Menu Planning at Lizzie's Home ~ Revisited

(© Grace Lee, www.cutecolors.com)

I've recently made a couple of minor changes to my old "If It's Monday, It's Spaghetti" menu plan. Here's the new version.

Monday ~ Pasta
Tuesday ~ Chicken
Wednesday ~ Frugal / Misc
Thursday ~ Beef
Friday ~ Fridge & Freezer Fare
Saturday ~ Chicken
Sunday ~ Roast / Homemade Pizza / Takeaway

The two main changes are to Friday and Sunday nights. Fridge & Freezer Fare is just a fancy way of saying we eat leftovers or a previously frozen meal, perhaps from a Cooking For The Freezer session. And I have more time on Sundays to potter about in the kitchen, so it works well for labour-intensive meals like homemade pizza (I make my own dough and chop the ingredients myself). In a four week period, Sundays look something like this: roast dinner (whatever is on sale that week, be it chicken, beef or lamb), homemade pizza, roast dinner, takeaway and then repeat.

With the pizza, I make a very large batch of dough and the kids get to choose their own toppings. I make three smaller pizzas around 6-8 inches in diametre, which gives enough for the kids to have half for dinner that night and half cold in their lunchboxes the next day. They go absolutely wild over choosing what to put on top, and it tastes delicious the next day. For Mum & Dad, we each get a whole 12 inch pizza made to our own specifications - don't worry, we don't eat the whole thing in one sitting! - plus I usually have enough dough/ingredients leftover for 1, sometimes 2 more large pizzas, which get added to the Freezer Fare stash.

I never used to make my own pizzas (or if I did, it was with premade bases bought from the store) but then I stumbled upon this recipe for pizza dough at the Mrs Catherine's Making It Home blog and suddenly I had a recipe that actually turned out fluffy and spongey, not soggy or brick-like. I make twice the quantity she uses and omit the cornmeal and it works just fine. I also use Defiance brand Baker's Flour (probably available nowhere else but Australia, LOL, but I believe it has a higher protein content than your general ol' versions) - it comes in a big 5 kg (11 lb) bag and I seem to have better baking results with it over the usual generic plain (all-purpose) flour. I buy yeast in a canister (Lowan brand in Australia) and store it in the freezer. I can't remember how long I've had my current tin but it's still working well. Oh, and another tip for making the dough - instead of using Mrs Catherine's 'oven light' dough-warming technique, pop the dough (which is, of course, in a large bowl, covered with a kitchen towel), in your car, parked in the sun. Even on a fairly cold day, the inside of the car will be warm enough to rise your dough, though it may take a little longer. If the car is in the shade, it's probably not worth the effort to move it, LOL.

Then we spread it with tomato paste, whatever toppings you like (we are partial to a bit of salami these days, and I cannot make pizza without semi-dried tomatoes, yum), top with cheese, bung it in the oven, and enjoy. The dough puffs up wonderfully, no soggyness in sight. It also freezes perfectly.

Happy cooking!

Cheers,
Lizzie