It’s a simple menu plan this week seeing as I’m working a day shift and two night shifts (after being on holidays for nine days). We’ll see how well I stick to it. Here goes:

Monday: Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Tuesday: kitchen sink vegetable soup (I’ll make it up as I go)
Wednesday: Lentil Brown Rice Casserole
Thursday: leftover soup? (night shift)
Friday: leftover casserole (night shift)
Saturday: Baked Garlic Parmesan Chicken
Sunday: Turkey Meatloaf (it didn’t happen last week)

There are already over 160 menu plan contributions at I’m An Organizing Junkie so go over, check them out, and add your own.

Also, unrelated but I thought I’d share: Thoughts That Stick, a really great-looking online store carrying vinyl wall lettering, quotes, and decals, is having a 25% off sale that’s good through November 30. I stumbled across them and walked away $50 poorer with four awesome quotes for four different places in my home. I plan to put this one in my bedroom as something to read every morning on waking up. I know that I need to learn to believe it fully and maybe with time I will. In finding Thoughts That Stick I also found Single Stone Studios and their gorgeous cherry blossom branch vinyl 3-colour decal, which I’ll be emailing to my mom as a Christmas gift for me since she’s asked for some ideas. (They also have a 2-colour one for about $10 less.)

Another Monday, another menu plan for the week. I’m amazed each week just how many people participate in Menu Plan Monday hosted by I’m an Organizing Junkie. I love reading through the entries and finding new recipes to try. The variety of meals are incredible and there’s something for everyone.

Monday: Friday Night Chili (carried over from last Friday)
Tuesday: Addictive Sweet Potato Quesadillas (varying the recipe)
Wednesday: breaded chicken, cheese, and broccoli cutlets
Thursday: Brown Sugar Salmon
Friday: Creamy Chicken and Noodles
Saturday: Turkey Meatloaf
Sunday: Lentil Quinoa Stew

Head on over to the Org Junkie blog to add your menu.

Winding down another day and sitting here breathing in the lingering smell of paint drying on the walls. The green walls of the living room (the same green which once filled the entire main living space of the upper floor) have been given a first coat of Behr’s Gobi Desert. It’s hard to get an accurate impression of it at night but it definitely neutralizes the living room. Hooray!

Tomorrow I will be turning 10 pounds of beets into pickles. I’ve never made beet pickles (or pickled beets, if you prefer) before but I do love them (I can eat a jar in one sitting by myself) and one of the local grocery stores had the 10 pound bags for $1.77. The recipes I’ve found don’t look that difficult or involved either. I like this one at Domestic Reflections, which uses the reserved cooking water. Instead of throwing all those nutrients down the drain, they’re added into the canning jars. I’m not sure yet if I’ll boil them or roast them though. I did learn that if I go with the boiling route I should leave them unpeeled and with the tails and an inch or two of stem attached to minimize the bleeding. Once they’re cooked, run them under cold water and, wearing gloves to avoid staining, rub the skins off.

I have about a dozen and a half quart jars but, though I’m sure I could sit and eat a quart of pickled beets on my own, I’ve borrowed some pint jars instead (as most of mine are filled with applesauce) and I’m ready to go! I think. I have a tendency to overthink things and worry myself out of doing something or at least procrastinating on it. I think I’ll use the reserved-water idea from Domestic Reflections and the quantities from Country Home Canning. I’ll prepare the beets to see how much that gives me and go from there on figuring out the pickling part. I had planned to make my own pickling spice but we’ll see how tomorrow morning goes. I’ll have to round up the ingredients; I have a few of them but not all.

Pickling Spice (recipe from grouprecipes.com)

What are some of the health benefits of beets/beetroot? Beet juice contains betaine, which stimulates the function of liver cells and protects the liver and bile ducts. According to various sources, some recent studies indicate that betaine contributes to the prevention of coronary and cerebral artery diseases. Red Beet is unique for its high levels of anti-carcinogens and its very high carotenoid content. It is chock full of antioxidant that helps the body against heart disease, certain cancers (especially colon cancer), and birth defects. Betacyanin gives beets their red color and is absorbed into our red blood cells and can increase the oxygen-carrying ability of the blood by up to 400 per cent!! Beets can help in normalizing blood pressure and also help to maintain the elasticity of our arteries. They also are very helpful in liver, kidney, and gallbladder function as well as in the natural treatment of certain skin disorders and afflictions (scroll halfway down the page here). Not bad for a humble little root vegetable, is it?

