July 18, 2020

WEEKLY MENU 07.19.20

Mid-summer Weekly Menu 07.19.20 covers all the bases: grilling, salads and a little bit of easy Italian.

Have you ever heard of Nanaimo Bars? Me neither. Which is surprising, considering they’re a huge item to the country just to the north of us.

The Nanaimo bar /nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ is a dessert item of Canadian origin.^[1] It is a bar dessert which requires no baking and is named after the city of Nanaimo, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island. It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut (walnuts, almonds, or pecans), and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. The custard icing filling is traditionally made using Bird’s Custard Powder. Many varieties exist, consisting of different types of crumb, different flavours of icing (such as mint, peanut butter, coconut, mocha), and different types of chocolate.
Wikipedia

Um, yeah. I can get behind that. So that’s dessert on Sunday, taken care of. The plan is that we’ll have some leftovers for snacks for the week, but we’ll see how that goes.

Ha! As if.

We’re having a special guest for dinner on Sunday who happens to be a vegetarian. Bert will be doing double grill duty with a beautiful piece of beef tenderloin for the meat eaters, and gorgeous grilled portobellos for our guest (and me, because I love them so much.) We’ll use big mushrooms, and brush them lightly with olive oil and salt and pepper. They’re super dense and taste pretty meaty all on their own. It will be no hardship to make that switch!

Pork!

Putting crock pot tenderloin on the docket is always a little dicey – the boys always enjoy pork when we have it, but like to complain about seeing it on the menu. They particularly don’t like the way the raw tenderloin looks – so cooking it in the slow cooker is a way to keep it out of sight (and out of mind). I’ll sprinkle a packet of Au Jus Gravy Mix on the tenderloins and dot on a little bit of butter – and they’ll make their own sauce. Hello mashed potatoes. We’ll cut the tenderloins before serving. Crisis averted. (Affiliate links follow – see disclaimer page for details.)

We have plans early Thursday evening, so I’ll make the Montreal Peanut Sauce and the Red Pepper Pasta before we leave the house. When we get back, Bert will grill up some boxed burgers lickety split and we’ll be in business. I love how easy eating is during the summer.

Speaking of easy eating (and cheap partying) check out the Lobster Boil plan for Friday night.