I have a confession to make. I really don’t know “how” to cook. I say that in all seriousness. I have taken exactly two classes in my life, and would never brag about my ability to consistently deliver results. What I am excellent at, however, is planning and organizing, and making my life easier every evening.
Seriously, whoever made that meme/tweet or whatever about “The most annoying things about being an adult is figuring out what to eat for every meal ever” is NOT WRONG. Also, feeding kids? That’s beyond annoying. So I am good at sorting things to make my life easier.
I have actually been fortunate lately to help some friends with this effort as well. It has been a fun experience, and I love to know that these skills that I have been honing for the past decade can go beyond just feeding my own family.
That being said, I have gotten good at finding simple recipes that feed and nourish my family at dinnertime.* Are you interested in learning how to do this too? Here are some initial questions to get you started:
How many times each week am I committed to cook?
Follow up to question 1: how much time am I willing to invest on making dinner?
Can I devote time to not only make it to the grocery store, but also get organized for that trip?
What does my family like to eat? Are there any dietary restrictions I should take into account?
Do we eat leftovers? (This is a big one! I try very hard to not have waste, so if there are leftovers, I often times shift my meals around.)
This is a great start to getting on your way to making a plan and sticking to it! Do you have anything to add to this list?
*I have to clarify at dinnertime because breakfast and lunch can still be a nightmare around here, and there is much fending for ourselves on all accounts!
I have to be honest, I nearly had a small break earlier this week trying to plan for all the holiday festivities. And, before I really say this, please know that I TRULY enjoy hosting dinners, and I love having family over. But honestly, taking into account my kids’ WILDLY different appetites and dietary preferences was the thing that made me lose it. Also, the elf. Moving that dumb elf. Whew. (Truth be told, most days, the elf brings us a source of joy. J and I giggle, the kids love it, but I’m ready for her to return to the North Pole.)
Before I get on with my weekly plan, I have to share (because I promised I would), my friends BEAUTIFUL homemade matzo ball soup, made with love from her grandmother’s recipe. We were lucky to be invited to a Hannukah party and enjoyed this soup, latkes, and some great Jewish deli food.
And…on with another week of planning, with a sprinkle of chaos in there.
This week:
Sunday: Dinner at my mom’s house! (Sometimes self-care is asking your mom if you can just show up for dinner.)
Monday:Tofu lettuce wraps for A, and tipsy turkey lettuce wraps for the rest of us. I skip the lettuce and serve over rice. The tofu was great. I skipped the separate sauce and just added some soy sauce straight to the tofu. She loved it! The other lettuce wraps came from this cookbook that I bought on sale like 20 years ago, and honestly, I can’t find it online to link it. This one from Chrissy Tiegen seems to be sort of similar in flavor.
Tuesday: I had dinner with a friend, so the fam ate leftovers.
Wednesday: I think we will do leftovers again to help clear out the fridge.
Friday: WE ARE GOING TO THE NUTCRACKER! Instead of going out to eat, we are having a quick dinner at home before we head to the show. Swedish meatballs (fake ones for A), buttered noodles, and salad will hold us all over for the amazing dancing spectacle.
Saturday: Christmas Eve Eve, or as they call it in Norway, Teeny Tiny Christmas! (Did anyone else watch that Christmas movie? I’m making a roast beef for the meat eaters, and my small vegetarian will be enjoying salmon for the holiday. Mashed potatoes and some broccoli will round out the dinner, plus I will probably make some gravy for the roast because mashed potatoes and gravy all day, please. (I still have to plan on a dessert. Stay tuned!) I’m also making these cinnamon rolls for breakfast which are so much work, but truly incredible and worth it.
YES I AM STILL PLANNING, KEEP READING!!!!
Sunday: Christmas Eve. I think we’ll have a fair amount of leftovers, and we have no plans for this day, so I think it’ll be whatever anyone feels like eating from the fridge!
Monday: Christmas Day. Same story as Christmas Eve, but I know that the girls do want me to make homemade hashbrowns, so we will start the day with that, as well as J’s homemade bloody marys (well, not for the kids, obv). We will have dinner with J’s family, so no planning there.
Tuesday: (I AM STILL GOING) We will be hosting the “sibling Christmas” and last year we did crabs, so we decided for a repeat. I still have to sort out sides, but the crabs are in the fridge, and apparently we should have warned Zoe because “they scared me” when she opened the fridge.
And now you know why I nearly had a full on menty b. I’m tired. Catch you next week, and I’ll let you know how I ended up rounding out some of these meals!
Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and if you don’t, I hope you take a break this weekend through next and catch your breath. I know I’ll try!