So what do you say, Babe? Want to help me create a horror movie in my kitchen after we pick my car up in the morning? Even if I muddle through on my own I’ll give you a jar. But just one. The rest are for me.

And Oh. Holy. Crap! Typo in my header!! That’s been there a long time. I can’t breathe. Must. Fix. It. Now.

I think the last time I did a menu plan was a month ago. Time flies! Back to it this week; we’ll see how well I stick to it. I find that things run so much more smoothly when I know ahead of time what to make but I find the actual planning to be tedious. This time around wasn’t overly painful though: supper tonight is already over and I’m working nights on the weekend so there are only four suppers to plan for (since I rarely plan out breakfast and lunch). I do love reading through the other menu plans at I’m an Organizing Junkie. There are so many great recipes linked there.

Monday: pasta with mushroom-laden sauce
Tuesday: Moroccan-Spiced Tomato Chicken, squash, beans
Wednesday: pork ribs*, corn, edamame
Thursday: Addictive Sweet Potato Burritos, Caesar salad
Friday: Friday Night Chili (with toast)
Saturday: leftover Moroccan chicken
Sunday: leftover chili

Tonight I cooked up the sweet potatoes (mine are yams, I think) for Thursday’s supper. I’ve been cleaning out the cold storage room and decided I’d better use them or toss them. They’re still firm and looking alright but one was staring to sprout. I’ve reserved the cooking water and will make a root vegetable soup next week. I’m thinking carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and some corn and kale tossed in for variety.

*Today in the mail I received coupons from President’s Choice for a free brick of cheese, a free carton of orange juice, and a free box of pork back ribs.

The sun!! It shone today on this side of the clouds! I took advantage of the cool-but-sunny weather to rake the leaves in my small backyard. This year I decided to put a layer of leaves into the four raised vegetable beds to mix with the soil in the spring so I ended up with four topped-up beds and one garbage bag of leaves.

I’m just about to turn on a movie that I picked up at the library the other day and pick up a sock that I’ve been working on intermittently for months. I can usually (or "lusually", as B would say) motor through a pair of socks in no time but I haven’t knit in ages and so these have been stuck in a plastic bag, languishing. 

So I’m off to knit and movie-watch while the dehydrator whirs on the counter, filling the house with pleasant smells and causing me to anticipate these,  raw Cinnamon Raisin Flax Crackers. And speaking of raw, I found an interesting new-to-me blog this afternoon. Bart of Raw Bart began a 30 days raw food trial this fall in his words "embarking on a journey to discover the raw food lifestyle." His tagline resonates with me personally as I’m entertaining thoughts on a constant basis about the raw food lifestyle: "Going raw. Maybe. Perhaps." I love it.

(Ah ha! I just went hunting through the archives and found a post from September 1, 2008 in which the sock in question (the first of a pair) is at about the same stage it’s currently at. It was quite a bit further along earlier today but I frogged it back to the ankle because though I’d been knitting on in denial, I wasn’t happy with the loose fit of the leg portion. So it ripped it back and took out four stitches and though it doesn’t seem like much reduction in width I think it’ll be perfect. I really need to take a picture in the daylight though; that picture from a year ago doesn’t show the colours accurately.)

B’s class is having a bit of a Hallowe’en thing tomorrow, as, I’m sure, are the majority of classes in any given school. I decided last night to send something in. I wanted there to be something (besides raw veggies, which he won’t eat) that he could have that doesn’t contain artificial dyes or flavours. His school is nut-free but I also decided to try my hand at gluten-free, casein-free baking and chose to convert the Apple Banana Cupcakes recipe that I occasionally use. It’s a wonderful recipe: light, fluffy, moist, and full of flavour.

My regular tweaks include using one cup each of white and whole wheat flour, swapping out the shortening for 1/3 cup each of oil and applesauce (or all applesauce), adding 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, using 3/4 cup of white sugar and 1/2 cup of brown or only using half the sugar, 4 tablespoons of yogurt instead of buttermilk, and chopping the two apples instead of shredding. It makes 24 regular cupcakes (I only bake them for 20 minutes) or 10 jumbo ones (drop the temperature to 350F for the jumbos and bake for 27 minutes).

So today I spent a bit of money picking up small amounts of various flours to make this all-purpose gluten-free blend. I also used coconut milk in place of the yogurt/buttermilk. I was a little nervous about how it would affect the taste and texture. I was figuring the flavours of the apples and bananas would cover any difference and was mostly worried about the texture. The batter had a weird cornstarch-slurry texture to it (if that makes sense). I needn’t have worried. I can’t find a difference between the two versions in terms of taste or texture/density/moistness. I’m impressed, if I do say so myself.

