31 March 2015

Menu planning: Holy Week

It's certainly possible that I'm nuts, but I'd like to think that I can manage to make just one trip to the grocery store this week. Despite and because of it being Holy Week.

Sitting down surrounded by cookbooks ("Why are there three hot cross bun recipes? Which one do I usually follow???"), I realized this afternoon that making one shopping list for now through Easter was going to take rather more preparation than most weeks' lists. Easter baking is wonderful and rich and full of dairy... how much butter do I actually need for all of the coming baking? Surely one gallon of milk will be plenty. Thank goodness I had the sense to buy eggs when they were on sale last week! Good heavens, how much flour am I going to go through? 24 cups?!? That math has to be wrong. (It's not.)

The grocery list I wound up with was reasonably short, considering. It helps that most baked goods have pretty similar ingredients! We were in and out of the store in just 45 minutes; with how slowly I've been walking these days, the past several weeks' trips have all taken an hour or longer. So that was good.

So far I've only thought oh no, I meant to put that on the list! about one thing, and it's not something we can't live without until next week. Maybe I really will be able to have a pretty quiet-at-home Holy Week this year. Okay, "quiet" is stretching things. And Holy Thursday afternoon is looking pretty crazy. But still.

Our schedules have been all weird so far this week, with Matt getting up at 5 to go in very early to work for a training being video conferenced in from somewhere in Central time. I'm so glad it doesn't run the whole week long! 

What's happening in my kitchen this week:


Palm Sunday: the psari plaki, Greek baked fish, turned out so well! We served it over long grain brown rice with green salads.

Monday: I baked soft pretzels to have around this week, and tried to explain to Little Bear their symbolism as "praying arms/hands," but it was the stickiest awfullest dough ever so they didn't really look right.

Tuesday: the big shopping trip happened today, and I made a pepperoni pizza and raw veggie tray for supper. Totally forgot about making something meatless to have leftovers for Matt's lunch tomorrow... There are two hard-boiled eggs in the fridge, so I'll make a little egg salad tonight.

Spy Wednesday: baking Jidáše (Judas rolls) to go with supper—a spinach-Swiss crustless quiche and a salad of strawberries and pineapple in a poppy seed yogurt dressing. I also need to make applesauce, because my slow cooker is already spoken for on Thursday.

Holy Thursday: a caribou roast in the slow cooker, spinach salad, baked sweet potatoes, and applesauce for supper. That afternoon will be super busy (chiropractor, midwife, etc), so I'll most likely wind up making the Hot Cross Buns (Good Friday's breakfast) after supper.

Good Friday: hopefully not very much! There's a little prep for the following day, hard-boiling eggs and making crescent roll dough. I really want to be able to have a quiet afternoon, though, so for supper I'm just mixing together pasta, a container of pasta sauce from the freezer, and some mozzarella and throwing it in the oven. I have a couple kinds of vegetables in the freezer, so we'll have something healthy on the side.

Holy Saturday: dyeing eggs, baking Italian Easter Bread, and making these spinach artichoke bites to bring to dinner on Easter! If supper winds up being an organized affair and not merely a case of "what random leftovers are in the fridge?", it certainly won't be anything more complicated than an egg bake or turkey-rice casserole. Actually, that's a good idea; I should sat aside some of the leftover turkey currently sitting in the fridge so that it's still around by Saturday.


...Aaand, nope. Going back to the store tomorrow, because Little Bear spiked a fever tonight and we have hardly any little kid ibuprofen in the house. It's Holy Week, can you tell? All the things happen at once to try to keep you from having a prayerful week. Would you mind saying a quick prayer for the sad little boy? 

I'm not sure how much I'll be on between now and Easter, so have a blessed week!

3 comments:

  1. This post reminded me to add baby ibuprofen to my grocery list! You'd think the wailing toddler standing next to me would help me remember, but nope.

    (He's not sick as far as we can tell but maybe molars? All. The. Crying.)

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    1. Aw, I hope he's feeling better soon! Molars are so awful. Thankfully Little Bear slept really well last night, and his fever was gone when he woke up this morning!

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