Shabbat Parashat Chukat, July 1-2, 2011

This is my 100th post! What a milestone! Thanks for following my adventures and sharing in my quest for frugal food in Israel!

This Shabbat I am serving the leftovers from the birthday dinner for Friday night, but I'll make some General Tso's Chicken to go with it, instead of the vegetarian version we had the other night. This plan was ok'd by the family - I know it's unconventional to have leftovers on Shabbat, but I wouldn't want the food to go to waste!

For lunch we'll have:

Breaded, oven-"fried" chicken

Make your own salad (lettuce, roasted red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, diced carrots, cucumbers, and whatever else I find around)

Roasted Zucchini with olive oil, salt, and pepper - this is delish served cold!

Potato Kugel

Chocolate cake for dessert (the kids made a big cake recipe for my hubby's birthday)

Seudah shlishit note:

I do very informal seudah shlishit usually. The leftover challah and whatever salads, chummus, peanut butter, jelly, etc are around. no fussing...

Random menus

I haven't posted so much lately - life is very busy. But here are a couple of menus that I served this week:

Birthday dinner for hubby:
Vegetarian eggrolls with dipping sauce (bought these - yes, I spent extra on the birthday dinner. figured it's still better for the budget than going out)
Chinese mushroom soup (one of our favorite soups. I use the recipe that's in The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Mollie Katzen's Classic Cooking) )
Rice, Steamed Broccoli, Snow Peas, and Red Peppers
Veggie nuggets (I never buy these but I made an exception because my hubby likes them much better than tofu and it was HIS birthday, after) with "General Tso's Sauce" - I had one in my pantry that was brought on the lift!

Otherwise, one day we had:

Pasta with homemade tomato sauce - this time I added roasted red peppers to the sauce. I like it that way, but not everyone in the family agreed...
Cut vegetables

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Wow! It has been a really long time since I sat down and blogged. I am really glad to try to get back into routine. It's been interesting with no plan, and with a fridge that keeps breaking down...

Summer is here, and that means that it is REALLY hot where I live. My kids seem to be living on ice cream and popsicles. Anything to cool off... I've been thinking of doing mostly raw foods this summer, so we don't have to heat up the house, but I'm not sure my hubby would go for it!

I ended up throwing out the contents of the fridge and freezer (yes, that hurt) when we got back from a few days away and discovered the fridge had broken. I couldn't bring myself to fully restock, and since we plan to move soon, I probably will just coast until the move...

Here's tonight's plan:

Mini-baguettes (with butter)
Gazpacho
Yogurt and fruit smoothies
I am going to have to serve something else with this, but I can't figure out what! Help!

Shabbat Parshat Sh'lach

We've been sick, as well as busy, as well as sweltering hot.
I'm trying to work out a menu that will not require any time over a hot stove (although I'm willing to run the oven. The architect who designed this house put a little alcove off the kitchen where the oven is, so I can shut that part off from the rest of the house, open up the window in there and the heat doesn't come into where we are!)

Here's the plan:

Salatim (vegetarian liver, chumous, various other salads)

Chicken in ? sauce

Southwestern style Pasta salad (to be served at lunch) - I'll cook ONE pot of pasta on the stove, at night, Thurs night.

Make-your-own-salad (we have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers)


Rice with mushrooms (oven baked) (for Friday night)


Oven-Roasted Butternut Squash (found a sale - 2.99 NIS/kilo - much lower than what I usually see)

Oven-roasted Kishuim with olive oil, salt and pepper (also, 2.99 NIS/kilo sale)

Potato Kugel


Carrot Kugel from freezer

Popsicles, watermelon, and other fruit for dessert


Gazpacho and whatever I pull together for seudah shlishit

Wish me luck getting it all done!

Shabbat Shalom! Feel free to share your menus and deals...

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Here's a last minute menu - I found myself haphazardly throwing together supper.

Pitot with cheese melted in them
P'titim (whole wheat ones)
Savory Pancakes made with some leftover gevinah levana that needed to get used
Cucumbers

I find that the less time I spend on meal preparation, the more my kids will eat it. Go figure!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

I told you I was hoping for no-fuss menus this week.