Sorry. Night lighting. The colour’s a little off.

The frosting recipe is found here. I used the "yellow" portion of the recipe. I used a dairy-free spread instead of butter and added in some brown sugar to give the frosting a slightly caramel-y flavour to go with the apples. The frosting turned out very sweet but if you make sure you’re taking a big bite of the cake with every bite of the frosting it works out perfectly. Kids being kids though, I doubt they’ll do that. The orange food colouring is natural, ordered (along with other colours) online last year when I made B’s birthday cake. The spiders, bats, and skulls were 99¢ at Zellers for a 60-count bag (20 of each) of rings. I’m not sure these rings would fit any kid above three years old but they were a cute way to complete the cupcakes since I don’t have any natural candy sprinkles.

All in all I’m super-happy with how these turned out. I mixed up a batch and a half of batter and filled the regular tins a tiny bit fuller (instead of a scant half that the full recipe works out to) and ended up with the 24 regular muffins and four jumbo ones. I’ll be sending the regular-sized ones off to school with my little alligator/dragon/crocodile who decided this morning that he doesn’t want to be a puppy after all and will just wear his costume (we’re not exactly sure which animal it is) from last year, thank you very much.

I like mushrooms. I don’t love them but I don’t mind them.

I love these though.

This recipe is based on this one from Tosca Reno. I couldn’t remember the recipe as I was making this a few minutes ago and was too lazy to hunt it down. I knew it didn’t involve hummus but I added it anyway.

Take two portobello mushrooms (though one is enough for a light meal) washed, stemmed, and de-gilled. Turn each mushroom belly-side up and spread a tablespoon of hummus* in it. Top with a tablesppon of salsa, a few baby spinach leaves, and a generous portion of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. I baked mine in the toaster oven for about 10 minutes and then broiled them a bit to further melt and brown the cheese. They smell amazing!!

*I added a tablespoon of tahini and about five or six dry-packed sundried tomatoes to this recipe as well as upping the lemon juice to 3 tablespoons and the garlic to four small cloves.

That looks questionable, doesn’t it? No matter what it looks like it smells pretty good.

I decided to try my hand at raw/dehydrated crackers yesterday. Going off this recipe from Emily at Vegan Paris and this one from Raw Genesis, I put two cups of flax seeds (one cup golden and one cup brown) to soak in four cups of water. I had planned to soak them for a few hours but I ran out of time last night and they ended up soaking from about 3pm until 8:30′ish this morning. I put them in the fridge last night and they seemed okay this morning. Soaking the seeds turns them into a gelatinous goo. I threw in a small handful of raw sunflower seeds as well.

This morning I pulled out the Vita-Mix (pricey but I’m loving it!!) and puréed up a large carrot, two stalks of celery, a few slices of field cucumber, and about half a large red pepper. I mixed the veggies into the flax goo and spread them out on three trays lined with ParaFlexx™ and turned the dehydrator to 115F. Now it’s just a waiting game. I expect these crackers will go well with some homemade hummus. Between the faint smell of the crackers just starting to dry and the applesauce cooking down to apple butter in the crock pot (I canned 10 pints yesterday), this house is a pretty pleasant-smelling place.

That’s often the way, isn’t it? Homemade food, gifts, products, and DIY projects are usually so much better than anything you can buy. I branched out today and made something that I have bought in the past, though they don’t often find their way into the grocery cart. I’m talking bagels. Cinnamon raisin bagels to be exact. Freaking awesome bagels with the recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen. She made these with Pioneer Woman and she loved them so there you go.

These are a bit of a process to make but I think they’re well worth it. Regular readers here know that it’s just a small family in the rainberryblue household (a family of two) so opting to make 20 smaller ones worked out well for us. I was actually aiming for 24 and figured my weight of each dough piece accordingly but somehow I ended up four short. Not sure how that happened. I baked 12 and froze the rest straight from the fridge; I’ll defrost them in the fridge and then proceed to boil and bake as usual. It also seems to be a forgiving recipe. I left my yeast "sponge" on the counter for at least 5 hours or more as opposed to the two called for in the recipe and it turned out fine. I also added gluten to the flour. I shaped them by rolling them into a rope and wrapping it around my hand and three of my fingers (like this) and then rolling the join on the counter.

I’ve eaten four of these myself already, just as they are. Not toasted, not buttered, not cream cheese’d. B had one toasted and buttered and it was equally good. I used half whole wheat flour and half white and they’re perfect. Next time I may up the whole wheat to 75%.