I find myself with great amazement thinking that we are now in the month of December! The last month of 2013!! It’s been a great year, and it’s been especially fun to watch my kids (ages 8, 6, and 4) grow, think through things, make some good decisions, and mature!
I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We ended up having Thanksgiving at my house, so that was good. Not only was it good to spend time with family, but it was also great to have lots of leftovers, so we have just been finishing the last of the leftovers.
In this edition of Monthly Menu Musings I’ll share the recipes I’ve made in the last couple of weeks and the recipes I plan to make in the next month along with what I’ve discovered about getting moist reheated meat. Go to the ** to read the tip about reheating meat.
The food is in BOLD below if you don’t want to read the personal.
Breakfast:
I made pumpkin waffles out of oats that you grind up in your blender. They are super easy to make and tasty, and we’ve had them SEVERAL times over the last month with the pumpkin I cooked. So if any of you have pumpkin, you should definitely try these waffles! And if you get certified gluten-free oats, you have yourself an easy breakfast for those who can’t have gluten.
A few days ago I took my crock-pot granola recipe, and modified it to make chocolate granola by adding cocoa powder, reducing the honey a bit and adding chocolate chips. I’ll keep working on it until I am satisfied with the consistency, but for the first time eating it today, I am pretty happy with the results, and so were my kids! JSarr just said I should add a little more honey.
I made my first yogurt using 100% raw milk. I think it’s the only way I can eat dairy-based yogurt since it’s not processed like the pasteurized milk and is absorbed differently. I don’t know if it’s worth it to make or not, still debating because I have to (along with my kids) get used to a bit of a different taste and it costs double the money of my homemade whole milk organic yogurt. It had a few tiny clumps, so I am wondering if I have to whisk it more thoroughly next time.
Main Dishes and Sides:
Nachos are seriously my favorite go-to lunch (you know that if you’ve read any other of my menu musings), and when we have leftover shredded turkey or chicken (beef would go well, too, but it’s been ages since I’ve bought any), they make a great quick dinner, too. If I have raw milk cheese, I’ll use that for myself and throw on some greens. Gotta love the nachos with homemade guacamole and salsa, too.
I made this Applebee’s-Inspired Oriental Chicken Salad a few times because I am trying to make more salads based on other vegetables besides lettuce. Now there is some lettuce in this recipe, but it’s mostly made of cabbage. It’s also made with yogurt, and since I didn’t have raw milk yogurt at the time, I used soaked cashews that we blended to make the base with added lemon juice for some tang.
The last couple of Thanksgivings I’ve made crock-pot stuffing a couple of weeks before the holiday and then froze it to have one less thing to thing about. When I reheated it (in the crock-pot), I added a little broth and was good to go. Maybe we will have it for Christmas, too.
We will definitely have sourdough rolls or a bread loaf at Christmas just like we had this Thanksgiving. I actually made three batches for our Thanksgiving feast because I wanted to make sure we had plenty of bread for making leftovers like little turkey sandwiches.
**My cooking tip for the month (not that I usually offer one) is to have broth on hand to add it to your meat and dishes to keep them moist. Five days before Thanksgiving I started a chicken stock in the crock-pot and kept it in there until the day before Thanksgiving. I would take the broth out as needed, strain it, and throw it in whatever dish that called for broth. My kids love the broth so much, they will have it as is, too! When I’d take some broth out, I’d just add more water to the crock and keep my broth going. It’s so frugal!
Then after Thanksgiving I started another broth out of my turkey carcass. Honestly, when we’ve been working all day in the kitchen, and then clean up time comes, the last thing I feel like doing is dealing with the turkey. So the turkey often gets shoved in the fridge with some loose foil where it hopefully won’t fall over. The edges of the turkey often dries out in the fridge if a little air gets to it. All that to say, every time I reheated the turkey in our cast iron skillet, I’d throw some of my perpetual broth in the skillet, and you couldn’t tell if you got a dried piece of meat. I. WAS. AMAZED. I guess I really shouldn’t be since broth is amazing, but I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. I also added my broth to the mashed potatoes, and stuffing I’d reheat.
