December 26th - January 2 Menu & new recipes tried

Shame on me, I haven't posted an entry in two months! But life got hectic and even a little scary for awhile and now that it shows signs of calming down I hope to get back to my regularly scheduled programming, including blogging. Thank you for the prayers, comments, and emails for my mother and stepfather. They're doing better and although I'm not under any delusion that all is well with them, they're managing for now. And finally, the holiday rush at work is almost over and I see a little more free time in my future.

The last few weeks I've been trying to:

scale down my cooking so I don't have a fridge full of leftovers I plan to use and end up trashing
vary my diet a little more
and cross a few things off my ever-growing "try this soon" list

So last week I made two new recipes that helped with those goals, Cornish Hens with Stuffing and Shortbread Squares. Both recipes turned out much better than I expected.

Here's a shot of one of the cornish hens. I prefer the taste and texture over the typical whole chicken and the amount left over was very manageable so it's now my whole bird of choice.

And here's the shortbread squares. They were delicious! I can't eat them often but they were a nice treat. Most of these gems were shared with my co-workers and I took a second batch to my family's get together over the weekend. I've been mulling over ideas for a lower carb version of these and hope to get busy on that soon.

By the way, I bought a dream KitchenAid mixer on Black Friday. And I didn't have to wait in line or brave stampeding crowds for it, either. I simply went to the store at about 7 PM that evening and there it was, just waiting to jump into my cart. Oh my, it's everything I dreamed it would be and more!

Now, on to this week's menu:

Yesterday I had soup made from the remains of the cornish hens. I just added a little more than a cup of vegetable broth and a hand full of whole grain noodles to the leftover meat and onion stuffing, let it simmer until the noodles were done, and the resulting soup was very good.

I also prepared chili con carne yesterday and will have that and a salad for dinner tonight.

The rest of the week I'll have, in no particular order:

Leftover chili with a spinach salad

Grilled kabobs made with beef and a lot of vegetables

Lemon butter fish with leftover grilled vegetables, faux rice, and salad

Two egg omelet with Italian turkey sausage and hash brown wannabes

Whatever leftovers are in the fridge and need to be eaten

And that's it for this week's menu. If you're bored with your food lately or want to learn more about menu planning, spend some time perusing Menu Plan Monday, hosted by the lovely and very organized Laura!