meal plans

Weekly meal plan: Day 3

By in meal plans, quick 2 Comments

Burritos_IMG_9405(above left to right: Rose and her burrito, my burrito, Shane’s burrito – oops! too late!)

Well, we made it through another crazy gymnastics night. Same deal, home at 7:55, shower, family dinner, Rose in bed by 8:30. Hooray!

My friend Rachel and I have been talking a lot (okay, nonstop) about dinner ideas for these Mondays and Wednesdays when Rose has class until 7:30. The way the conversation goes, is that Rachel gives me really great suggestions, and I tell her why they won’t work.

Here are some of the challenges we are facing on Mondays and Wednesdays:
1. Dinner needs to be a meal that I can heat up and have on the table in 5-10 minutes (without owning a microwave or crock pot).
2. Ideally, whatever I make should be able to feed all three of us. It needs to be either vegetarian, pescetarian, or not take much effort to make both a veg and a meat version.
3. The meal needs to be something I’m pretty sure Rose will like. After 3 hours of gymnastics, I feel like I shouldn’t really do the tough-love thing if she doesn’t like what we’re having.

Tonight’s dinner was a roaring success. DIY burritos are a perfect prep-ahead meal. There’s no recipe per se, it’s really a use what you’ve got kind of situation. Click here and here for more inspiration.

At lunch time today, I made beans from this recipe, but using pinto beans instead of black, and scallions instead of leek. I also made a quick batch of guacamole (recipe below), grated the cheese, washed some salad greens, took the tortillas out of the fridge and put leftover rice in a pot on the stove. I made sure we had salsa and sour cream on hand, and set the table.

When we got home, all I had to do was warm the rice and the beans, put everything on the table, and smile when Rose said “Yay! free night!” before overstuffing and devouring her burrito.

So far this week we’ve had:

Monday (Make Ahead: 1 hour to prep, 5 minutes to reheat):
Spicy (or not-Spicy) Vegetarian (and Turkey) Chili and nothing else! This is a one-dish meal, baby.

Tuesday (Quick: 30-45 min start to finish, if you have leftover rice on hand):
Weekday Grilled Chicken, Brown Rice Fritters (make Rice Pancakes next time, instead), a simple salad.

Wednesday (Make Ahead: 30-40 min to prep, 5 minutes to reheat):
DIY Burritos: Quick & Easy Beans, whole wheat tortillas, leftover rice, salad greens, guacamole (recipe below), grated cheddar, sour cream, store-bought salsa.

• Quick and Easy Guacamole •
inspired by Ronni

1 ripe avocado
the juice of 1/2 to 1 lime
3 tablespoons chopped green chiles from a can
1/4 teaspoon salt plus more to taste
chopped, fresh cilantro

Peel and pit the avocado, setting the pit aside. Mash avocado with juice of 1/2 a lime, chiles and salt. Taste for seasoning, add more salt and lime if you like. Stir in as much cilantro as you like (I use about 1 tablespoon chopped). Put guacamole in a bowl and poke the pit into the center of it. Cover until ready to serve. The pit will keep the guacamole from browning for several hours.

Weekly meal plan: day 2

By in failures, meal plans, quick

Chicken_Salad_RiceFrittters_IMG_9400Tonight was a relatively easy night. We had Brown Rice Fritters, Weekday Grilled Chicken and a CSA salad of arugula and red peppers with mustard vinaigrette.

The rice fritters were disappointing. I’d had the recipe on  my Pinterest Recipes to Try board for a long time and was so excited to finally make it. I thought it would be fun to make the rice patties with Rose, but that was disappointing too.

I probably should have read the reviews before getting excited about this one. But I’m a visual person, I like to look at the pictures and think later.

The rice, egg and cheese mixture for the fritters was very dry and crumbly, it was a major challenge for Rose and I to form the patties. Frying them was difficult too, half of them fell apart and had to be discarded.

To top it all off, they didn’t even taste that good. They were okay, edible, but certainly nothing to email my dad about.

