Weekly cooking

[Aberrantatavia]

I try to prep on the weekends for the week, so I thought I'd share what I did today. This helps me eat well and I've been doing batch cooking and weekly cooking for awhile. Once you get used to it, it's a life saver.

Grilled a couple of steaks

Sweet potato hash patties

Ground elk with sweet potatoes and spinach

Homemade mayo (actually did this last night for my deviled eggs)

Zucchini ribbons (recipe from Theclothesmakethegirl) and boars head kielbasa - I used ghee for this for the first time and it was utterly amazing

Then I got derailed because I had to run a couple of errands. I was supposed to also make some chicken breakfast sausage but that will have to be done tomorrow night.

I got home and my daughter was looking for some salad fixings and wanted to know a healthy dressing, so I made up some smokey bear dressing from The northwest cavegirls site and left it paleo for her with a little honey.

Then I decided I still had energy and some zucchini hummus sounded nice. So I made a zucchini hummus with some roasted multicolored peppers that were needing to get used and added some toasted pine nuts. It's a little watery since my food processor is old and needs to be replaced and I used my blender which makes it harder to get thick hummus. But it tasted ok, even if it doesn't stick to the veges so well.

[Phanniemae]

I've heard of lots of different hummus, but not zucchini... Will you share your recipe? : )

[Aberrantatavia]

Sure... Although I'm terrible with measurements, I'm a wing it cook.... So it's something like this.

Take a couple big scoops of tahini and put it in the whirrly machine of choice. Add a bit of olive oil, maybe 1/4 cup, and a couple cloves of garlic. I usually add a handful or so of parsley here too, it seems to crush better at the beginning than at the end. You can also hand chop it and dump it in at the end. A fresh squeezed lemon or 2, and beat it up for a minute or so. I use my blender so then I add chopped chunks of zucchini until it gets thick and looks like hummus. Tonight it was still a little thin but I was done so I stopped. I used almost 2 medium zucchini. Then I took pine nuts and toasted them in ghee and added them to the hummus. I roasted some chopped multicolored peppers until they were fragrant and added those too. I'll use this as an addition to my salads and for dipping veges this week.

[Phanniemae]

That sounds fabulous! Especially the toasted pine nuts!!

[Bridgedurso]

I did my first whole 30 weekly cookup yesterday. I spent HOURS in the kitchen, hopefully it will feel worthwhile as the week progresses. I made a double batch of the chocolate chili from Well Fed, using venison, buffalo, and beef. I froze half for week three. NExt week, I'll make a double batch of something else and freeze half of that for week 4. I made a double batch of the ground beef, grilled 10 chicken breasts, precooked a big batch of roasted mixed veggies, lightly steam-sauteed some zucchini, some brocolli, and some celery. Made a batch of zucchini hummus, a batch of mayo, a batch of colse slaw. I am hoping this gets our family of three through the week. I measured and approximated portions, and we should still need to make sausage once this week and fish once this week, and a mornign fritatta every day. sheesh. The grocery bill was out of control! Having been vegetarian for many years, the sheer volume of meat was shocking. I am hoping that the hot plates form the well-fed are as quick and simple as they sound.

[Aberrantatavia]

This will get to be second nature after a bit, and it won't take as long. You will learn your own short cuts and generally become more efficient:)

How do you feel it worked out for you?