Danielle - Homemaker

The most stressful thing I've been dealing with since being voted off Survivor Island is planning the menu for the week. It really is a bitch trying to prepare a healthy meal encompassing all four food groups. When I ask My Man what he wants to eat, the only he gives me is, "Anything as long as it has meat."

Now those who know me know I am overall not a chicken person and absolutely will not eat that fowl off of the bone. I do not like the flaky texture. I loathe cooking it. It's one of those weird meats you can't over cook or under cook because if you do it'll be all kinds of gross and you can get sick and die. When I buy chicken breasts (fresh or frozen) half the meat is gone by the time I'm done trimming the fat because it all looks nasty to me. I have the same problem with frozen chicken tenders. I know they're supposed to be ready to go, but I have to cut out this big, white vein that runs through the center of them, leaving merely bite sized pieces. I understand you don't see or taste the vein when it cooks, but if I see it during preparation it's got to go. I did cook a chicken and rice meal last week, but the chicken was dry. It was edible and overall received good reviews, but I thought the chicken sucked, therefore the meal was fucked up.

Let's move onto pork now, shall we? The only other meal I've semi-fucked up since playing Betty Crocker is a pork tenderloin. It was pink in the center, thus not fully cooked. My side dishes were off the heezy though, but those side dishes were my demise. I had TWO casserole pans in the oven as well the pan cooking the pork, which was on the top rack. My deduction is that the casserole pans were blocking the heat to my roast. Next time the meat will be on the bottom rack.

We are beef people. We're all about the red meat. I went grocery shopping this morning and Sweetbay had coupons on their ground angus (I will not use chuck or beef, only angus or sirloin). After everything was said and done, I purchased 9.89 pounds of meat for about $1.79 per pound. A) I'm a friggin' bargain shopper; B) I've proved yet again that I go big or go home.

So what will we be eating this week? Tonight I plan on making lasagna (with beef of course). This'll be a first for me but it seems like fun. I've been giggling ever since I thought about it this weekend - I was contemplating making meatloaf. If that's not housewife dinner of all time, I don't know what is. Luckily, I decided to only experiment with lasagna this week. Wednesday is My Man's birthday so I'm going to forgo cooking, get all dressed up (poor thing mainly sees me looking unemployed), and take him out to dinner. Thursday we'll have Taco Bell tacos in the all-in-one kit I purchased from the market (3 lbs. meat down). At some point I'll be cooking a pork tenderloin as well. Watch out Martha, here I come.

And finally, I anticipate baking a triple layer cake for My Man's birthday (pics to follow). For those of you remember my cakes from back in the day, they've only gotten better. I'm a little miffed though - I forgot to by birthday candles at the store.