What's for Dinner????

What are YOU having tonight????

Our menu for this evening includes the "Fix-it & Forget-it Recipes for entertaining" recipe for:

No Fuss Sauerkraut

3 lb pork roast (I'm using a bone-in pork tenderloin)
3 (2-lb) pkg sauerkraut (drain juice from 1 pkg)
2 apples, peeled & sliced
1/2 c brown sugar
1 c apple juice

(I also added 1 whole onion, sliced into half-rounds, and 3 celery stalks, sliced into in 1 inch pieces.)

Place Meat in large slow cooker. Place Sauerkraut on top of meat. Add apples & brown sugar. Add juice. Cover. Cook on high 4 to 5 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes.

I'll be serving with boiled baby white potatoes, instead. Oh, and I layered the sauerkraut on the bottom, lay the meat on top of that, then the apples & onions, brown sugar & juice.

So, that's our meal for this evening.

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On a similar note, I recently read a book that prompted me to consider menus for dinners in our house. I really didn't like the book much, so I'm not going to say much else positive about it, except for the part where it pointed out that a person wastes a lot of time (and generally money) when dinner is not planned for, ahead of time. While the author of this book was all for rotating about 7 or 8 different dinners over & over.... I need more variety. So, I sat down today (while watching ID4, for the umpteenth time) and wrote down every last dinner I could think of that I've ever made and we've liked. (Well, those that had easily obtainable ingredients, since there's no point in putting shark on my menu plan if it's a rare treat. Same goes for things like ham, turkey, halibut, and moose & caribou at this point.)

I have roughly 60 main dish ideas written down. I'm going to have DH & DD go over it when DH gets home from work, and see if they can't come up with more things to add. Then I'm going to get busy, portioning out the meal ideas into 7 day segments. Each week will have (hopefully) one "fancy" meal. Something that takes me a good deal of planning & cooking to take care of, ya know. And 6 less-time-intensive meals. Mondays will generally need to be something with very little trouble involved, as that is the day, most often, that DH must cook. So, we'll save burgers, bratwursts, mac&cheese&hot-dogs, and grilled-cheese&tomato-soup, and things like that for nights when DH has to cook. Then that leaves me things like spaghetti & garlic bread, SOS (ground beef & gravy over toast/rice/noodles), steaks & stuffing and BLT's for the other 5 nights where I'm likely to be cooking, or DH & I can cook together.

Hopefully, portioning these meal ideas out into 7 day segments will make planning & purchasing easier, and I won't wind up here at home at 6:45, wondering what the hell I'm going to make for dinner. Or worse, at the grocery store spending big bucks for quick-to-prepare dishes that I could do easier on my own, if I'd just planned ahead. And, unfortunately, DH doesn't get home very much earlier than I do, so he can't start things. Or, he doesn't quite have the skill to know where to start, if he does beat me home with enough time.

I hope this makes making dinner a little less tedious for me. And besides, if I've got 60+ recipes, that means I'm not going to be making the same dish, 3 weeks in a row. So hopefully I'll find eatting a little more appetizing if I can look forward to at least a couple dozen different meals before I repeat one. We've all been getting burned out on having the "same-old, same-old" for dinner, over & over again, it seems.

And I really need to start using my slow-cooker more. I've got a rather nice (if rather large) slow-cooker that has pre-set times & temps on it. It's got 4 and 6 hours on High, 8 & 10 hours on low, and warm. Really, it should be very easy to me to plan ahead the night before, to take the ingredients out (or have them from the grocery store, in the case of veggies & dairy) and simply prep & toss them into the slow-cooker before I head out the door for work. It doesn't actually work as well as one would think. I've been told that for being a very predictable & steady type person, I'm rather scatter-brained sometimes. And making dinner is one of those times. LOL

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Wanted to say thanks again for all the comments on the last couple of posts. DD got quite a kick out of seeing the kudos on her last game, and everybody telling her to get out there & "kick the brat's butt", so to speak. Of course, she knows that the best way to beat him would be by getting a shut-out against him. And she's trying. Hopefully before the end of the season (mid-march) we'll stomp that team once.

And she was quite embarassed to see that I took a pic of her asleep & posted it. *grin* Ahhh, but isn't it a parent's priviledge to embarass they're youngster?!?!?! LOL

Have a Blessed Day!