I made Christmas dinner!

I'm quite pleased with myself. I made Christmas dinner for myself and a friend.

I roasted a turkey breast - a first for me. Because I wanted to be able to focus my attention on the turkey, I used boxes/cans for pretty much everything else. I saw it as a "pick your battles" kind of thing. My sides were: stuffing (Stove Top Savory Herb), mac & cheese (Kraft), mashed potatoes (Idaho, from a box), mashed sweet potatoes (Betty Crocker), sour cream & chive scalloped potatoes (Betty Crocker), green bean casserole, and spinach (from a can). I also had cranberry sauce and gravy from cans.

Now, you may be thinking, "But Joy, I thought you said there were only two of you!" Yes, I went overboard.

I found this package of "soup greens" at the grocery store. It had a small amount of several vegetables (carrots, celery, leeks, parsnips, turnips, onion) plus some parsely & dill. So I put all that in the pan with the turkey with a little bit of chicken broth. I also rubbed the whole turkey with butter & then used a little salt, pepper & poultry seasoning.

After handling the turkey, it was mostly an exercise in project management. I subsituted chicken broth for water in the stuffing and vegetable broth for water in the mashed potatoes. I also pressed a couple cloves of garlic into the mashed potatoes.

I only made the spinach because I felt guilty about all the carbs, but it was totally unnecessary. Neither of us ate very much of it, but we'd had quite a lot of vegetables with dinner the night before and in the omelets that morning.

It came out very well overall. I managed to get everything finished at almost the exact same time.

I learned that I could make dinner for 6 if I wanted, because that's how much food there was. I think I gained enough confidence to actually attempt roasting a whole bird.

However, I don't think I'll make that much food for 2 people ever again. My dinner companion doesn't have a microwave, so I ended up with all the leftovers. After a feat of spacial engineering to get all the food into my refrigerator, I'll be eating Christmas dinner into the new year.

Follow up on the Root Vegetables

Well, I definitely didn't cut them up small enough. Also, they originally came out a little bland. I toasted some pine nuts & threw those in; that seemed to help. Next time, I'm going to include sweet potatoes & some onion.

Root Vegetables!

Inspired by this post from the Crockpot Lady, I bought a heap of root vegetables at the Farmer's Market this weekend: Turnips, Parsnip, potatoes & carrots. I didn't see any rutabaga.

I peeled them & cut them up & tossed them in the crockpot last night with some olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage & thyme. I taste tested a carrot this morning, and I think it came out ok. But I think I may have left some of the chunks too big. We'll see.

Organizing, pt. 2

I completed the organization of the cabinet (boxes of potatoes, rice, stuffing, pasta). That also gave way to my meal planning for the next few days.

I decided it would be easier to simply eat everything in my freezer than organize it.

In other news, I've decided I simply *must* try out this Chicken & Dumplings recipe from the Crockpot Lady.

I organized my kitchen! Sort of...

I realized that one major problem in my kitchen was the lack of organization. I'd stopped rotating my food when I wasn't so "stocked up" but then I started stocking up on things again. So I just purged my kitchen of some expired canned goods, as well as donating some "I don't remember why I bought this" items to a local food bank.

In order to accomplish this, I had to take every can out of my cupboard and off my shelves to turn my kitchen floor in to a sea of canned goods. Sorting, purging and then re-shelving actually took almost a whole weekend (not uninterrupted). But now almost all of my food is stored in an orderly fashion. I ignored one shelf which houses my boxed items: Stove Top, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Betty Crocker Potatoes, Minute Rice, etc. That's for this weekend.

I also cleaned out my freezer, but not my refrigerator. That's also for this weekend.