Week 28: All By Myself

Recipes to Go: 507 233

Weeks to Go: 52 24

Recipes Made This Week

Beef Barley Soup

Ezekiel Bread

Veggie Tuna Burgers

Caramelized Onion-Gorgonzola Pizza

Pecan Lemon Loaf

Reuben Crescent Bake

Broccoli with Lemon Sauce

Chocolate Party Cake

The Husband left on a business trip Sunday afternoon, so The Captain and I were by ourselves all week. Sunday night some friends were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. I agreed on the condition that we could bring some of our leftovers with us. They accepted. For dinner, they had beef soup. They wanted to make beef barley soup, but couldn't find any barley. I brought my barley salad, which in addition to being convenient, started a conversation about where to find barley in the few stores in our county.

The soup was so delicious, I decided to make my own beef barley soup the next day. It was also delicious. But because I had quick-cooking barley instead of regular, I only put it in for the last few minutes. Despite this, it still managed to suck up all the moisture in the soup. So I added water and salt to each serving. It was still marvelous. I didn't mind eating all the leftovers myself.

On Monday I also made Ezekiel Bread. (So named for a passage in the book of Ezekiel, which mentions the joy of sweet wheat bread.) It was sweet, and used mainly wheat flour. I halved the recipe because it still made 2 loaves and I only have 2 bread pans.

It was so delicious. It made excellent toast which supplied The Captain and me with breakfast all week. And sandwiches, and snacks . . . And we had a crusty heal leftover to feed the ducks with.

The veggie tuna burgers were on my list for last week, but we didn't get to them. So I tried them on our own. They were tasty, but The Captain was too skeptical to eat a tuna patty. I bet older kids who don't take their burgers apart to eat them would enjoy the taste and get plenty of veggies in them in the process.

Thursday, I made the Caramelized Onion-Gorgonzola Pizza. I haven't tried Gorgonzola cheese in anything other than my favorite soup from now-out-of-business *sniff sniff* Big City Soup --Tomato Gorgonzola. It is almost essentially blue cheese. Wasn't expecting that.

And I can't say I was a huge fan of it on my pizza. Everything else on the pizza will end up in future Pizza Night (first Sunday of the month) homemade gourmet specialties, though. Man, does anything beat caramelized onions?

Additionally, I managed to make a Pecan Lemon Loaf for my early morning class, which was, of course cancelled. Apparently there is some causality between me making a treat and snow storms.

That was disappointing since now The Captain and I had to eat the whole thing, and he's not supposed to eat many nuts right now. I did let him try it. He enjoyed it and didn't have any allergic reaction to the pecans. Good sign.

The Husband came home on Saturday. His birthday was on Friday, which meant a depressing evening alone in a hotel room for him. Too make up for that sadness, we moved Game Night to Saturday and I made him one of his favorite things, a reuben sandwich. Okay, the Reuben Crescent Bake wasn't exactly a reuben, and I had my doubts about using crescent rolls, but apparently the only difference between crescent rolls and rye bread is caraway seeds. They duplicated the taste surprisingly well. This was delicious. We all wanted leftovers and were sad it got eaten so fast.

I made the Broccoli with Lemon Sauce to go with the Reuben Bake, but something went wrong with the lemon sauce. Too much lemon juice, or something, because it just didn't taste good. Oh well.

And for dessert, chocolate cake. He wouldn't be my husband without his deep and abiding love of chocolate cake. And so it wouldn't be his birthday without it. I almost hated to experiment with a new recipe in case it just wasn't very good and ruined his birthday twice, but I needn't have worried. This was delicious.

Unfortunately, it did boil over in the oven, so the house smelled like burnt chocolate for Game Night. After tasting the cake, no one mentioned the smell.

So, only 8 recipes this week, but not bad for being on my own, I say. Especially since there really weren't that many leftovers to deal with when it was all over.