In case you’re keeping track. Here’s how the weekly meal plan is going so far:

Monday (Make Ahead: 1 hour to prep, 5 minutes to reheat):
Spicy (or not-Spicy) Vegetarian (and Turkey) Chili and nothing else! This is a one-dish meal, baby.

Tuesday (Quick: 30-45 min start to finish, if you have leftover rice on hand):
Weekday Grilled Chicken, Brown Rice Fritters (make Rice Pancakes next time, instead), a simple salad.

More tomorrow, as always.

We did it!

By in meal plans 4 Comments

Veggie_Turkey_Chili_IMG_9396Well, we did it. We survived our first night of pre-team gymnastics without forsaking the family meal. Somehow we managed a sit-down dinner, and also got Rose showered and in bed by 8:30. And we did it all in 35 minutes flat!

Here’s how, in 15 easy steps:
1. Lose several night’s worth of sleep over how you’re going to manage dinner with your family’s challenging new schedule.
2. Plan a menu for the week. Order all of the necessary ingredients for delivery on Sunday night.
3. Change your mind on Monday morning, and go out to the store, for all of the ingredients you’re actually going to need.
4. Call your oldest friend in the world to discuss ground turkey, because it would be waaay too easy to just follow a damn recipe.
5. Spend all of Monday morning making Monday night’s dinner, when you should really be working (because you’re a freelancer and get paid by the hour to work, not to make dinner).
6. Prep condiments and have them ready to go.
7. Set table.
8. Leave completed meal on the stove top, ready to reheat the moment you walk in the door in the evening.
9. Spend 3 hours at your daughter’s gym, catching up on the work you didn’t do earlier because you were making dinner (good thing you’re a freelancer and can work from a gym).
10. Sneak a peek (or twenty) at your happy kid, after all, she’s the reason you’re making yourself crazy trying to learn how to be a planner-aheader.
11. Drive home with your now exhausted kid, meet husband at front door, hand him the car keys and head upstairs while he looks for a parking space.
12. Pop chalk-covered gymnast in the shower and turn on stove to warm dinner.
13. Remove tiny gymnast from shower, put her in her pajamas (because she’s too tired to do it herself) and start plating dinner.
14. If the stars are aligned, your husband will walk in just as you’re setting the last dish down on the table.
15. Enjoy dinner with your family! You earned it.

• Spicy (or not-Spicy) Vegetarian (and Turkey) Chili •
modified from this recipe from Joy the Baker

For the Vegetarian Version:
3 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 jalapeno, diced (optional – skip if you don’t want it spicy)
1 cup corn kernels, frozen
3 small cloves of garlic, diced
3 heaping tablespoons steak seasoning* 
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 cup vegetable stock (or 1 cup water mixed with 1 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon)
1/3 cup barbecue sauce (I used Jack Daniels No. 7)
1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed
1 15-ounce can kidney beans, rinsed
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, rinsed
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup vegetable stock (or 1 cup water mixed with 1 teaspoon Better Than Bouillon)
1 cup water

For the Turkey Version, you will also need:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1lb ground turkey

For topping:
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and cubed
chopped, fresh cilantro
grated cheddar cheese

* I used this kind of steak seasoning, which is very salty. I recommend you start with 1 tablespoon and once the whole pot of chili is simmering, taste and then add more steak seasoning if you want more spice and/or salt.

In a large pan over medium flame, heat olive oil.  Add onion and saute until translucent.  Add the bell peppers and zucchini and cook for four or five minutes, until they begin to soften.  Add garlic, jalapeno, corn and all of the spices into the cooking vegetables. Cook for two minutes.

Adding one cup of broth to the hot pan and scrape the bits off the bottom of the pan.  Then, add the barbecue sauce, beans, diced tomatoes, vegetable stock and water.  Bring to a low boil and cook for about 20 minutes.  

While the chili is cooking, in another medium to large saucepan, melt the butter and olive oil. Add the ground turkey and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently and breaking apart until cooked through.

When the chili is done, add half of it (about 5 cups) to the turkey meat. The remaining half of the chili will be your vegetarian version. Season the turkey version with additional salt and pepper if needed.

