patti

Ooh, @Shelby, those are some good looking dinners you’ve had! Boudin is close to my heart. Sorry to hear about Amish faux boudin, but at least it was tasty. 😟😂 @Smithy, boudin from Cajun-adjacent territory doesn’t count, haha. Especially if they spell it boudain! But I guess even the most authentic could be off putting in its original linked form. Nowadays boudin stuffed eggrolls with a pepper jelly dipping sauce, boudin king cake, boudin omelets, or fried boudin balls stuffed with pepperjack cheese are all the rage. And even boudin made with cauliflower rice (a mortal sin).

Thank you for that bolding!!! Haha. I didn’t examine the labels until after the fact, and since I had called out something from last week’s label, I would be pushing my luck two weeks in a row. I do want him to continue making the labels. I will emphasize “copy and paste,” however! Also, the dressing was really good, if I do say so, myself. I don’t always use sausage in cornbread dressing. My mother’s east Texas family shredded the chicken or hen they’d used to make the stock for the dressing, as well as the chopped up giblets and put those in the dressing. I haven’t made that style in a few years, but it is delicious. And more time consuming than I wanted to do for this week.

I don’t know how helpful this will be, but my husband and I often eat completely differently. He freezes things for himself to have when we aren’t having the same thing. For example, rice dressing (aka dirty rice) and eggplant dressing. I make a batch, but mix rice in only with the portion he will have for two meals, and then he freezes small containers of the meat/veg mixture to add to rice later. And if you also freeze rice, you could grab your rice portion, your eggplant dressing or rice dressing mix, thaw, heat, combine, and have a very nice main. With the eggplant dressing you could also make and freeze little one serving casseroles of the dressing, to which you’ve added cheese, and a bread crumb topping. Baby showers for a second baby are not the norm, but I was given one for my second son and the gifts were all homemade frozen meals put together by the guests. What a gift! Unfortunately, that was 38 years ago and the only one I recall was chicken tetrazzini.

I’d love to say there were no hitches in this week’s CFM, but I can’t. Just after the labels were made and it was almost time for plating, my husband informed me we only had 7 of the three compartment to go containers left! We had plenty of the single compartment containers, but I didn’t want to use them. Costco is less than a mile away, but neither of us was prepared to go. How lucky that we managed to get an Instacart delivery within 20 minutes of realizing the problem? Had to pay $1 extra for faster delivery, but problem solved almost painlessly. Yay! Cornbread was made (more than pictured), and sourdough was purchased. Both were dried out in the oven Jimmy Dean sausage, browned, along with the trinity, plus extra celery. Combining the meat mixture, cornbread, sourdough, and chicken stock. Seasoned with Tony’s, poultry seasoning, plus a little extra sage and thyme. I added four eggs to each pan of dressing for binding. And after baking. There were two pans. I baked at 350, covered, for 45 min. Removed the foil at 45 min, and decided to moisten with more stock, returning the pans to the oven, uncovered, for 15 more minutes. For the green beans, I started with bacon grease from the crock I keep in the fridge. Softened the veg. Added the canned green beans, a few tablespoons of Better than Bouillon chicken base, and seasoned with Tony’s. Not much to say about the chicken! Seasoned and baked at 400 for 45 minutes. The tray on the bottom rack was moved to the top and cooked about 15 minutes longer to even out the browning. One tray pictured. Dessert The plated meal. I try very hard not to say anything when my husband changes capitalization or punctuation or uses random bolding. But if you bold baked chicken and green beans, why not cornbread dressing? And why not be consistent with spacing between items. AND WHY NOT JUST COPY AND PASTE EXACTLY AS SENT?! (Can you tell which of us is the nice guy and which is a controlling um, person?) Regardless, success!