Hope everyone that celebrated had a restful and delicious holiday. I had turkey twice (Thanksgiving plus Friendsgiving two days later), and then stuffing waffles twice. (Have you made these ever? I’m convinced it’s the best way to use the waffle iron. I’ll leave the VERY best way to make this a breakfast at the end of this post.) I believe as of today at 1:02 p.m. I have eaten my last turkey sandwich. Until 2024, big birdie!
This is what happens when you have Chef friends who make your turkey.
But yes, back to it. Back to my mostly vegetarian lifestyle, and back to planning a full week of dinners. Sort of.
This week:
Sunday: At Z’s request, Broccoli Cheese Soup. I also had time to bake this bread which was heavenly on the side. (Yes, I made the bread from scratch, and no, I’m not better than you. I just have more time right now. And I REALLY love homemade bread!)
Monday: Fried rice. Here’s the scoop on this: I used to follow a recipe, but now I just throw it together from memory. Remind me to write down how I do it. But the beauty of it is this: you can’t screw it up too much. We add edamame for all of us (but not A), and extra soy sauce for the parents.
Tuesday:Southwestern Lentils and Rice Skillet. Have I talked about this one yet? Everyone loved it, but since Zoe mostly doesn’t like rice, I just don’t bring attention to it.
Wednesday: I have plans, so it’ll be a leftover night!
Thursday: I have plans again (’tis the season), so either more leftovers or breakfast for dinner!
Friday: I’m trying out a new one. Smitten Kitchen doesn’t do me wrong, so we are trying her perfect vegetable lasagna. I’ll report back on this one!
Saturday: Finally, we get to celebrate A’s bday with her friends, and she is taking them all for a cooking class. They’ll be making homemade pasta. I hope they feed the parents. I’ll probably make a little something for the parents’ table, but I haven’t decided yet.
HOW TO SERVE THOSE STUFFING WAFFLES (breakfast edition):
Follow your waffle iron instructions, but use the leftover stuffing instead of batter. Once they are done (they take longer than a typical waffle in my opinion), top with a beautiful fried egg or two and some leftover gravy. You’re welcome.
It’s been awhile, my friends. Almost a decade. It took another baby, a career pivot, then another, then deciding on a career break to get me back here. Here I am. Still on my same ish. Planning. Cooking. Did I mention I MOVED? (The kitchen is still small.) Wait, did I mention that I’m not even a lawyer anymore? Does this blog title even make sense?
It’s me, unfiltered, drinking a “Life Event” wined on my wonderful porch two days into my sabbatical!
But, it’s the job loss thing that has me back here. I have time on my hands. Those kiddos are in school all day, I’m allowing myself a little break, and here I am…menu planning. Kids need to eat, I suppose.
Another new life update? Beebs has become a vegetarian. I’ve always dabbled (meatless Monday anyone?), but this is a new challenge. I basically cook almost entirely vegetarian now, so I’m constantly looking for new veggie-friendly recipes. Let me be honest, friends, there have been A LOT of misses. Still, we persist. I feel grateful that she decided to go vegetarian during soup season. (Who else is here for midwestern fall food likes soups and chilis?)
Since I have this time on my hands, I figured I’d dust off this old blog and start sharing my meal plans with you all. (All one of you. Maybe my mom still follows? Shoot, she has a new email address, maybe not.) Screaming the meal plans into the void it is!
Monday:Slow-Cooker Tofu Butter Chicken I loved this one. Kids thought it was maybe a bit spicy. But slow cooker? Yes please. Served with rice and some of that great mini naan bread you can get from Aldi.
Tuesday: Tacos are still the theme…probably doing some taco bowls with faux taco meat, rice, sweet potatoes, and quesadillas for the kids.
Wednesday: Leftovers! Also known as if it’s in the fridge, it’s fair game.
Thursday: Mark Bittman’s Braised Lentils. We find a ton of recipes in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian cookbook. I highly recommend. They are not the most simple recipes, but the flavors are incredible.
Friday: By this time of the week, I’m lazy. Pizza it is. Or leftovers.
Saturday: I didn’t get that far. Check back next week!
Hi guys. Me again. Time to plan those meals, right?