When ready to eat, reheat chili and serve topped with grated cheddar, avocado pieces and chopped, fresh cilantro.

 

A dinner conundrum

By in family, meal plans 1 Comment

Dinner_Conundrum_IMG_9342I don’t usually do a mid-day, non-what-we-had-for-dinner post, but I think this situation warrants it. We have a dinner conundrum.

As you might know, Rose is quite passionate about gymnastics. This week, she was invited to move to a more rigorous training schedule. It’s wonderful news because she’s really been wanting a promotion, and she works so hard, and is so in love with the sport. But it totally messes with things, dinner-wise.

Twice a week she’ll be finishing gymnastics at 7:30pm (we’re angling to change it to 7:00, but still). After which we’ll have to drive home, find parking (at a more challenging time than the previous 6:00pm), have dinner, shower, pajamas, teeth, read(?), and get Rose in bed. All of this needs to be completed by 8:30pm.

Oh shit.

I was already worried about how the new addition would impact our family dinners, but this is a whole new can of challenge. Also, Shane has physical therapy until 7:15pm, three times per week, for the foreseeable future. Having him get dinner ready isn’t an option either.

What we really need is staff. We can’t afford staff, so I guess the next best thing would be a plan. A good plan.

I am not, in general, a planner-aheader but that might need to change. What I’ve decided to try is creating a weekly dinner menu, ahead of time. Next week is our first week on the new schedule.

So far I have this:
Monday – Make-ahead meal & CSA veggies
Tuesday – Chicken & CSA veggies
Wednesday – Coffee shop – call ahead so we don’t have to wait?
Thursday – Something (new?) that can be prepped ahead of time (CSA pickup night) & CSA veggies
Friday – Steak & CSA veggies

I hope you’ll check back to see how it all pans out. I figure if we can make this work, we can handle having another kid around. Hopefully.

As always, suggestions are welcome!
Steady_Gymnast_IMG_0344

A Steady Table twofer

By in cape meals, meal plans 1 Comment

Tonight we present a Steady Table twofer (that’s a two-for-one, in case you didn’t know). There are two reasons for the twofer. One is that the cooking of tonight’s meal occurred over the course of two days. The other is that a certain silly pregnant person overexerted herself, spent some time in the ER* and is now playing catch up.

On Monday, we wanted to do something relatively simple for 16 people. Despite the volume of food, and the manpower it takes to make a meal for 16, it really was an easy meal.

Dinner prep wasn’t made any easier by the fact that Shane and Sean were preparing four (!) racks of ribs for Tuesday’s meal, at the same time they were preparing Monday’s meal. But they pulled it off, with help from everyone.

Menu:
A simple summer dinner for 16
4 lbs of ground beef made into burgers, and/or cheeseburgers, and cooked on the grill
16 ears of corn, boiled and served with butter and salt
16 potatoes, oiled and wrapped in foil, and cooked over the coals
A simple cucumber and tomato salad dressed with red wine vinegar, salt and olive oil
3 bags of cubanelle peppers oiled, salted, and roasted in the oven until soft and silky
A green salad
Ketchup, mustard, mayo, butter, sour cream, pickles and any other condiments you might like
Drinks
Ice cream novelties for dessert

Tonight was a bit disrupted by my pregnancy crisis, so I can’t tell you much about meal prep except that Shane made the best ribs he’s made so far, in his Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker. He had a lot of help from Sean and, well, everyone else.

There was also homemade barbeque sauce, succotash from scratch, and a selection of delicious pizzas—including fig and gorgonzola—by Drew. For dessert, 13-year old Alicia made a very delicious peach and rum cobbler.

Thanks to everyone who took care of me and everything this evening. Especially my sister in law Trish, who spent 5 hours of her vacation keeping me company at the hospital.

*The ER on Cape Cod can run circles around any of the stinky, dirty, creepy, ERs in NYC, by the way. And no worries, everything is fine with the baby, I just need to take it easy from now on.

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