Hanukkah songs imix

gave the kitchen aid a workout

I just baked a whole bunch of stuff for the synagogue's bake sale tomorrow.

3 challahs, 2 loaves of bread (1 honey wheat and 1 oatmeal-10 grain cereal). 4 dozen cookies (2 dozen triple ginger & 2 dozen hallowen candy cookies), and a tray of chocolate-black bean-oat bars

Yum.

All on my 50 year old (at least) kitchen aid mixer. (you can see it in this picture). Well the cookies and the brownies. Unfortunately this model doesn't support a dough hook so I make my bread by hand.

weekly meal plans

Actually we're doing a monthly plan. Essentially it's Breakfast for Dinner (BFD) on Sundays, soup or stew on Mondays, Mexican on Tuesdays, Meat on Wednesdays, Pasta on Thursdays, Chicken on Fridays (Shabbat dinner), and Fish on Saturdays... with plenty of wiggle room. This was all to get the kids to eat better and provide some predictability.

I've stuck with it over a month and it's going well. Ben, who eats *nothing* has actually been taking a bite or two.

I've tried a few recipes from Deceptively Delicious with great success. I already was the master at adding vegetables to food but it's nice to have a few new recipes.

Anyway - next week's meal plan: We switched BFD to tonight because Ed will be home tomorrow and wants the falafel that was planned for tonight. So
Sunday: Falafel (with home meade pita because I can't eat the cardboard they sell in the supermarket
Monday: Cellar Soup (a recipe from the food network minus the bacon)
Tuesday: Make your own tacos
Wednesday: Shephards' pie
Thursday: Thanksgiving :)
Friday will probably be Thanksgiving leftovers
Saturday: Tilapia and piroges and some kind of veggie

For Thanksgiving we're making apple and pear bisque, turkey, root vegetable and wild rice salad, green beans, rolls, mashed sweet potatoes, apple pie, and pumpkin roll. We're having 9 adults and 3 kids.

roll your own sushi night

It came out pretty well but I made way too much rice for the amount of seaweed I had on hand. Plus the rice still seemed a teeny bit "crunchy" don't know if I didn't use enough water or if I didn't cook it long enough.

Also I ended up only making a couple of types of roll - the boys wanted lox, cream cheese and masago only pretty much. And the tamago was a big hit. I made one with tuna salad and sprouts that was delish too.

I never used the crab stick or the vegetarian stuff I bought and the Japanese mayo was a waste of money.

The easiest way to do it was the hand rolls and the gunkan (battleship) pieces. So we didn't need the rolling mat for either of those.