Can I take one quick second to give a serious shout-out to Aldi? They have REALLY been stepping up their game with respect to providing affordable organic and free-range foods. The past two weeks, I have scored an organic, free-range, no hormones whole chicken for roasting for $1.49 per pound. This lovely happy-lifed birdie will feed my family of three for at least three meals. This is an amazing deal, and if you can spare an afternoon to roast a bird (which, I promise you, you CAN), this is a great way to feed your family healthfully and deliciously. We are also a big fan of their organic pasta sauce (when I don’t get a chance to make my own), their free range organic beef and organic apples. While I wish we could buy everything we put into our bodies organic and free range, we are on a budget, so I’m grateful that Aldi has enabled us to be more environmentally conscious.
So here are our meals for the week.
Saturday (last night, I know): Thomas Keller’s roasted chicken. Three ingredients. Salt. Pepper. Chicken. High heat. Smokes out our house, but the result is stellar. I served this with some mashed potatoes and zucchini pancakes. I even whipped up some gravy because I couldn’t bear the thought of those lovely pan drippings being for naught.
(This was last week’s chicken with some killer green beans, but same idea this week.)
Sunday: Turkey vegetable soup. A few weeks ago, my mother in-law was in town, and I decided to put on a Thanksgiving spread since we wouldn’t get to see her for the holiday. Of course, the leftover turkey breast meat had to be repurposed. I made a massive pot of soup and froze some. Have I mentioned I like freezing???
Monday: Chicken and cheese enchiladas. This recipe will be blogged as soon as my happy fingers can trot out my adaptation to this recipe. (Spoiler alert: I add chicken and make it in two pans so I can freeze one. Dinner for three times two!)
Tuesday: I’m having dinner plans, so J gets to thaw some homemade chili and finish off the beer bread. Beebs LOVES chili, so she’ll have that too.
Wednesday: Meatloaf and roasted brussels sprouts. (I made this recipe two weeks ago and froze one.)
Thursday: Pasta. I made my own sauce today using Mark Bittman’s recipe as a base (I LOVE his How to Cook Everything cookbook. It’s really my cooking bible.)
Then we will rinse and repeat and go again for next week.
For lunch, I mixed some quinoa with baby kale, some more of the leftover roast chicken, walnuts, dried cranberries, and feta cheese along with some balsamic vinaigrette. It’s what we do probably once a month (in between boring sandwiches), but it’s healthy and filling, and that’s the name of the game.
P.S. Obviously, if you want more timely updates of what I’m making, follow me on instagram at @allegedlish!
Oh hey, it’s Friday. Know what that means? Time for me to take a break from work and figure out what we are going to do for eating next week. As you may recall, Saturday is our busy day, so I like to be all set to go on Friday. Once I’ve grocery-shopped, then I like to do prep work on Saturday and Sunday (or a little on each day). This is also the time I play around with new recipes and tinker with a few of my own. (THAT PART IS SO DIFFICULT.)
When I’m faced with yet another week of meal-planning, I focus on healthy (meaning vegetables every night), things with leftovers (two dinners for the price of one, yo), easy dinner ideas I can throw together in less than 20 minutes, and crockpot meals without all the processed crap. I mean, I LOVE Velveeta (and I will not be ashamed for it), and I can get behind some cream of mushroom soup in my Swedish meatballs, but those have to be rare. So basically, easy, fast, and healthy are my goals which keeps me plenty busy. Find me a recipe that I can freeze half for the future, and I might be in heaven. Seriously.
AND NOW, our third family member has embraced the solid foods and so we must plan for her. She can eat almost everything we do, so that makes life easier, but I do try to incorporate variety in her diet. We did some purees for her, but pretty much embraced the baby led weaning movement, so her diet (in addition to all the breast milk she can handle), includes anything we can chunk up and make into manageable pieces.
So, in light of the fact that I spend a fair amount of time planning our life, I’d love to share that with you.
So here is what my family will be eating next week!
Saturday: Crockpot beef stew and beer bread. (I’m working on a new take on the beer bread, hopefully it’s good.)
Sunday: Roast chicken. (Easy and we can get several meals out of this). Some sort of veggie to accompay.
Monday: Salmon and a veggie. (I buy whatever is seasonal veggies, and am constantly looking for ways to cook my salmon so I don’t hate it.)
Tuesday: Tacos. I use leftover roast chicken meat, char the tortillas, make some black beans and BOOM. Taco Tuesday.
Wednesday: Pasta with salad. (I make my own ragu sauce, based on a Mark Bittman recipe. Good for freezing too!)
Thursday: Leftover beef stew. (Did I mention I love leftovers??)
Friday: Taco salad. (Don’t judge me for eating taco-based meals twice in a week. We’re really a simple family.)
And for lunch? I’m gonna whip up a batch of chicken salad and stuff it into pitas. I will probably make a cucumber and tomato salad for the side because vegetables, always.
Allegedly Delicious 