Eat Like a Rabbit

Central Florida isn't just home to Kennedy Space Center (although I highly recommend the back-lot tour of the area if you're ever in town visiting the attractions. It's a day's activity, but well worth it.) It's also home to some great restaurants that focus on the Slow Food Movement. Rachel from Slow Food Orlando contacted me about the project and even shared a link to a fabulous map of Central Florida with restaurant locations in relation to food sources. It is completely fascinating. Slow Food Week starts tomorrow; so do your research. . .or just read mine!

Another picture from last weekend in New York. We already blew up a few photos, framed them, and hung them downstairs. Just glad we weren't there this weekend!

I assume your thoughts are like mine when the week of Christmas comes around. There's so much food about to go in the fridge, you just can't imagine making something new and storing it in there. Not to mention, you're about to be spending a couple days in the kitchen and don't want to spend extra time each night working on the family meal. Course, when you're 7 months pregnant and have a broken foot, things get much trickier.

I've been happy to allow my mother the joy of taking care of the meal for Christmas Day as it will just be my folks and grandmother and ourselves. Paul's family comes in late Christmas night and will be around to play for the next week. Today, I'll post my plans for meals Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, hoping my mother has cooked up a great plan for Christmas Eve, too. And, later in the week, I'll post the ideas I have for the week that Paul's folks will be in town. Granted, Paul's mom and sister are great cooks and the menu's subject to change if they bring around a recipe they want to try or if Paul requests something in particular.

Sometimes, it's really hard to think of dinner. Sometimes, it's even harder to think of an entire week's worth of dinners! This is what happened yesterday. I had a lot going on. We had salad for lunch and leftovers and peanut butter and honey for dinner. (Hey, it's what the baby wanted!) However, today my mind got back on track surprisingly quickly as it all came to me while I was at work, and I actually have a meal plan for the week that isn't 100% salad and ice cream.

Dinner Menu for October 12

• Tonight we had the butternut squash pasta bake/lasagna that I took from last year's post and tweaked. I'll have an alternate recipe up as soon as Paul edits the pictures. There's still enough left for another night.
• Butternut squash soup--again trying to perfect a recipe, but suddenly we're in record highs of 90's! May have to come up with an alternative.
• Dilled roasted potatoes and green beans maybe cornbread, too. (High in iron.)
• Salad (just in case the baby rabbit doesn't want anything else as has happened of late.)
• Burritos

We have some great-looking fruit that my be a night's meal with peanut butter and honey toast or cereal or maybe just for desert.

Paul's folks had a major issue with their kitchen earlier this year. Their upstairs water heater flooded their kitchen and ruined--among other things--years of collected recipes. You can see all the marked pages in the cookbooks that the insurance company replaced. I also benefited because we learned one of the cookbooks The Occasional Vegetarian was out of print. Kathleen graciously sent me a used copy when she found a source. I'm happy my stomach is more settled because I've already read it cover-to-cover. (Yes, I do find enjoyment just reading cookbooks.) I've already used two recipes and will be going back to it later in the week.

I purchased a 1 pound package of spinach at Costco on Thursday and am determined to finish it off before the end of this week. One pound doesn't sound like much, but it looks like a lot, probably because I'm not running to the kitchen when I get home from work like I once did. I hope that excitement will return. Anyway, below are some ideas I have for getting that extra iron into my tummy because the vitamins still aren't staying down all the time.

You'll never believe this. I almost don't. . .except it happened to me. You know that planned menu list for dinners last week I did as part of my New Year's Resolution? Well, it seems that this was not the week to plan such things.