Weekly Meal Plan 2.13.22

 Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday: Pumpkin Lasagna (recipe calls for acorn squash, but we grew so many pumpkins this last fall!)

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday: 

Weekly Meal Plan 2.6.22

I’m getting back into my weekly meal planning, and posting them here on the blog always helped me keep the recipes in one place. So here we go!

Sunday: peanut tofu wraps (Hungryroot)

Monday: curry wurst, potatoes and green beans

Tuesday:

Wednesday: Indian curry (still need to decide which kind)

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: Tuscan chicken thighs with chickpea pasta

Saturday: takeout

The Bread Bible Week 1: Brinna’s Pugliese

This week I’m baking Brinna’s Pugliese from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible. This is a dough that requires a biga started at least 6 hours before, so it’s not a dough I often feel I have time for. But as luck would have it, I was flipping through the book yesterday afternoon, which gave me plenty of time!

I started my biga around 4pm on Sunday, which meant getting it into the refrigerator at 10pm. It was then ready to start step 2 on Monday morning!

One of the things I love about rustic hearth breads is that, while they may take a lot of time to rise or ferment, each individual step is very short in hands-on time. That was true for this bread as well. It was easy to fit each step into my day around a toddler, which is always important!

We ate much of the loaf as egg salad sandwiches and all enjoyed it! The addition of rye flour gives the dough a little extra depth over an all white loaf. Unfortunately, while I might have an appreciation for the crusty ends of hearth breads, the small child does not, so this might not be a bread we put into our regular rotation. But it was a fun one to try!

Baking through Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible

 Sean and I have been baking for years. When we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, we primarily did sourdough because it was so simple to get it right! Then we moved to Colorado, and struggled with finding the right balance with our sourdough starter. But, we started turning to The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum more often. We found that even at altitude, her recipes come out well very reliably!

Fast forward a couple years. We stopped baking as much after the Munchkin was born, because who has time for bread when you’re working and taking care of a baby?

Fast forward some more to spring 2020. Like much of the nation, we were home and grocery stores were seeing shortages. We started baking again as a way to provide for our family and bring some regularity to the week (Mondays became sandwich bread days, Fridays became challah days.) This continued until January 2021, when I got pregnant with #2 and nausea set in so badly that I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near the kitchen. 

Well, after months of pregnancy nausea, I can finally cook and bake again! Some things still trigger the gag reflex (Sean is still in charge of any raw meat) but I’ve been able to find joy in baking again! Munchkin enjoys it too, since he’s now at the perfect age to help stir with lots of supervision. Since we’re baking regularly again, I thought I’d try doing a series I’ve thought about for ages, and bake my way through The Bread Bible. Rose Levy Beranbaum has so many amazing recipes here, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of this book! My goal with this series is to try a different recipe each week, photograph and write about it. Hopefully this will be a good way to take notes as I bake, and maybe act as a review of her delicious recipes.

Happy baking!

A Return...Maybe?

 Well, we’re here. I’ve reached the point in 2020 that I’ve returned to a blog I haven’t posted on in two years (almost exactly to the day!) I’m not sure exactly what that says about blogging, or this year in general, but here we are.

What’s bringing me back? Well, being home all the time these last few months has inspired me to do a ton of home improvement that sat waiting over the last two years. I’ve finished projects I wasn’t able to finish while pregnant, started new projects, and overall felt more inspired by my space than I have in a while. That feeling of inspiration brought me back to what inspired me to blog in the first place: the fact that I enjoy reading about other designers’ process as well as seeing their end results. I’m not going to promise any kind of regular blog schedule yet, but I’m excited to take some nice photos of the work I’ve been doing as well as the new projects I’m dreaming up!

A few of the projects I’ve been working on:

-I used vinyl peel and stick tiles to give the laundry room floor a fresh new look

-A master bath makeover that keeps growing

-possibly an upcoming faux finish on my old IKEA dresser from college

-plus, the small one and I have been doing weekly baking. Baking with a toddler is so different from baking alone!

I’m looking forward to sharing bits of all these projects!

Weekly Meal Plan 8.26.18

Another busy fall week! We're into the second week of the semester, so that means hopefully finding a rhythm to workdays and meal prep.
Here's what we're eating this week:

Sunday: leftovers

Monday: Chicken and Hummus Flatbread "tacos" (Sun Basket)

Tuesday: Korean tteokbokki rice cake stir fry (Sun Basket)

Wednesday: leftovers

Thursday: crockpot turkey & black bean chili

Friday: Harissa tofu and quinoa bowls (Sun Basket)

Saturday: BBQ with friends!



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Weekly Meal Plan 8.19.18

Sunday: leftovers

Monday: spiced lamb meatball and swiss chard stew

Tuesday: crock-pot chicken curry

Wednesday: leftovers

Thursday: crock-pot turkey & black bean chili

Friday: dinner out

Saturday: New Mexican posole