I found those large Israeli "bagels" on sale Tuesday, so I bought some. And my kids love bourekas, so we had a simple no fuss menu:

Bagels
Cream Cheese, Butter, Sliced cheese, Cottage Cheese
Potato Bourekas
Cheese Bourekas
Sliced Tomatoes
Fruit Salad

The price of cottage cheese keeps going up, but I found these larger than normal containers so the price was slightly better. But I'm going to have to really keep an eye on those prices, and figure out the best place to stock up, since my 6 & 3 yr olds have decided that they can live on cottage cheese alone...

Help needed

So, my fridge wasn't cooling so well and now lots of stuff is spoiled. It's not as hot as it was last week, but I am S-I-C-K. I cannot breathe. My allergies are awful and my asthma has flared up much worse than ever before. So, now, I don't have any energy. And my house is a mess, and I can't clean it up because I can't breathe when I clean (severe dust allergy).

Oh, and did I mention that my mother in law is coming to visit this week (yes, from overseas)?!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Here's an "after-the-fact" post. (It's late already!)

Tonight's supper:

Fruit & Yogurt smoothies

Sloppy Sams with Pitot

Cucumbers and Pickles

Somehow,  this turned out to be enough. Goes to show that sometimes it's simpler to offer fewer choices...

Looking forward to a no-fuss week!

Shabbat Parashat B'ha'alotcha, June 10-11, 2011

Assuming I can breathe tomorrow, I'll cook for Shabbat... (I'm having something of an asthma flare-up which was exacerbated by smoke in the air from a nearby brush fire today, and I'm trying very hard to avoid the emergency room. Good luck to me...)

Here's the plan:

Some sort of cold soup (help!)

Chicken with date honey (again. trying to use up the date honey)

Barley with mushrooms

Roasted Zucchini

Fresh tomatoes and cucumbers


Baked Potatoes

Fruit for dessert


...

Resuming something of a pantry challenge

Uh oh! It's that time of the year - Summer! We love summer. But sometimes, summer brings a dreaded phenomenon with it - moving. Even though we haven't yet finalized a lease, we know we are moving this summer. And that means packing, more decluttering, and paring down wherever  possible. Oh, and a pantry challenge. I am not so excited about that though, I really do like serving fresh food to my family. But somehow there's still food in the pantry and freezer. (Not so much of it this time, though) So, my goal is to use up the food around, and only stock up on foodstuffs if there is such a great sale that I just cannot resist, and ONLY if it is non-perishable. My focus right now is using ALL the food in the freezer, because that is just difficult to move. I don't really mind moving one box of non-perishable foods with us, though.
So, with that in mind, I need some ideas - I bought too many frozen peas and green beans, and oddly, there is a bag of artichoke hearts in there too!

Search Amazon.com for pantry organizer systems

Please help me figure out how to use them up! Other items in my freezer are assorted leftovers. I am so tempted to toss them, but I'll hold out for now. You never know - maybe I'll get creative and find a way to disguise them.

Shavuot Menu!

I can't believe it's Shavuot already! I love cheese, and cheesecake, and using my great-grandmother's dairy china (I never met my great grandmother, but since my grandparents gave us the china when we got married, it makes me think of them. They were amazing, wonderful, special grandparents. I think of them all the time, and I know they are watching over us.)...

(I just don't love the custom of staying up all night, but that's another story)

Anyhow, I am throwing frugality out the window for the chag. It is, after all, the shortest chag. It's only one day. And cheese is not a frugal food but somehow I've already purchased a LOT of mozzarella, cheddar, feta, and bulgarian cheese. Not to mention gevinah levana, cottage cheese, and more...

I'm planning to make the following foods that my family loves:


Creamy mushroom soup

Broccoli Puff (chopped broccoli, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, some flour. all combined and baked together)

Spinach Puff (same idea as above, but with chopped spinach)

Lasagna (with homemade tomato sauce)


Fingerling Potatoes

Make your own salad (greek salad style)


Brownies


Mini Cheesecakes

That sounds like enough, but I might bake something else in case someone around here actually decides to stay up very late learning. And pop some popcorn (I love the air popper!).