I try not to let my husband’s food idiosyncrasies affect my choices for the CFM, so I’ll also try not to consider the food idiosyncrasies of @Darienne’s husband, or @chromedome’s GF! 😂

Maybe I am not as sensitive to taste changes, but I eat vegetable leftovers from the fridge all the time and don’t seem to detect enough of a change in taste to stop me from enjoying. Cheesy broccoli and cauliflower are still great a couple of days later. Air fryer roasted green beans, broccoli, and cauliflower aren’t especially good as leftovers, but I never have that problem because I air fry my serving size and eat them all! Are you worried that green beans won’t hold up well for the CFM? I don’t plan on cooking them two days ahead.

Please thank Ed for his choice! Not sure what you mean in the second statement?

My plan for this week’s CFM (Thursday delivery) is incomplete. Baked chicken thighs and cornbread dressing are the main items I’ve decided on, but haven’t settled on a veggie side. Broccoli? Sweet peas? What about using those giant cans of green beans? I used to dress up canned green beans by sautéing the trinity in bacon fat and adding a can of green beans to that and simmering for a bit to be more like southern (cooked to death) green beans. A part of me wants to damn southern green beans to hell, but the part of me that loves them can’t do it. 🤷‍♀️

Too kind, you are. My husband put a croissant in the freezer for 15-20 minutes and that was enough time to make it firm up for easy slicing! He thanks you.

Thank you! Improvements could’ve been made, but isn’t that always the case? I ordered the containers a long time ago, and while they are a little large for this usage, they have been too small for other things, so this was a good way to use some up, and I would’ve been sad to ruin the salad by having it get soggy. This would’ve been great info to have! Also, it sounds delicious. Thank you. (Do y’all just cringe at my ignorance, sometimes?) 🥴😜

When planning this week’s CFM, I imagined a ladylike chicken salad filled croissant, a side salad, and some dressing, and an undetermined other thing. 🤷‍♀️ Many chicken salad recipes were considered, but I fell back on the kind my southern mama always made. Just like her potato salad and tuna salad, her chicken salad always had hard boiled eggs in it. How many, you ask? However many your heart tells you to use. Chop ‘em all up. This was about 2/3 of the chicken. There was more waiting for shredding and chopping. A lot of chopped celery, diced red onion, sweet pickle relish, mayo, mustard, Tony’s, and an overnight chill later, here is the chicken salad and a few other meal ingredients. Not shown are the bags of pretzels I decided to include. Based on advice from Google, I heated up the Costco croissants in the oven at 325 for five minutes. If I had a giant air fryer, I think they “refresh” better there, but ain’t nobody got time for 8 batches in a regular size air fryer. Google was wrong about slicing the croissants AFTER their trip in the oven. Bread knife didn’t do very well, nor a smaller serrated knife, or other. Who knew this would be where I’d go wrong? My husband ended up using an electric knife. All I’ll say is that sandwiches were made. Salad wise, I went with spinach, feta, toasted pecans, dried cranberries (again?), and honeycrisp apples. The dressing was a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, olive oil, salt & pepper, and a few squeezes of lemon. The dressed salad was SO good! We decided it was best to have the dressing on the side. The plated meal included a snack sized bag of pretzels. The bag was more generous than I’d anticipated, which is nice. The chicken salad croissants were behemoths, not the imagined ladylike ones, and probably hard to eat. I hope they were able to be enjoyed. When we delivered the meals we were happy to see that someone else had filled the freezer, too.

That sounds like hurricane force winds! Whoa! ETA: Glad the damage was something fixable, even if a royal PITA.

I’ve done baked chicken with baked potato, but with sweet peas. Doesn’t mean I won’t do it again, though! I’ve also done chili cheese baked potatoes. Lots to think about, thank you. Speaking of Darienne’s mishmash, I’ve sort of gone out of order by quoting this here and not my previous post, BUT, I’ve only frozen cabbage when it was an ingredient in soup. I wish I kept closer track of my freezer items. Sigh. I am guilty of keeping things for an undue time.

Yes! I would call it smothered cabbage. Do it the same way, but add enough water or stock to lightly simmer, and cover it until everything is tender. No ribs need be removed. Also, if the texture ends up not being to your preference, add it into soup?

I think the texture would change and I don’t think there would be any crisp. But soft cabbage can be good, too.