October 10, 2020

WEEKLY MENU 10.11.20

Our Weekly Menu 10.11.20 covers all the bases – slow cooked and super speedy meals bracketed with Italian and Mexican. We’ve got it all!

These days, the Covid still has us keeping within the confines of the contiguous United States. No day trips to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for now. That’s okay! It lets us explore more of what’s (kind of) around us. The post pic is from Arches National Park in Utah. It’s unbelievably beautiful, but what surprises me the most is that it’s basically in the middle of the country. It looks super exotic.

Arches National Park

A red-rock wonderland.
Visit Arches to discover a landscape of contrasting colors, land forms and textures unlike any other in the world. The park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. This red-rock wonderland will amaze you with its formations, refresh you with its trails, and inspire you with its sunsets.
Arches National Park

The story of Arches begins roughly 65 million years ago. At that time, the area was a dry seabed spreading from horizon to horizon. If you stood in Devils Garden then, the striking red rock features we see today would have been buried thousands of feet below you, raw material as yet uncarved. Then the landscape slowly began to change.
First, geologic forces wrinkled and folded the buried sandstone, as if it were a giant rug and someone gathered two edges towards each other, making lumps across the middle called Anticlines. As the sandstone warped, fractures tore through it, establishing the patterns for rock sculptures of the future.
Next, the entire region began to rise, climbing from sea level to thousands of feet in elevation. What goes up must come down, and the forces of erosion carved layer after layer of rock away. Once exposed, deeply buried sandstone layers rebounded and expanded, like a sponge expands after it’s squeezed (though not quite so quickly). This created even more fractures, each one a pathway for water to seep into the rock and further break it down.
Arches National Park

Heading into Arches National Park on Weekly Menu 10.11.20

We’re going to need an RV.

Arches National Park in Moab, Utah is 1780 miles from beautiful Erieland. On a positive note, we’ll get to travel through Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Omaha and Denver. The bad news is that it’ll take 26 hours. And plenty of gas money.

Weekly Menu 10.11.20 is full service.

We’re having a good, old fashioned Sunday dinner at Bert’s request. He remembers going to his grandparents Sunday afternoon to have chuck roast served right from the dreaded Black Pot. (Affiliate links follow – see disclaimer page for details.) He was a ketchup aficionado at that point – and now he’s requesting it!

Nowadays, I use my biggest Ceramic Coated Dutch Oven. It works great on the stove top to sear the chuck roast, and it cooks evenly in the oven. I think I might sneak in a couple parsnips – I’m not sure the boys have ever had one.

To freshen up the meal, I’m making a super simple salad – chopped green apples (leave the skin on) and walnuts on top of mixed greens. Toss in the Apple Cider Vinaigrette for a sweet & sour note.

Sunday Dinner Continues…

We’re finishing up with an AWESOME Bundt Cake. If you don’t have a Bundt Pan, look into it. They’re not super pricey, but they are very versatile. Obviously for cake, but they’re perfect for Monkey Bread and even for molding a pretty meatloaf. Make sure you spray it copiously with cooking spray before adding the batter. This recipe is a winner with me because it starts out with a boxed cake mix – an unsung hero of the dessert world.

Italian, Mexican and crock pot meals all make the cut. Check it out!