Last Week of Nov. '13 Menu

Another week has rolled on past us and we're only days away from Thanksgiving now! I could be in a panic and attempting to get all the ingredients together for Thanksgiving, but I'm not. We're going to go to Grandma's house for Thanksgiving!

I bought everything for the pickle plate (our yearly contribution) at the beginning of the month. All of the supplies for the banana pudding the children are making to take along are here as well, I'll buy the banana's tomorrow. 

So, what's on our menu this week?

Sunday - French Onion Soup (still half a crock pot left) - Toad in a hole for breakfast with turkey bacon
Monday - Pork Roast, mashed potatoes, and sour kraut 
Tuesday - Chicken Quesadillas homemade
Wednesday - "Something" beef night (possibly Swedish Meatballs) - make banana pudding for Thursday
Thursday - Thanksgiving!!!
Friday - Oven "fried" fish fillets, mashed potatoes, corn
Saturday - Thanksgiving leftovers (we always get sent home with some :-) )

I made Swedish Meatballs for the first time this past week and boy oh boy did it go over well!

I couldn't find a recipe online that I liked so my wonderful husband called his mom for me. Grandma to the rescue!

Here's Grandma's recipe for Swedish Meatballs (not traditional but super easy and delicious!):

• 2-3 small cans condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1-2 pounds ground meat (we used 1 pound each ground beef and ground pork ... turkey could be used)
• milk
• fine breadcrumbs or fine corn meal
• flour
• water
• Worcestershire sauce (or equivalent)
• salt and pepper to taste
• * fresh mushrooms
• egg (or another binding agent for those with egg allergies)
• 1 packet onion soup mix

In one bowl mix up your meat, breadcrumbs, onion soup mix, some salt and pepper, and egg to form your mix for your meatballs. Mix well (texture like a meatloaf) and form balls. I fried mine a bit to sear them and then finished them in a 350 degree oven. (We also fried off a couple of the ones that didn't fit on my pan and my husband preferred those.) While meat balls are cooking in the oven (they took about half an hour to 45 minutes) empty your condensed milk into a saucepan. Put in about half the liquid you normally would to make soup (instructions for soup on label), I used milk for the creaminess but you could certainly just use water. Turn on over medium/ medium low heat. Add in a few tsp of Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste. * I added fresh cut up mushrooms to the sauce mix. In another pot boil the water for your egg noodles.  Once your sauce mix is beginning to get warm, or your meatballs have about 10 minutes to finish, add in flour mixture** and turn the heat up to thicken the sauce a bit. Cook your egg noodles.

Once everything is done place noodles, then meat balls, then sauce on your plate and enjoy! - This fed all five of us with plenty of meatballs left over.

** Flour mixture is what I call the trick I learned when I was younger to not get lumps in any gravy or sauce I was making. You place the normal amount of flour (or cornstarch) you'd use for thickening in an empty jar with a lid. Add enough water so that this becomes a liquid (not paste) when you shake the whole thing up. You can season this to match the sauce that your adding it to. Pour in slowly with one hand while stirring with the other. No more lumps!

Toad in the hole:

My kids wanted me to share this as it's one of our family favorites and they don't think any kid should be ignorant of it. Super simple and easy to make with only 3 ingredients.

You'll need bread slices, eggs (one for each bread slice), and a tiny amount of butter.

Using a cookie cutter (or the lid off of something in the kitchen) cut a circle into each slice of bread. Save the circle! Melt a tiny amount of butter into a non stick pan on medium heat (lower if you prefer). Place the holey bread into your pan and the circles that came out of it. Put one egg inside of each circle. Cook about half way and then flip all the bread. Cook for a minute or two more and serve. Two of the kids like the eggs over easy so they can dunk the "toast circles" and one of them likes her egg scrambled together in the middle. This is filling, packed with protein, and takes less than ten minutes to make (even with five of us!).

You can find us on Facebook here.

Linked up today with Organizing Junkie