New Year, new planning. If you’ve checked out my Meal Planning S4: Plan and Shop post, then you know I had intended on following a full menu meal plan with lunches and all. While this plan didn’t work out as I had intended, it did make cooking at home much easier.

Read on to see the meals that I made this week and what experiments I tried with each as well as how they turned out.

Beef and Noodles and the Homemade Noodles

I’ve had stew beef prepped in the freezer for weeks.  However, I discovered that I didn’t have any noodles in stock.  I only had spaghetti which really doesn’t work in this meal especially because it would make many meals. 

However, I realized that I did have all the ingredients to make noodles.  They are very simple to make though just a bit more time-consuming.  I also hadn’t used my tiny rolling pin since buying it in the summer to replace my full-sized one.

I decided to try to make the entire dish in the slow cooker again and set the beef in with salt and pepper only on high for 4 hours.  A few hours later I mixed together with the noodles.  I borrowed a recipe from my sister and the recipe said to make a bowl out of the flour and mix in the eggs slowly. 

Yeah, that didn’t work and I couldn’t figure out how to save it so I threw that out and started over in the mixer.  Even in the mixer, I struggled to get the flour to absorb.  Eventually, it all worked out and I rolled out the dough.  The dough kept pulling back together and I bailed out pretty early.  I think my noodles were still a hair too thick.

While the noodles were drying, I started to build up the stock flavor in the crockpot.  I threw in a variety of flavors and bullion packets to build up the flavor.  I mixed the spices in a small prep bowl and went by smell.  Then worked to build the stock up to match in taste.  In the end, it may have been slightly heavy in Clover, but it was great.

Chicken Spinach Lasagna and the Great Experimental Cheat

My mother made a lasagna over Christmas using No-Bake noodles, so I wanted to give that I try with mine to cut out that extra pot and cook time.  The packet of noodles was well sized for the 9×9″ baking dishes I use as well.

It’s not so much that cooking noodles is difficult but it is nice to be able to snap uncooked noodles to size than cutting cooked ones and I don’t have to wait for them to cool.  It’s a pretty quick recipe to make if the chicken is prepped ahead of time.

It was terrible.  I worked to cover the entire noodle in cheese but the top layer burnt in far less time than it was supposed to be in the oven.  In this recipe, you start with a layer of noodles.  So the top and bottom layers were not cooked and honestly I was finding shards of completely uncooked noodles in the middle because it normally wouldn’t hurt to have the little shards of noodles cook in the lasagna.

It’s not the case here.  In the past, I’ve found that forgetting to cover the lasagna in foil makes it cook too fast on the top. Since it didn’t get to cook long enough for that reason, it’s possible the bottom and shards of noodles could have cooked.

I’m not sure that I’m done with trying this but I won’t be making two next time.  I’ll probably make one with my regular already cooked noodles and then retry his with a few adjustments.  I think I’ll add a layer of cheese to the bottom to help the noodles cook on the bottom and then remember to cover it.

To salvage the meal, I pulled the top noodle off and scooped the middle out, and put it in tacos to eat instead.  It would have been very good except that I’d put the broken shards in and they hadn’t cooked.  So if I do this again I won’t add the shards so I can pull the noodles off again if I have to.

Steak and Rice the Dill Addition

The steak was prepped in the freezer salted and peppered.  This round I make just rice and added a dry seasoning and butter after between the initial rice cooking and setting for 10 minutes off heat.  It took more butter than I would have thought but I’m not used to cooking with butter.  I’m not sure but I may have stopped cooking with butter when my gall bladder was removed and just forgotten about it.

This experiment was all about the seasoning though.  I mixed salt and pepper together with some of the herbs in my pantry.  Italian herbs are pretty easy to get right and this was the base for my mix this time as well, but I added dill.  And it was FANTASTIC!  I saved a little behind to also add to the mixed veggies though I forgot to save salt or butter which may have made them stand out less.

The meal was great and super simple.  I didn’t measure anything, I went by smell while mixing ingredients.  This works for everything but salt as I don’t seem to smell salt dry so I always have to adjust a bit as I go with salt.

Skillet Grilled Cheese with Freaky Bread

I started my order by clicking on a Monte Cristo recipe in Instacart.  I assumed but wasn’t sure that it would automatically add the ingredients required, which it did.  I think it may have added a white sandwich bread, which I don’t tend to like much on these types of sandwiches.  So I went hunting for a replacement without soy.  It’s a nightmare finding bread without soy.  Somehow I wound up with impossible bread that somehow or at least claims not to have gluten, soy, or GMOs.

Worst idea ever.  I like my gluten and have no need to cut it out.  I don’t understand why they add soy to bread if there’s gluten but I’ve had to look at over 20 loaves to find one that was soy-free and Instacart doesn’t always show ingredient lists so that didn’t seem feasible.

Instead of making the Monte Cristo (too much work for a migraine day), I made a grilled cheese sandwich.  This bread, however, didn’t absorb any of the butter.  It just seemed to burn it right to the outside (didn’t really taste so burnt).  It somehow had no taste but was still as repulsive as bread that has too much salt…like way too much salt!

It cooked the outside too fast, I’m sure I’m to blame too, but then all the stuff on the inside was still cool and unmelted.  I barely ate half the sandwich.  I could force myself to eat it but it was not an enjoyable experience.  I’m pretty sure if I ever needed to avoid gluten I would cut back or avoid meals with bread because this option was terrible.  Never again.  I’ll risk the soy next time.

Grilled steak with frozen veggies and rice, the Italian edition

I mentioned above that Italian seasonings are very forgiving and I would always recommend starting there.  I have had almost no reactions to Italian seasonings either.  I just have to avoid onion powder and garlic powder.  If I chop up fresh garlic I’m fine though.  Onions I’m still trying to figure out.

Normally I pan fry my steaks.  However, I decided to break out my George Forman grill for a little variety.  I hadn’t cooked on it in nearly a decade because you can’t adjust the temperature so I was a bit concerned about giving this a try.  I’ve only recently bought a meat thermometer though so it seemed like a good time to try.

I cooked the steak up to the same range and while the readings didn’t really seem to stabilize the way they do on a skillet, I was able to tell it got past the range I needed and could approximate how long it had been over that range.  I may have flipped it over to stall it at this point but it’s not really necessary.  It was incredibly easy to cook and perhaps faster.  Cleanup was easy as well.

Lemon Pepper Chicken Marinade

Cooking chicken correctly has been a problem area of mine for many years.  I tend to overcook it but I’ve undercooked it before too.  I was brainstorming with my sister some ideas for lunch and she shared a post that she was looking at for chicken marinades.  There happened to be two that didn’t have ingredients I couldn’t eat.

One of my troubles with cooking chicken is not getting it fully thawed before trying to cook it.  I’ve learned that it even requires more than 8 hours to thaw fully, so now I know to pull it out the night before so it has all night and the full workday to thaw.

At the time, I only had Lemon Pepper seasoning on hand and it was new.  So I went with a simple marinade.  I pulled two chicken tenders to thaw and added the marinade to frozen chicken breasts and allowed it to thaw overnight and through the workday.

Then using my new grilling skills and my thermometer, I grilled up the chicken which made wonderful juicy chicken.  If I remember correctly it was just oil and Lemon Pepper seasoning in the bag.

Then I threw in some reheated rice and veggies which were already Italian seasoned.  It was a very simple meal!