Truthfully, my meal plan is only half done for this week. I am feeling really short on ingredients and too tired to come up with much. So tomorrow, I will probably go to a nifty site like allrecipes.com where I can type in my ingredients and they will offer recipes.
But, I thought that I would share a couple of the recipes that I came up with last week. Just so that we are clear, I have no illusions that I know how to cook any exotic or specific ethnic foods. I am Irish and English, who eat meat and potatoes or fish and chips. So I will fully acknowledge that while the following recipes have words such as ginger or curried, they are Canadianized or Marissa-ized in every way. We still found them quite satisfying though.

Curried Squash Soup/Sauce

3 c. squash puree

5 tsp. curry powder

5 cloves garlic

1 med. Cooking onion

1 apple, peeled, sliced and cored

2 c. water or milk (I did one of each)

2 tbs or so Honey

Salt to taste (I used about 1 tsp)

Butter or oil

Saute garlic, onion and apple in butter (or oil if you prefer),  add curry powder (you could add more, I just didn’t want to overdo it for the girls), salt, and honey; sauté briefly. Add to pureed squash and 1 cup water in the food processor and blend until smooth. Pour into sauce pan, add 1 cup of water and milk, heat on low.

I served it with left over rice; it is quite thick and kind of worked as a sauce. This was probably the most heartily enjoyed meal of the week. Cecily especially kept asking for more and there were no leftovers in sight.

Ginger Beef Stir Fry

Orange Ginger Beef Stir Fry

Sauce

2 tbs cornstarch

½ c. water

1 lg orange, juiced

½ c. soy sauce

1 tbs honey

2 tsp ginger

2 tbs sesame seeds

Salt to taste

Few flakes of red pepper

Stirfry

1 lb stew meat (or sirloin sliced if you feel extravagant)

½ cooking onion

2 carrots

1 head of broccoli

½ lg red bell pepper

3-5 cloves garlic crushed

about 2 tbs olive oil

Salt to taste

Few flakes of red pepper

Brown meat in oil and set aside to sauté the thinly sliced/chopped vegetables. Mix up the ingredients for the sauce in a small bowl using a whisk to remove all cornstarch lumps. Once the vegetables are mostly tender, add browned meat and sauce. Simmer on a low heat until vegetables are tender.

Serve with rice.