![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2FiHUGl
ughhhh mealplanning. ok. i have come back from out of town to a house devoid of food.
I did plunder my sister’s deep freezers before i left, though. She pays me in food, and food is what they’ve got. So I have, to work with:
2 frozen chickens, entire
1 unidentified hunk of dark red meat that is probably a venison roast, like 2.5 pounds
2 bone-in pork chops labeled in my handwriting and dated 2/17, meaning it’s that pig we processed last year in the slaughterhouse
“stew beef” labeled “not for sale”, which means it’s from a farmer’s personal stash that was traded for and therefore is probably actually beef, a bit under 1 pound
a 1.3 lb “top round steak” also labeled not for sale
oh yeah a butternut squash because there was a crate of them on top of the freezer in the back porch
I also have two chicken thighs from the grocery store, some frozen pork stock, and a bunch of little pucks of pork skin and fat that are the left over cracklings from rendering lard. (I froze them in a muffin tin and they are excellent if you want to brown something in fat, like if you’re making bechamel sauce or a stir-fry. it was a customer suggestion and it’s brilliant.)
So what am I gonna eat?
Well, I plopped one of the chickens in the sink in warm water, so that will defrost hopefully enough for me to roast it tonight. I could make it in the dutch oven, if you do it low and slow and with the lid on you can actually roast a still-frozen chicken pretty reasonably, you just don’t get crispy skin. (That’s a time-honored Oh Shit lunch on the farm– if you put a frozen chicken in at like 300 at 9am you can eat it by noon. It’s super backwards though, compared to how normal people emergency cook. Most people don’t decide at 9am that they’re making lunch for eight people.)
So if I roast the chicken and the butternut squash tonight, then I can make a bunch of left-overs meals all week. Normally dude and I only eat like, half of one breast, and a drumstick, when I roast a chicken with side dishes. So…
1 is the roast dinner, which could follow any number of recipes, but if i do it in a dutch oven i might do milk chicken especially if i can get dude to go grocery shopping and get me real lemons which i’ve always wanted to put in that recipe and never have
2: A breast and a drumstick can be warmed up and served alongside a cole slaw or a rice dish of some kind, maybe pilaf. I’d have to look that up. OR laid atop a casserole kind of deal. Need more brainstorming there. maybe i could use the leftover drippings/gravy/milk from the roast to make a rice pilaf which is not a thing in my rotation but looks exactly like a risotto only without the stirring so sign me the fuck up.
3: carcass goes into stock pot, half of the stock goes into butternut squash soup, and then the second half i can use below, if i make enough (make a big pot and add browned onions and some celery scraps for flavor
4: Shredded meat pulled off the rest of the carcass could go into some sort of vegetable stir fry served atop rice or noodles– ooh, maybe we have udon, that could be nice. gotta figure out what vegetables i need though. sprouts? everyone loves sprouts. what the fuck else? idk spinach?
5: dude wants to cook pork chops so we’ll see. he’s looking up side dishes. oh we have some frozen salmon i didn’t notice, that could be something instead. that would be easy and could go in the middle somewhere.
Any leftovers of any of these will be lunches and i do rely on that for work week eating, so let’s hope. shit maybe i’ll make a side dish of mac and cheese for tonight instead of baking potatoes, so it can be lunch all week. uh provided we have cheese. ok time to make a grocery list.
(Your picture was not posted)
ughhhh mealplanning. ok. i have come back from out of town to a house devoid of food.
I did plunder my sister’s deep freezers before i left, though. She pays me in food, and food is what they’ve got. So I have, to work with:
2 frozen chickens, entire
1 unidentified hunk of dark red meat that is probably a venison roast, like 2.5 pounds
2 bone-in pork chops labeled in my handwriting and dated 2/17, meaning it’s that pig we processed last year in the slaughterhouse
“stew beef” labeled “not for sale”, which means it’s from a farmer’s personal stash that was traded for and therefore is probably actually beef, a bit under 1 pound
a 1.3 lb “top round steak” also labeled not for sale
oh yeah a butternut squash because there was a crate of them on top of the freezer in the back porch
I also have two chicken thighs from the grocery store, some frozen pork stock, and a bunch of little pucks of pork skin and fat that are the left over cracklings from rendering lard. (I froze them in a muffin tin and they are excellent if you want to brown something in fat, like if you’re making bechamel sauce or a stir-fry. it was a customer suggestion and it’s brilliant.)
So what am I gonna eat?
Well, I plopped one of the chickens in the sink in warm water, so that will defrost hopefully enough for me to roast it tonight. I could make it in the dutch oven, if you do it low and slow and with the lid on you can actually roast a still-frozen chicken pretty reasonably, you just don’t get crispy skin. (That’s a time-honored Oh Shit lunch on the farm– if you put a frozen chicken in at like 300 at 9am you can eat it by noon. It’s super backwards though, compared to how normal people emergency cook. Most people don’t decide at 9am that they’re making lunch for eight people.)
So if I roast the chicken and the butternut squash tonight, then I can make a bunch of left-overs meals all week. Normally dude and I only eat like, half of one breast, and a drumstick, when I roast a chicken with side dishes. So…
1 is the roast dinner, which could follow any number of recipes, but if i do it in a dutch oven i might do milk chicken especially if i can get dude to go grocery shopping and get me real lemons which i’ve always wanted to put in that recipe and never have
2: A breast and a drumstick can be warmed up and served alongside a cole slaw or a rice dish of some kind, maybe pilaf. I’d have to look that up. OR laid atop a casserole kind of deal. Need more brainstorming there. maybe i could use the leftover drippings/gravy/milk from the roast to make a rice pilaf which is not a thing in my rotation but looks exactly like a risotto only without the stirring so sign me the fuck up.
3: carcass goes into stock pot, half of the stock goes into butternut squash soup, and then the second half i can use below, if i make enough (make a big pot and add browned onions and some celery scraps for flavor
4: Shredded meat pulled off the rest of the carcass could go into some sort of vegetable stir fry served atop rice or noodles– ooh, maybe we have udon, that could be nice. gotta figure out what vegetables i need though. sprouts? everyone loves sprouts. what the fuck else? idk spinach?
5: dude wants to cook pork chops so we’ll see. he’s looking up side dishes. oh we have some frozen salmon i didn’t notice, that could be something instead. that would be easy and could go in the middle somewhere.
Any leftovers of any of these will be lunches and i do rely on that for work week eating, so let’s hope. shit maybe i’ll make a side dish of mac and cheese for tonight instead of baking potatoes, so it can be lunch all week. uh provided we have cheese. ok time to make a grocery list.
(Your picture was not posted)
