Menu planning in late February

An Italian-American friend of mine once shared the following with a bunch of us on a girls-getaway weekend when we were discussing food: "I love eating, and I think about food all the time. When I wake up in the morning, I'm already planning in detail what I'm going to cook and eat..." Another shared that she'd rather not think about food at all, and is happy to eat most anything put in front of them, and would love not to have to cook and plan menus at all. My mother once confided in me that she found cooking family meals a chore: "Sometimes I would have to fix myself a strong cup of coffee before I could face the kitchen."

A cynic might say,
There are only 2 kinds of people (replace w/ housewives or moms?) in this world: those that plan and think about food all the time, and those that don't think about food until their stomachs growl (or their kids start whining...)

I actually fall somewhere between those extremes. I sometimes go for long periods of time without thinking a whole lot about food (especially when very busy at work, blogging, sewing or other creative endeavors), but more commonly I do think about food and meals frequently. I have to (!) as a mom, plus I enjoy eating, and I get grumpy when my blood sugar drops too low.

Can you remember what you cooked & ate this past week?
Do you know what's for dinner this coming week?

I don't usually plan meals in great detail, but now that we're getting our weekly CSA boxes, that is forcing me to become a little less haphazard in my menu planning. And by writing this blog, I'll hopefully have something to return to when I run out of ideas/ inspiration...

I started this past week with the overdue job of defrosting the big freezer, and discovered how low we were getting on meat. We're down to our last 2 packages of salmon (Wild Alaskan Sockeye), but I still have some of my smoked fillets left. It's good to eat all your harvest before going into next spring/summer, so I defrosted some salmon for us to eat.

Here's the emailed list of what our CSA box contained:

from Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm and VanderWeele Farm:
Alaskan Yukon Gold potatoes | Alaskan carrots | Alaskan green cabbage | Alaskan onions

from Outside:
certified organic bunch beets with their greens | certified organic bok choy | certified organic leeks | certified organic broccoli | certified organic Fuji apples | certified organic navel oranges

Dinners this past week (* denotes recipe is posted on blog)
We always eat salad or other raw food (crudites such as carrots, etc) -- but I don't list them here.

Monday: Bubble & squeak (*) with turkey breakfast sausage.
Tuesday: grilled salmon marinated in ginger-soy sauce, quinoa, broccoli w/ hollandaise sauce.
Wednesday: leek & potato soup (*), panini w/ cheese and prosciutto ham.
Thursday: Eggs in a Nest (*), brown rice, beets w/ horseradish dressing (*).
Friday: Burritos w/ refried beans, beef & red pepper fajitas, cheese & avocado.
Saturday: Salmon chowder (made w/ leftover salmon, carrots, bok choy, corn).

Tonight I was going to make homemade Spaetzle and goulash, but we spent the afternoon skiing on the frozen river, and I admit to taking a delicious nap after skiing, so I just reheated some Chili con carne, and tried a new recipe for coleslaw. Recipes to follow soon...