While doing clean-up on my blogs I discovered I'd never got this post up and running. It was originally written for the week of July 4, 2012 and for some reason never left the draft mode. I did some adjustments to it and so here it is. Finally! Hopefully I'll get the rest of the 52 weeks up soon.
July 4, 2012
It’s ground beef time again. As I said in the beginning we eat a lot of ground beef, so technically every other week my menus will be ground beef based for a while. After all what can’t you make with ground beef?
Please note
that most, if not all, of the recipes I do with ground beef could be done with
other ground meats. You might have to
make a few allowances for fat content or such to keep things from drying out,
but pretty much you can interchange the ground meat ingredient without much
change. Unless, perhaps with wild meats,
such as venison, but if you are cooking with wild meats you most likely KNOW
what you need to do to make the recipe work.
As usual I’m
running a little behind on my menu posts, so this is being done during the July
4th week and therefore you will be seeing our holiday cook out menu
for that day during the week. It will look like a huge menu for just the three
of us, but we LOVE leftover grilled meats, so when I am cooking I am doing so
with planned leftovers in mind.
Today is
Tuesday and I have the Donvier in the
freezer preparing for our homemade ice cream for tomorrow’s dessert. And the chicken leg quarters to grill, along
with tomorrow’s ground beef and bologna are already thawing in the
refrigerator. I’ll boil the eggs for the
deviled eggs later on today.
My son has
already made a delicious huge batch of chocolate chip cookies both for sharing
at work today and to go with our ice cream tomorrow. We are in full holiday mode here.
We’ll have
zero fireworks because we don’t want to burn the place down, not to mention the
fact that the cost of those does not comply with the budget we have going right
now. We’d rather save money we would
have spent on fireworks to travel to Walt Disney World in the future on a
shoestring budget to have a wealth of fun and enjoy their fireworks while
there. If you are interested in how you
can travel to WDW cheaply, and still get the most fun see my blog posts on the
subject. How to Plan a Frugal Trip to Walt DisneyWorld, Payingfor your Magical Trip, Saving Money While onthe Trip—Getting There, Saving Money While on the Trip—Food! GloriousFood!, and Saving Money While on the Trip—Souvenirs and Other Things.
So instead
we will have a great day of watching the
latest Harry Potter movie and other movies we have recorded scheduled, complete
with popcorn and a little Pepsi (an uncommon treat around here any more), along
with a cookout and some down time as a family. During the evening hours we’ll
watch fireworks on tv in the cool of the house. Both men are off work for the holiday and that
makes for an even better time.
In this week’s
menu you will also see the appearance of using my muffin tins for things other
than just muffins. For a whole list of
ideas on other uses of the muffin tin and other common household items view “Muffin Tins, Not Just for Muffins and Cupcakes Any More.
“
Anyway, here
is the menu for Week #3—Ground Beef #2.
Hope you have a Happy and Safe July 4th!
BREAKFAST
OPPORTUNITIES:
Raisin Bran
Grapenuts
Oatmeal
Farina
Fruit salad
Dried Fruit
COMMENTS:
My husband
loves cake donuts, but we don’t love the calories from frying donuts. So for Christmas I purchased him two donut pans and we’ve been
experimenting with different recipes. We’ve
found that muffin recipes work well, especially if you add a little glaze. As time goes on there will be various other
donut recipes posted as we find ones we like.
This was the first, other than the one that came on the pan—which we can’t
find right now, that he really likes. He
eats his unglazed. Me I want the glazing—gotta
have my calories you know!
LUNCH OPPORTUNITIES
MuffinTin Corn Dogs—once we’ve
had them for dinner
Spaghetti and Meatballs—once we’ve
had them for dinner
Home canned
beef soup
Jarred salad
with cucumbers from the garden
PB&J
Potted Meat
Salad sandwiches.
COMMENTS:
In an effort
to stick with keeping things cool in the house I’ve taken to cooking various
muffin tin meals. These make great
individual servings, that leftover well and re-heat quickly. They also cook in record time. After all the shorter time the oven is on,
the better it is when it’s 100+ degrees outside.
WEEK 3—DAY 1, GROUND BEEF
2
Mashed
Potatoes—make a big batch for uses later in the week
Peas
Jarred salad
Toasted
French Bread
Tea
COMMENTS:
Red Topped
Meatloaf is the basic ground beef meatloaf with the ketchup topping we all grew
up with. You can either cook it in your Summer Kitchen in either your turkey roaster or crockpot. Or if you prefer in muffin tins to speed up cooking in your oven.
We like
potato salad made with mashed potatoes, so later this week you will see the
leftover mashed potatoes appear with the holiday big meal. If you prefer a
different type then go ahead and prepare your potatoes while boiling the
potatoes for the meatloaf then cool and refrigerate for being one step ahead in
that meal preparation.
WEEK 3-Day 2
Frozen
French Fries
Pork ‘n
Beans
Refrigerator
Pickles
Tea
Applesauce
Spice Cake
COMMENTS:
As I
mentioned earlier we are trying to cut down fried foods in our household—except
on the fourth—sorry doc, so I’ve been experimenting with how to have our
favorites without frying them.
