Menu Plan Monday: Jan 5- Jan 11

Monday: Pumpkin & Black Bean Soup
Tuesday: Jambalaya (probably with chicken since Jerry has shunned the turkey leftovers in any form)
Wednesday: Indian Spiced Salmon and au gratin potatoes
Thursday: Personal Pane Pizza's (Jerry's new idea for pizza on our favorite Trader Joe's pane (bread)) You may have noticed that I could eat pizza every week, and I have been ;)
Friday: Oh bother. I don't want to cook more by Friday night. We'll have to eat cake. Or more like chocolate, since we have a plethora of that around. OK, ok, we'll eat some butternut squash soup if I don't find something cheap in the frozen food isle at Aldi.
Saturday: Roasted Winter Veggies and mac n cheese. Pure comfort.
Sunday: Slow Cooker Beef Tacos

I have a couple resolutions for 2009 that have to do with food. First, I will use my crockpot on Sundays to prepare dinner since we have church at 1:00pm now. I'll use my time in the morning to make sure we have something for dinner when we get home from church, and the house will smell yummy too. Unless it burns. But I think I have learned that lesson.
Second, I will buy more local foods. You know I am a thrifty shopper extraordinaire, so this may seem like an oxymoron if you've checked the prices for CSA's or at Whole Foods lately. So I will start small. I will buy my milk from CVS, where they sell Cloverland Dairy milk, which comes from a farm near Baltimore and has no growth hormones (and, of course, I can buy it with my extra care bucks!). I will either buy a share of the Clagget farm's harvest (we might qualify for the reduced price share, or maybe I'll find someone who wants to share a share? Let me know if that's you), or schedule regular outings to do a workshare (I'll pick for 4 hours to get a share for the week). I think the outings option will be fun for Calista and myself. I miss working outside and having a yard. I miss the pleasure of eating something that I tended, watched, and harvested.

Eating with the fullest pleasure –pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance –is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. - Wendell Berry (1924- )