Farm House Menus and Cooking ahead for the week of December 4-9, 2010

Here's what cooking at the farmhouse this week:

Friday:

Pan fried steak, baked potatoes, fruit and veggie salad.

Chuck eye steaks were on sale at Food Lion this week. These are a relatively tender steak and when on sale are just a couple of dollars each. I bought a packagge of 5 for $10.00, cooked two for hubby and me and froze the remaining three.

Our grill was in the storage building, it was dark outside and it was cold, so I opted for pan frying the steaks. I just heated a small amount of oil in a pan, seasoned the steaks and threw them in. I turned them once, cooking each side until brown and then let them sit for about 5 minutes.

Saturday:

Southern style chicken and pastry; chicken salad

No, I don't roll out pastry the way my mother and grandmother did. You can buy this stuff at the grocery store in the frozen section in my part of the South. All you have to do is boil the chicken and then cook the pastry in the broth. I made chicken salad from the boiled chicken.

Sunday:

Stew beef with vegetables served over rice; fruit and veggie salad

This is the best beef stew I ever made! The meat was so tender that it almost melted in our mouths. I used THIS RECIPE found on the Family Homestead blog.

As most of you know, the secret is cooking the stew on a very low temperature for several hours. I cooked mine at 300 degrees for 3 hours and then for about 1` hour at 200 degrees and then cut the oven off and let it sit for a little while longer in the wam oven. Dusting the ingredients with flour help the liquid to thicken into a wonderful gravy.

The recipe says to use chuck roast instead of stew beef. This worked out well, since chuck roasts were also on sale this week at Food Lion. I cut the roast into bite size pieces. I put the fatty pieces in a pot of water to boil. This made a pot of beef broth to be used in vegetable soup later on in the week. I pulled the lean bits of beef from the fat and then discarded the fat.

I also cooked extra rice to be used in another recipe this week.

The fruit and veggie salad is made up of whatever you have on hand. This version contained banana, apple, raisins, broccoli, bell pepper, cheese, grated carrot and a heaping tablespoon of light mayo. Mix it all up and its a really good way to get some servings of fruits and vegetables in


Monday:

Lasagna, Green beans.

I browned the ground beef on Saturday to be used in this. I plan to put the lasagana together in the morning before going to work, then pop it into the oven as soon as I walk inthe door from work.

Tuesday:

Chicken Fried Rice with garden peas

I will use boneless chicken from the freezer that was bought on sale. This is where the extra rice cooked on Sunday will come in handy!

Wednesday: Shephard's Pie

I plan to make the mashed potatoes that are spread on top ahead of time, either the night before or Wednesday morning.

Thursday: Vegetable Beef Soup

I will use the beef broth with beef bits with vegetables added.

Friday: Chicken Potatoe Soup

Another Family Homestead r ecipe found HERE: