Making it at Home

Yet another blog post about trying to make it to the end of the month and still have food left over...

A lot has happened already this month.  I've been keeping busy, and staying stressed out as well. But that's another story. OK, not really another story, pretty much the same story that repeats every month or so...

Anyways...

Yesterday I actually started thinking about dinner BEFORE it was dinner time!  I knew I had a head of cauliflower that had to be used up, and a pound of ground beef that I thawed out.  I had to find a way to make the cauliflower so that everyone would eat it, not just me & Bug.  My original idea was from a recipe for mac n cheese with cauliflower.  Personally, I think it sounds great, but I doubted that Mike would eat it.  Then I found a recipe for Cheese sauce from scratch in this awesome cookbook I checked out from the library.  Who knew?  OK, I guess it is kind of common sense, but still... I had no idea!  So Cheesy Cauliflower it is!  I also made a meatloaf to go with that.  UGH. It was by far the WORST meatloaf I have EVER made!  I love meatloaf.  I would make it every day if I could.  I just learned yesterday that my husband DOESN'T like meatloaf! (I find myself wondering, often, what planet he is from!)  I told him he would need a lot of ketchup with it because it wasn't very good.  "All meatloaf tastes like shit.  I don't know why you thought this would be any different."  Harsh, yes, but I know that he wasn't putting MY cooking down, just meatloaf as a dish in itself.  As long as I have the time and the ingredients I will continue to make meatloaf though!  So, if anyone has a good tried and true recipe for meatloaf I would LOVE to try it!

Today is a nice brisk fall day.  It's the perfect day for soup!  I don't have any pasta of any kind (and am not in the mood to make it myself) so I had to get creative again.  I had frozen broccoli, leftover cheese sauce from last night, & onions... Creamy Broccoli & Cheese soup!!  I started out with this recipe and went from there.
I didn't have Velveeta, so I used the left over cheese sauce from last night, and I tossed in the teeny tiny bit of leftover cauliflower from last night too.  I put in the nutmeg that it calls for, but next time I will not!  We did not like the taste of the nutmeg in the soup.  We also had to add a lot of salt 1) to overcome the taste of the nutmeg, and 2) because my cheese sauce was not salty at all and Velveeta IS.  I will definitely chop the onions smaller next time, and use more milk!  The way it is written it would definitely NOT feed my family of 5, but with a little extra milk/water it was great for the 3 of use that were here for lunch!  I know a recipe is a keeper when SAW goes back for seconds!!!

What have you been making for dinner lately??