No blog posts for 5 days! What have I been doing?
I have been doing the routine things that keep our life ticking over day by day and week by week. This has been interspersed by a couple of interesting diversions.
A couple of weeks ago we managed to go to IKEA on a busy day trip to Brisbane. Our mission was to buy some new chairs for our outdoor setting. We bought 8 chairs as the table we have is quite large. GMan has made a start on assembling them and did 2 the other night. This is what they look like.
The old ones are the director-style chairs and they are impossible to keep clean as our cat believes that each one of them is his bed and they end up covered in grey cat hair! I plan to make removable cushions for the new chairs so that we can have padded seats with the benefit of being able to easily remove and store them when not in use.
I have mentioned before that I menu plan our evening meals. It is difficult to emphasise how much easier this makes shopping for and preparing meals.
Here is my plan for this week.
Saturday – Dahl with brown rice and steamed carrots and broccoli
Sunday – BBQ eye fillet with sweet potato chips, roasted beetroot in caramelised balsamic and crumbled goat’s cheese and green beans with red wine viniagrette and toasted sesame seeds
Monday – Vegetable quiche (adaptation of zucchini quiche) and salad
Tuesday – Tumeric chicken with brown rice and salad
Wednesday – Stuffed mushrooms with side salad
Thursday – Hamburger patties with home-made tomato sauce, fried mushroom and onions and salad
Friday – Baked potatoes topped with refried beans and cheese plus salad
Salad will be lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and capsicum with the addition of cheese on Tuesday and Thursday.
Sunday’s meal was actually lunch as we had guests. It put a lot of restaurant meals to shame.
I had time this morning to prepare the mushrooms before I went to work so all I needed to do when I arrived home was to microwave them until cooked then top with a little extra grated cheese and finish them off under the griller.
Any plan needs to be flexible and menu plans are no exception. I try to make choices based on our activities and needs but sometimes those change. I cook the baked potatoes in the slow cooker for 4 hours so I would need to be at home to turn it on at about 3pm. This was going to be OK as I planned to work from home on Friday, however, I need to go to Brisbane and may not be home by 3pm so I have decided to make that meal for Sunday and we will have an antipasto platter and salad on Friday as we need to eat fairly quickly before heading out on Friday evening.
organised castle 