Category Archives: National Blog Posting Month

The first menu plan of my 39th year

This weekend was Semi-Annual Birthday Extravaganza, and we had a really lovely time. We rented a cabin with Rockford’s parents, his sister’s family and some of our best friends, and we spent the weekend watching movies and having a series of goofy tournaments.

It was an excellent way to reach Level 39. Speaking of which, here’s my first menu plan of my 39th year. It looks oddly like the menu plans of my 38th year.

Monday: Vegetable Curry
It’s supposed to be pretty rainy here today, so it’ll be nice to come home to a crockpot full of curried goodness.

Tuesday: Poppyseed Chicken
There’s a good bit of dairy in this so I’m not sure what I’m going to eat, but it’s Pete’s 10th birthday and he asked for poppyseed chicken for his birthday dinner.

Wednesday: Leftovers
There will definitely be veggie curry, and there might be poppyseed chicken.

Thursday: Rotisserie chicken and baked sweet potatoes
I had this on the menu a few weeks ago, too, but we didn’t actually have it. We will this week.

Friday: Pizza
I’m not sure if I’ll make myself a dairy-free pizza or just have a salad.

Hungry for more? Check out the Menu Plan Monday linkup at OrgJunkie.

An easy Sunday night dinner

Every other week we host my in-laws for Sunday night dinner. Here’s my tried-and-true pot roast recipe, which is actually my mother-in-law’s tried-and-true pot roast recipe. It makes a gravy, too, which is a great thing for a recipe to do. I usually serve it with mashed potatoes, but it would also be great with The Best Crunchy Roast Potatoes You’ll Ever Have.

Really Easy Pot Roast
2 1/2 pound boneless chuck roast
1 packet Lipton’s onion soup mix
1 can cream of mushroom soup

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put enough aluminum foil to wrap around your roast in a roasting pan. Put the roast on the foil.

Sprinkle onion soup mix over roast and spread mushroom soup on top. Pour about 1/4 can of water over the roast.

Seal the foil over the roast (fold the top, then the sides).

Bake for 3 to 4 hours or until the roast is really tender.

Be careful when you open the foil packet. It’ll be steamy. Put the roast on a serving platter, then carefully pour the gravy into a gravy boat.

This isn’t our week to host Sunday night dinner. My sister-in-law is hosting this week, and she’s making pot roast. What a crazy coincidence.

Gaining momentum

I was early to pick Poppy up from her classes last week, so I took the opportunity to visit a new art gallery that a friend’s family recently opened. I don’t go to art galleries all that often, but I think maybe I should. It was a lovely space, and being there was pretty soothing.

A lot of the artists at Momentum Gallery are local or have some kind of local connection, and I recognized a few of the artists who had work on display there. Hoss Haley, for example, makes large metal sculptures that I’ve seen around town before. They kind of looked like balled-up pieces of paper, and if I had a lot more money than I have I’d buy one for my yard. I’d also buy his “Blocks No. 2,” but that would require a lot of money and some larger walls.

The more I looked at it, the more off-kilter it made me feel, like I was Alice about to tumble into another wackadoodle adventure.

"Blocks No. 2" by Hoss Haley
“Blocks No. 2” by Hoss Haley

My favorite piece at Momentum was Mariella Bisson’s “Waterfall in Three Parts,” which would also require a lot of money — $24,000, to be exact — and a ginormous wall were I to make it mine.

Her paintings are really textural, and from a distance they look like you could step straight into them.

"Waterfall in Three Parts" by Mariella Bisson
“Waterfall in Three Parts” by Mariella Bisson

They also had a good number of Andy Farkas Prints. He does a lot of paintings that feature woodland creatures in anthropomorphized situations, which you may not be shocked to learn is right up my alley. Happily, his work is much more affordable than Bisson’s, and I am going to have some of his trash pandas on my wall in the near future.

If you’re in or around Asheville NC and you’re looking for something unique to grace your walls, you should stop by Momentum (24 N. Lexington). They have some really interesting work, and the people who run the place are both nice and local.