62 things everyone should have in their pantry

Part One: Pantry Staple List for Cabinets
Pantry Staple List | Photo by 40389150@N06

Jamie Oliver – the Naked Chef – has put together a list of 62 things everyone should have in their pantry for Oprah.com.

It looks like a pretty good list.
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Weekly Meal Menu

Ingredients needed

We’re trying a new practice around Casa de Blundell. Trying to get back to planning ahead more and cooking more at home. I’ve volunteered to do the planning and cooking. So here’s the first week. (Probably a little different schedule than normal due to continued holiday/birthday events.)
Ultimately my goal is to try and reduce all the different things we buy – and have enough left overs for lunches the next day.

Sunday Lunch:
Spaghetti
Rolls/bread
Sunday Dinner:
Sandwiches/Cereal (can you guess who’ll be eating what?)
Monday Dinner
Southwestern Turkey Chili
Tuesday Dinner
Rosemary Scented Grilled Chicken
Salad
Wednesday Lunch
Chicken salad (using leftovers from the night before)
Wednesday Dinner
Out to Eat/TSO Concert
Thursday Dinner
Chicken & Chipotle Soup
Friday Dinner
Birthday Parties
Saturday Dinner
Small group

So what do you think? What does your menu look like for next week? Got any pointers for future menus? Especially for a family of 2?

Oh and for the record, while this wasn’t built using the site, HEB has one of the best weekly meal planners — EVER. Granted much of it is based around their products (including several partially prepared meats/meals) but its a great resource even if you’re not near an HEB.

Homemade salisbury steak

Salisbury steak

Got a craving to cook Sunday night and decided to give my hand at some salisbury steak — aka the poor man’s steak and one of my favorite cafeteria meals while growing up.

Yup. I’m the odd one that actually enjoyed salisbury steak from the school cafeteria. It was one of the top cafeteria meals, alongside the rectangular slices of pizza and the giant fried burritos.
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Co-op dinner time

Jose and Sally

It’s been a while since we’ve had one of our infamous dinner clubs at our house. I always had lots of fun having folks over for a themed meal — with everyone participating in the cooking and eating of the meal.

Granted, we do have our weekly small group which sometimes takes on the dinner club idea with everyone pitching in for the meal, but even participation in that’s been slacking as of late.

But I came across an interesting article today, talking about building community around the preparation and enjoyment of a family’s evening dinner.
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Fried egg pizza

fried egg on a pizza?

It’s been a while since I’ve added any recipes or food ideas to the blog, so I thought this week would be a great week to catch you guys up on some of the eats around Casa de Blundell.

No thanks to some of her new meds, Laurie wasn’t feeling too interested in eating anything but crackers and cereal last week, so I took the opportunity to try a couple ideas that had been rolling around in my head recently.

I recently found, thekitchn.com and a couple posts related to fried eggs stirred my imagination.

We LOVE the Royal Red Robin burger at Red Robin (with the fried egg on top), so I’ve been trying some other unique ways to eat fried eggs as well.
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