Sometimes careful planning and scheduling everything down to the month, week, day, and almost the hour can backfire on you.  I have just experienced this and a small oversight has put me into double time panic mode.

I had the school year and lesson plan worked out beautifully on big desk calendars that hang below each of my boys’ very own bulletin boards; a system that I’ve used for years to keep our lesson work on track.  But I have been so complacent about checking the schedule this month, knowing it was all mapped out and that the majority of the work that we were to do together would be cooking a medieval dish every day.

The boys do their math, language arts, German, spelling, and writing on their own and have been bringing me the medieval lesson which we quickly work out in the kitchen and rate at the end as something we would or would not like to eat at another time.  It’s been so carefree from my end that I have been enjoying cooking and blogging, spring cleaning, planning my garden and starting seedlings, then making whatever is scheduled for that day from their medieval food lessons.  I’ve become so lazy, in fact, about looking ahead at the calendar and just checking their finished work that I forgot that the entire month of January did not end up being devoted to food as I’d hoped over the summer when setting up our lesson plan.  There had been a timing glitch and unless we wanted to do an extra week of school, some subjects needed to be consolidated.  I really didn’t remember until this morning when I had my son bring today’s lessons from his file.  He said, “It (the calendar/lesson plan below his board) says all subjects are for the medieval feast.”

“Medieval feast?!”  I told him to go look again, that the feast was the last full week of January which is next week not this week.  We would spend Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday planning, shopping, cooking, doing recipe conversions, getting ready for the feast which we would enjoy Saturday afternoon when their father got home from work.  Even though I was certain that he was mistaken I still followed him into the lesson room to see for myself.  Guess who was wrong.  Guess what today is.  Wednesday.  So, not only am I a week behind but hours behind schedule.

In addition to that, the boys meet with their group tonight, I planned a visit with a friend for Thursday afternoon and my husband has planned that, since they have so much brainstorming to do, the team of engineers he has gathered to develop for a contract he’s working on for his own business will meet at our house rather than the library on Saturday afternoon since the library closes early.  I volunteered to cook dinner for the crew.  So, unless they want to wear cardboard crowns and eat braised oxtail, I can move the medieval feast to Sunday.  He has yet to tell me if that is on or not, but I think takeout pizza for his teammates will suffice if they do need to work at the house, and the boys and I will hide out in the kitchen doing what we can for Sunday’s dinner.  I guess that would give me a whole other day to prep and it’s just the four of us, so if anything else goes awry, no biggy.  Still kicking myself, however, for such an enormous oversight.

This will be my last post until next week.  Coincidentally, I was eating the leftovers for my late lunch as I typed.  It’s even great the next day…if I do say so myself.  It was a perfect rainy day winter blues chaser last night during,  yet another, torrential thunderstorm.

Ingredients:

3 medium sized beets, or a full can if using canned

1 head of romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces

2 cups baby spinach leaves

1/2 to 3/4 c. walnuts, broken, but not chopped

3 oz. bleu cheese crumbles

Pomegranate Vinaigrette:

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 c. pomegranate juice

2 T red wine vinegar

Salt to taste, a pinch or two

1/3 c. extra virgin olive oil

Method:

Thoroughly scrub the beets.  Trim them.

Place in a baking dish.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Roast in a 350 degree oven until tender about  1/1/4 hours.  Cool and pull the skins off with a paring knife.

Chill.  Medium dice.

Make the vinaigrette by combining all of the ingredients but the oil.

Whisk vigorously while drizzling in the olive oil to emulsify.

Mix together the greens and portion on four dinner plates.  Add bleu cheese, walnuts, and the diced beets to each.  Douse each with vinaigrette and serve.

I served this with some girdle bread the boys and I made for their medieval lesson and Lemony White Bean Hummus for a fab. vegetarian night dinner.

Makes 4 dinner salads or 6 to 8 side salads.