Menu Plan: Green Week!

 

Happy St Patrick's Week!

Being 3/4 Irish I always look forward to planning my St. Patty's Menu. But I have tired of Corned Beef and Cabbage, so I branched out this year with a springy soup and a twist on Irish Soda Bread.

I'm also trying to lose a few pounds from winter and improve my cholesterol, so I'm planning for that too. Oh, and I want to take advantage of spring produce! The Allrecipes.com site is helping me do all that and make my menu-planning faster and more efficient.

I am finally getting the hang of using their new Menu Planner program.  It's not the most intuitive design, but it's proving worth the trouble. I open the Menu Planner, give my Menu Plan a name (like Mar 14-Mar21, or St Pat's Day), and save. It asks me if I want a one-meal menu (like a St. Pat's Brunch maybe) or a multi-day plan. After making my selection for multi-day, a window opens with 5 boxes. Into those I drag and drop the recipes that I have either saved in My Recipe Box, or from the page the recipe is on I can choose to click on Add to Menu, and it will drop it in. (I will have to actually drag it to the day I want, but it will be in the queue.) I can add as many days as I want.

The next great part is that the Shopping List is being compiled automatically! When I save it I can edit in or out those ingredients I already have or extra stuff that I also want to pick up like bread.
This service is member-supported, but the reasonable cost is worth it!
 So here's what I planned:


Monday. Made with some-lo-fat ingredients, but doesn'y taste that way. We found it very comforting.
Easy Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
Sliced tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing


Tuesday. Pioneer Girl Meeting
Frozen Entree




Wednesday
Pasta Primavera with Smoked Gouda
Green salad.
Crusty loaf of bread




Thursday. Happy Vegetarian St. Patrick's Day!
I kept it light and meatless!
Spinach, Leek, and White Bean Soup
Cheddar Onion Soda Bread


Friday.
We are studying Marco Polo and I wanted to try something with the flavors that he would encounter on his travels through the Middle East. While a tagine is traditionally Moroccan, the spices and fruits would be authentic to the spice trade on the Silk Road. Besides I just tried some at a homeschool co-op cooking class and HAD to make it, without or without a Marco Polo study!

Chicken Tagine 
I can't find eggplant this week, so am substituting already skinned and chunked butternut squash to replicate the texture, if not the taste. Never knew you could buy it like that!
served with couscous


Saturday.
Traditionally Father R's day to cook simply because he likes to!


Sunday
I'm sure there will be some great leftovers for tonight. A Day of Rest from the kitchen.

Clog over to Organized Junkie and more Menu Plan Mondays!

Japan Earthquake: Being There in Mind and Spirit

I normally wake slowly and peacefully (or grudgingly and grumpily) to a classical music station, so it was the last place I would have expected to hear the news of the earthquake in Japan, so when my half-open ears took in "greatest earthquake in Japan's 140 years of recording, " I at first thought this must be some anniversary of an earlier quake that was being remembered. But a minute more brought me fully awake as I grasped that  the understated announcer was describing the disaster that Japan was facing today.


I decided that this was one of those "teachable moments," even if an ugly one, a moment that I owed Mei a lesson on because this event would be talked about for days, weeks, even years from now and she deserved to have at least a simple understanding of its importance.  And how can we pray for those in need when we don't really understand what their needs are?

Thankful once again to be homeschooling in the Internet Age, I went straight to Enchanted Learning.com to print off information about tsunamis  to read (for that proved to be the more serious topic), quizzes to answer, and a map of Japan to label.  (I considered purchasing Hands Of a Child's Earthquakes lapbook or downloading a free one from  Homeschool Share. Lapbook Lessons has a free Japan lapbook. I may follow up with one of these.)

It became quickly apparent though that helping her to understand about the tragedy and guarding her against the grimness was going to be a delicate task in our instant-info age.  She actually turned her back on the mesmerizing video feeds of the engulfing waters, choosing to play with me instead, as if she wasn't interested.  God's way of shielding our children when He knows they're not ready for some things?

At another point I was checking the web for some update about the potential for a tsunami on the West Coast where we have several family members.  While on CNN.com, I clicked on their viewer uploads of texts and photos from people at the scene.  Unfortunately  she saw the unnerving post before I could shut it down: "I am dying."

Teachable moments are one thing. Living in them is another .

As I drove about our suburbs, I tried to grasp what the victims experienced in those moments when their cars were being swallowed by the encroaching waters. I looked at all of us in line at a stop-light, and imagined if it was us having our conversations, listening to music, thinking about our next errand and then--from nowhere-- watching ourselves being overtaken by a a sea growing before us, passing under our cars, rising, picking our vehicles off the pavement and now floating, crashing, overturning, and submerging us. The panic, the terror, the screams.

I look across the fields from our front window and imagine all of that simply washed away, scrubbed of houses, trees, schools, churches, people. 

As we cook a nice meal--just coincidentally fish and sticky rice, Japanese staples--I wonder what those families are eating, if anything.

Too horrible to think about and yet how I choose to enter into their last moments. And the lives of those who must go on. 

A woman, carrying a child on her back, walks over tsunami-drifted debris and mud in Rikuzentakada, Iwate Prefecture, Saturday morning, March 12, 2011 after Japan's biggest recorded earthquake slammed into its eastern coast Friday. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

I've always felt that death by drowning, along with being buried alive, would have to be my least favorite way to go. I know My Savior, and I know where I'd be going, but I hope I don't have to go like that.

Father God, be with the people of Japan.