I was just thinking tonight about how very many weekly menus I’ve shared here – I hope you find them helpful!  Here is this week’s menu:

Shabbos (Sabbath) – dinner – challah, baked chicken, roast potatoes, vegetable salad, marinated tomato olive salad, roasted cauliflower, ratatouille (it actually was something new and not quite ratatouille but I don’t know what to call it!) , kimchi, curried purple sauerkraut, sandwich cookies; lunch – bean stew, chicken, kishke (stuffing), cucumber-tomato-olive salad, almond mandarin salad, carrot cake

Sunday – breakfast – eggnog (raw milk, raw pastured eggs, organic cream, honey); lunch – hearty soup with diced chicken, brown rice and yams; dinner – chicken, ratatouille, salads

Monday – b – Amish oatmeal; l – egg drop soup (lamb broth base with lots of vegetables); d – rice pasta with cheese sauce

Tuesday – b – breakfast bulgur; l – chickpea yam patties; d – quinoa with meat sauce

Wednesday – b – yam rounds with sweet almond sauce; l – baked potatoes with sour cream and vegetables; d – chickpea cheeseburgers

Thursday – b – baked oatmeal; l – CORN (Clean Out Refrigerator Night/day); d – injera with vegetable alecha

Friday – b – polenta with sour cream

Today I decided it was time to do something about the three cases of yams left that I got (for free)  three weeks ago.  Some of them are starting to get small soft spots, and once that happens, it doesn’t take more than a week or two for them to spoil.  I asked my dd9 to estimate how many there were so I could figure out what I had to work with, but she actually counted them all. The verdict is that we have 98 very large yams (each is equal to about three small to medium size yams).  Of those, I had ds11 sort out about 40 lb of those that are in perfect condition, so I don’t have to think about those for now.  Of the other 80 pounds or so, I got busy with today!

a) I have a load of yam chips in the dehydrator right now – I peeled them, sliced them thinly, then spread coconut oil on top before putting them in to dry.  b) I boiled a large pot of sweet potatoes to make into chickpea-yam patties (will adapt this recipe).  c) I made a huge pan of coconut-nut crusted yams that I’ll put in the freezer to use for next Shabbos.  d) I also sliced a bunch of yams thinly and put them in the freezer.  I’m planning to make another dehydrator load full in the morning, and will probably slice up a bunch more for the freezer.  I could can them,  and though right now I don’t want to take the time to do it, if I decide I want to later on, I can take them from the freezer or use the ones that are still in perfect condition.  d) For lunch today I created a new soup that used up the last of the chicken broth, soup chicken, and naturally, included yams.  e) I have yams scheduled for Weds. breakfast with sweet almond sauce.  With wonderful bounty comes much work! 😆

Last time I bought raw milk, I was delighted to find that it stayed fresh for four weeks in the fridge.  Planning to keep everything refrigerated once again instead of freezing some, I sent down several gallons with my kids to our mini fridge in the basement.  Since in the past they didn’t make sure it was plugged in (we don’t use it regularly), I gave explicit instructions that the fridge be plugged in.  I asked them later on if they had, they confirmed it was plugged in. But – I didn’t ask them if they turned the dial on, or if they closed it securely.  🙁  So I now have five gallons of sour raw milk.

Fortunately, unlike pastuerized milk which spoils and is disgusting when it goes off, raw milk continues to be edible and simply changes form.  The cream at the top has changed into sour cream and is really delicious!  The rest of it will be used for soaking lots of grain based dishes, since I can’t think what else to do with it except make it into yogurt.  We’ve been largely avoiding oats and minimizing other grains for a few months now, but these next couple of weeks will see them featured more in our breakfast menus!  The milk will be useful to soak the grains for Amish oatmeal, breakfast bulgur, and baked oatmeal.

We also did an inventory of our pantry, to see what food we have that need to be used up before Pesach (Passover).  It was interesting to note the difference between this year and past years – we really don’t have a lot of grains around anymore, so there wasn’t that much to use up.  I found some rice pasta, a few boxes of bulgur, and a package of teff flour that I bought (many months ago!), thinking I’d make injera (Ethiopian flatbread).

I have a couple of new recipes I’ll be trying out to use up the bulgur, and I’ll start a sourdough starter in the morning with the teff flour so I can make injera on Thursday.  I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy food so I’ll be making a very mild Ethiopian-style vegetable alecha to go with it (that means all hot spices or chili peppers will be omitted!).

I have a large pot of lamb broth bubbling on the stove right now.  Last week I made up a very yummy soup using the broth as a base, adding lots of vegetables (particularly notable amounts of cauliflower and napa), then stirred into the boiling soup a bunch of eggs.  It was very satisfying.  So I’ll be making that again this week.

I have a couple of pounds of chickpeas soaking overnight that I’ll begin sprouting in the morning to use for the chickpea cheese burgers, and two more pounds that were already soaked and are cooking right now to use for the chickpea-yam patties.

Fortunately I got this taken care of by 2:30 pm, so when a friend called to let me know about an event the local police training academy was sponsoring, I was able to spontaneously leave with all nine kids within about ten minutes. We had a really nice time, even the older kids.   They got to do a mock police academy training that consisted of a number of fun activities, go in the fire truck, police helicopter, operate the bomb squad robot – all in all lots of fun!

The minute we got back I had to go with ds3 and ds7 to violin lessons, and then right after returning from there, had to take ds11, dd13, and dd15 to a recital by world-renowned pianist Leon Fleisher.  (They were the ones to go since they take piano lessons.)  It was a wonderfully full day and tomorrow I hope to get started with Passover cleaning!

(This post is part of Menu Plan Monday.)

Avivah