I am not one to make mashed potatoes often, although we enjoy them. Mashed Potatoes do frequent all of our big holiday scenes, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. And they are so easy to make in the crock-pot, too. Just make sure you cook them long enough. Don’t ask how I’d know:). I include 2 versions of mashed potatoes, one being dairy-free.
So in which dishes did you hide your leftover turkey? My biggest fake out was turning the shredded turkey into fajitas by just stir-frying it with grape seed oil, onions, garlic, and bell peppers and throwing it on a tortilla with cheese-no recipe. The turkey was so dark JSarr first thought it was beef. Anyway, that was a fun way to have turkey along with the other ways below.
I made a homemade enchilada sauce and made some enchiladas. Shredded chicken and turkey both work. In fact we made a batch of vegetarian enchiladas with black beans, too.
Every Black Friday I make a Thanksgiving Leftovers Soup, and this year was no exception. JSarr thinks I am perfecting my soups-my secret is sautéing the onions, celery and carrots in a cast iron skillet with grape seed oil until the onions are translucent and then throwing them into the crock-pot. Oh, and not being afraid to add sea salt. I still don’t add as much as the commercial cans have, but I am becoming more comfortable with adding salt.
Here is another way to rework shredded turkey or chicken we had recently, Tetrazzini. This post also includes 11 other leftover ideas-some I’ve mention here today.
We also had our new favorite soup, Shredded Turkey/Chicken Enchilada Soup multiple times last month. A-MA-ZING! That’s my family saying it, not just me:).
For December, along with repeating some recipes from November the plan is to have:
- Crock-pot Ham
- Crock-pot Ham Soup
- Hot Pockets
- Crock-pot Kale & Squash Soup
- Crock-pot Refried Beans
- Crock-Pot Lentil Vegetable Chili Recipe
- Easy 4 Ingredient Pizza
- Chicken or Turkey Pot Pie, G-F option, Dairy-Free (No Cream of…Cans)
If you are looking for some Crock-pot Christmas Ideas, here are 22 Crock-pot Ideas for the Holidays.
Beverages:
The kids just started drinking tea last month when they each had a sore throat, and loved it! I don’t even need to add honey anymore. Anyway, we never have hot drinks (besides my coffee-loving husband) except for this time of year. We made some spiced apple cider and hot chocolate-such great fall/winter treats! We’ll be breaking out the kid-friendly crock-pot wassail, too.
- Crock-pot Hot Chocolate
- Kid-friendly Crock-pot Wassail
For our smoothies I’ve been making the Green Key Lime Pie Smoothie multiple times a week and don’t foresee stopping anytime soon. It’s the perfect blend of sweetness and sour!
Snacks and Desserts:
From the 2 pumpkins I cooked came an abundance of pumpkin seeds, so we roasted some and made a savory version and a sweet version of pumpkin seeds. We only have a few left.
I made my 4 Ingredient Peanut Butter Granola with my son and added 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, so I am also working on a Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola Bar. He loves them! They aren’t perfected yet, but they are still really good, and the kids ain’t complaining!
How have we survived so long without making Homemade Peanut Butter Cups? Has it been half a year? I know! We’ve had those Chocolate No-Bake Oatmeal Cookie Bars that we’ve continually kept on hand in the fridge since May. Makes sense. But it’s time for the PB cups!
- Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
- Apples and/or Bananas with Peanut Butter or Almond Butter
- 2 or 3 Ingredient Chocolate Nut Clusters-almost as good as the Peanut Butter Cups but lacks the nut butter.
Do you have any meal plans for the week or month? Wishing you all a blessed Holyday season.
Go here for the complete list of recipes. Go here to see past Menu Musings.
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