On one list
a woman recently posted she made these using a pre-packaged cornbread mix. Since I make all my own mixes I first tried
them with my Cornbread Master Mix cornbread
and it came out a bit too dry and crumbly for our liking.
So then I
decided to use my Corn Dog recipe that uses
that master mix and found we liked the texture and firmness better. An additional tweak I did was on the second
batch I used my mini loaf pans instead of muffin tins and found they accommodated
the shape of the hot dog link better.
WEEK 3-DAY 3
Mexican Rice
Guacamole
Flan
Tea
COMMENTS:
Moo Gurgle
is our quick and easy homemade taco filler recipe that we use in numerous
ways. My husband made it as a teenager
and then introduced it to me while we were dating nearly 40 years ago.
It didn’t
earn its unique name until we had teenagers of our own, however. A group of them went to our lake house together
and wanted to make tacos while there.
They called
and asked me for the recipe and I rattled it off—forgetting to tell them to
drain the meat after they browned it.
Being teenagers they purchased the cheapest, fattest ground beef they
could.
All the kids
called me “Mom” so when I was asking them how the tacos turned out one young
man said “Mom, those moos really gurgled!”, referring to the thick grease in
the taco filler. Thus the name was born “Moo
Gurgle”.
WEEK 3-DAY 4—July 4,
2012
Charcoaled
Hamburgers, plain
Charcoaled
Hamburgers, bbq sauce
Grilled
Bologna
Char-grilled
Chicken Leg quarters
Potato salad
Butterfly
potatoes
Cole Slaw
PEPSI
Homemade
Ice cream
Chocolate
chip cookies
COMMENTS:
We
thoroughly believe in this house when you fire up the charcoal grill or a wood
fire you use every bit of the fuel you put in the grill. We also love grilled leftovers, so while we’ll
cook all the above on the fourth not all of it will be eaten for certain. It will be a pick and choose meal. “This is what we cooked, choose what you want
and the rest will reappear in other meals.”
All the
hamburgers with bbq sauce consist of is a beaten egg mixed with bbq sauce and then
mixed into the ground beef patties and grilled.
One word to the wise, they do tend to fall apart easily—despite the egg
for a binder, so cook them on foil on the grill. I use Kay’s BBQSauce as the sauce in them.
We make up
for all of the non-fried foods this week in this one meal. Butterfly potatoes is our name for the
potatoes that you see at fairs of all sorts that are potato chip thin and cut
in a spiral. I was lucky enough to
acquire one of those potato cutters at a craft fair years ago and we have
enjoyed it ever since.
I’ll try to
get one of the guys to create a pattern for it and I’ll put up photos of it as
well asap.
We are Pepsi
addicts in this household, but once we decided to become super gazelle intense
on paying off our debt Pepsi is one of the things we removed from our
life. Now we each drink one sweetened
beverage a day (juice, tea, lemonade or kool-ade) and the rest of the time we
drink water or unsweetened tea. I will
admit it’s hard going from lugging around a Pepsi all day to going to a single
sweetened beverage (I generally do a juice), but it has saved us so much money
it is unbelievable. (Do the math on how much you pay for soft drinks in a week
and multiply that by the month/year—you will be astounded!) Plus all three of
us are losing weight and are feeling better.
So the Pepsi
for this one day—two 2-liters, is a special treat. The bottles will be washed out and saved for
future events—stay tuned for those.
WEEK 3-DAY 5
Smoked
Chicken Salad in Tortilla bowls
Lime
Cilantro Rice
Refried
Beans or home canned pinto or kidney beans
Chocolate
Chip Cookies
Tea
COMMENTS:
What grilled
chicken isn’t eaten on the fourth will be deboned, cubed and tossed in with
picante, refried beans, corn, lettuce, rice and whatever else we happen to
think of for a cool salad on a hot summer night. We may even forgo cooking the tortilla into a
tortilla bowl and simply roll it all up in a burrito style tortilla much like
Qdoba burritos.
WEEK 3-DAY 6
Garlic Toast
Jarred Salad
with Italian dressing
Leftover
desserts from the week
Tea
COMMENTS:
I generally
make a double or triple batch of the spaghetti meatballs—which are different
than my Master Mix Meatballs and either can
or freeze them with or without the sauce for future grab and run meals.
Both men
also like for me to cook extra pasta for the meatballs and will take the
leftovers to work for lunches.
WEEK 3-DAY 7
Biscuit
Cup Tacos
Either
leftover Mexican or Lime Cilantro Rice
Tea
Leftover
Flan
COMMENTS:
Truly the
tail end of the week and a meal of all leftovers, simply reproduced in a
slightly different manner. Quick to bake
in the toaster oven in the Summer Kitchen. Look for any leftover Biscuit Cup Tacos to make an appearance at
lunchtime next week.
Jan who
wishes you a Happy and Safe Independence Day in OK
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