monday meal madness!

Good Monday morning. Since I won’t be able to make comments like this again until season four, please tell me: last night’s episode of “Downton Abbey” was just a dream, right? Please?

Regardless, the fact that it’s Monday is certainly not a dream. Time to start planning the week’s meals, even if you are home today. Please enjoy a few ideas from dinners we’ve made over the past week….

I am on a breakfast-for-dinner kick. I was inspired by reading How to Cook the Perfect Day to make waffles with peaches on top. I added some of the last of my raspberries I’d frozen in the summer. Tasting a frozen raspberry in the middle of February makes me truly yearn – dare I say, lust? – for summer.

I kept on with the berry kick and made a blackberry cobbler over the weekend, followed by a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. My little rhubarb babies are emerging from the soil. Welcome back, honeys!

Mr. Fresh Scratch has been loving the combination of blueberries and blue cheese lately, so he has been making this salad regularly. The kids seem happy with it, too, except for Teensy Weensy’s constant reminder, “I don’t wike WETTUCE!”

So, in the Pioneer Woman’s most recent cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier, she has a great section on breakfasts. This last week, I decided to give her breakfast pizza a go. I made my favorite pizza dough in the bread maker, then made my own hashbrowns and baked some bacon. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.

This recipe is pretty labor-intensive; lots of things to chop and cook before actually assembling the pizza. But it really was worth it.

The first two meals of it, it was worth it.

But the leftovers just kept appearing. It was the pizza that wouldn’t go away. In short, it is wayyyy too big for a family of four to polish off in a reasonable amount of time. My tip? Make this for a big brunch.

Here’s a peek at our Valentine’s Day dinner. This is our annual tradition.

Every year, we have a Valentine picnic in our living room. We always serve these baguette sandwiches that consist of butter, avocado, kosher salt, and sliced almonds. We call it the “Olga Sandwich” because we first ate it at a restaurant in the little hippie town of Olga on Orcas Island. We always throw together whatever fruit is left and make a salad. Voila! I made peanut butter balls, too, but they weren’t pretty enough for their close-up.

We entertained a bit over the long weekend, and this is a picture from our dinner with our friends Patrick and Marie. I slow-roasted some icky, pale, winter tomatoes {which always brings out the best in them}, then made a pasta salad. We also had tomato soup with pesto and goat cheese and a simple salad. And cobbler.

Don’t forget the berries, man.

Are you there, Summertime? It’s me, Mrs. Fresh Scratch.