the meals that should grace our table this week.
1. Roast beef and vegetables
2. Crab and mixed seafood rice noodle soup
3. Baked vegetable risotto
4. Double Baked cauliflower and emmenthal souffle with salad
must buy cream
5. soft shell crab burgers
must buy soft shell crabs
6. mussel and saffron veloute followed by turkey, fig and duck liver salad
must buy mussels, more cream, pancetta, duck livers, figs, more baby spinach, watercress, turkey, walnuts (ok, that’s just crazy extravagant talk but I MUST eat this salad and soon!)
7. oxtail lasagne
ok I’m laughing hysterically now at how I’m actually going to find time for this one mid-week but anyway…I’ll just add in a back up meal. Assuming I pull this one off I’ll need 1.5kg oxtail
8. prawn ceviche with guacamole and tortillas
I’ll need another cucumber, more avocados, 1 kg small green prawns and probably another red onion for this one. Plus some of those exorbitantly expensive spelt flat breads that will double in beautifully as tortillas.
That has got to be the most overblown, extravagant, unrealistic meal plan I have written in quite some time. I didn’t start this post intending to get totally silly. Stupid cook book with it’s fancy schmancy temptations. Maybe I should just wing it this week and see what happens. It would probably be cheaper.
I guess I should emerge from fantasy land and figure out what to have tonight. Sausages and left over lentil salad for the kids. Maybe the crab and mixed seafood rice noodle soup could actually be a reality for the grown ups tonight? In the meantime, I need to get some bread baking as we’ve run out…gee I got back to earthy and mundane pretty quickly didn’t I?
Sincere apologies for the second dose of over tired rambling from me today. I’ll try not to inflict myself on you again until I am making a little more sense.
