The Menu

Okay, don't laugh...

challah (so far, so good)
salmon gefilte fish w/dill sauce (mm hm)
hamburgers (what?!?!)
french fries (for shabbos?!?!)
carrot cranberry salad
coleslaw
pear gingerbread

and for lunch...

chicken with chimichurri sauce

(and chimichurri is THE best reason for taking the trouble to check parsley, flat-leaf anyway!)

Yep, hamburgers for shabbos. But these really aren't just any hamburgers. Deluxe fixings, homemade buns, and dh's special touch. These are so good we just had to save them for shabbos because they just don't seem like a weekday menu. And when you have hamburgers, you just *have* to have french fries, or so the kids tell me. :) At least for our lunch guests, we'll be more "normal."

The salmon gefilte fish turned out great. Whole salmon has been so cheap here - $1.78 per pound. For every pound of fish, I added about a cup each of celery, onion, and carrot, 1/2 cup of flour, a bit of salt, and an egg. I had four pounds of fish (originally two 3-pound fish) which made five 18-ounce loaves. I spent maybe about $13.50, making it around $2.70. Sure beats the $8 or whatever it usually is!

Also, with groceries I've decided this month to not buy a single pre-made snacky thing. I often buy granola bars, peanut butter cracker packs ($0.15/each!), and mini-bagels (which are really just mini-breads with a hole in the middle, not papa's bagels!). Other things too, I'm sure. I did buy pasta, but that's really cheap. I'm just making a point of making a really good snack bar kind of thing a couple of times per week.

So earlier this week I threw together oatmeal, egg, a few butterscotch chips, flax meal, sugar, and a little bit of okara (the soy bean pulp leftover after making soy milk) and, um, probably something else too, then spread it thin to make something like granola bars. It was pretty good, but I should have let them dry out longer.

Tonight I had a larger amount of okara (2-1/2 cups?), so in went some eggs, flax meal, flour, oatmeal, oat bran, butterscotch chips, baking powder, sugar, milk, and, um, no doubt something else too. I baked it into a cake-like thing in a 9x12 pan. It came out REALLY good, much better than the granola bars. Just very slightly sweet, great texture. I guess I've made enough cakes in my lifetime now that I don't need to use a recipe, but DARN I wish I had this one! :) Hope I can recreate it. Oh, dear.

Good shabbos!