A couple of lovely readers reminded me, via facebook, about Chicken & Rice. Quick, easy, kid-friendly, it’s a no-brainer.
I’d planned to make chicken and Japanese salad turnips tonight, but didn’t have any particular recipe in mind. Their reminder inspired me to replicate this meal exactly (except for the tofu). Thanks for the inspiration ladies!
(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.
Tonight 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.
I don’t usually get away with a dinner quite so simple and minimal as this, but we had a big lunch.
About an hour into our trip home from Boston, I realized I needed lunch. Not a snack, not a handful of nuts and some dried apricots, but a proper lunch. Ah pregnancy.
Shane remembered that he had read about a good barbecue place near Sturbridge Mass, and so we went there. The lunch at BT smokehouse was great, and left us almost not-hungry for dinner.
At least, not-hungry enough that I could serve pasta with butter, olive oil and cheese, and a salad, without a whole bunch of sad faces from Rose and Shane.
Tonight was simple turkey burgers (for them), and roasted eggplant, cherry tomato and fresh goat cheese over greens. I loved the salad, but was a bit full from eating half a jar of pickles before dinner (that’s right), and couldn’t enjoy it like I should have.
We’ve been working on giving Rose a bit more responsibility, now that she’s going to be a sibling. We have some catching up to do, after having her do pretty much no work at all, when we thought she was going to be an only child forever.
She’s been setting and clearing the table, and does a decent job (see below). What should we task her with next? Laundry? Moving the car?
I didn’t post yesterday because dinner was a very late, incredibly glum, takeout meal. Our cat Buttercup was at the Animal Medical Center again, for a suspected intestinal blockage.
She was exhibiting all of the same symptoms as the last time she ate something she shouldn’t have. Emergency surgery wasn’t a feasible option this time around, and it was with heavy hearts that we delivered her to the capable and kind folks at the AMC, for the second time this year.
I woke up this morning feeling dismal and heartbroken. And then my friend Britta reminded me about the power of positive thinking.
As I was meditating on how I would like things to turn out, I got a call from the vet. Buttercup was going to be fine! She had some kind of bad GI upset but they couldn’t find an intestinal blockage.
Our trip back to the AMC was a joyful one. I embarrassed Rose with my tears as they gave little Butters back to us.
The icing on the cake was when her treatment cost fell within the limits of her kitty cat insurance policy, with money to spare for follow-ups.
Upon arrival home Rose made both cats a nice dish of cat treats garnished with catnip. And I made Shrimp Scampi Over Grilled Bread.
Bullet dodged. Happy family. Go positive thinking!
When Rose saw that we were having DIY burritos tonight she said “Oh good, free night. I love free night.” So that’s what we’ll call it from now on.
The fixins were black beans, grated cheese, shredded iceberg, guacamole, yellow tomato salsa, and sour cream with a sprinkle of sugar and a dash of lime to make it more dribbly. Yay for free night.
Rose requested Penne alla Vodka for her night-before-back-to-school dinner. How could I say no?
You might recall that I’ve posted about Faux Penne alla Vodka a lot (here, here and here, for a start). For a night as special as this, I decided to make the real deal. After all, you only start first grade once (if all goes well).
Real Penne alla Vodka is super-quick and easy. I rely on the faux version for times when I only have 10-15 minutes to get dinner on the table, instead of 30. The real deal is totally worth the extra 15-20 minutes, if you have it to spare. All you need is a simple salad to complete the meal.
• Penne alla Vodka •
from Lidia Bastianich
Salt
One 35-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano) with their liquid*
1 pound penne
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
10 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
Crushed hot red pepper
1/4 cup vodka
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil for finishing the sauce, if you like (we like to finish it with butter)
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley (optional**)
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for passing if you like
Bring 6 quarts of salted water to a boil in an 8-quart pot over high heat.
Pour the tomatoes and their liquid into the work bowl of a food processor (if using whole instead of crushed, see note below). Using quick on/off pulses, process the tomatoes just until they are finely chopped. (Longer processing will aerate the tomatoes, turning them pink.)
Stir the penne into the boiling water. Bring the water back to a boil, stirring frequently. Cook the pasta, semi-covered, stirring occasionally, until done, 8 to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Whack the garlic cloves with the side of a knife and add them to the hot oil. Cook, shaking the skillet, until the garlic is lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Lower the work bowl with the tomatoes close to the skillet and carefully — they will splatter — slide the tomatoes into the pan. Bring to a boil, season lightly with salt and generously with crushed red pepper, and boil 2 minutes. Pour in the vodka, lower the heat so the sauce is at a lively simmer, and simmer until the pasta is ready.
Just before the pasta is done, fish the garlic cloves out of the sauce and pour in the cream. Add the 2 tablespoons butter or oil, if using, and swirl the skillet to incorporate into the sauce. If the skillet is large enough to accommodate the sauce and pasta, fish the pasta out of the boiling water with a large wire skimmer and drop it directly into the sauce in the skillet. If not, drain the pasta, return it to the pot, and pour in the sauce. Bring the sauce and pasta to a boil, stirring to coat the pasta with sauce. Check the seasoning, adding salt and red pepper if necessary. Sprinkle the parsley over the pasta (if using, see note below) and boil until the sauce is reduced enough to cling to the pasta.
Remove the pot from the heat, sprinkle 3/4 cup of the cheese over the pasta, and toss to mix. Alternatively, you can leave the cheese out and serve it on the side, at the table. Serve immediately, passing additional cheese if you like.
* The type of San Marzano tomatoes I like comes in a 28oz. This works just fine. You can simplify this recipe further by buying the crushed tomatoes, which eliminates the need for the food processor.
** I sometimes serve the parsley on the side. Mixing it in would be a deal-breaker for my kid.
Pasta e Fagioli is quick, easy and oh-so delicious. Perfect for when you need a make-ahead dinner, a prep-ahead dinner, or just something fast.
We had ours with a salad of CSA greens and yellow tomatoes, capers & dijon vinaigrette. We (meaning I) devoured the salad so quickly, that there was no time for a picture.
We dillied and dallied this evening. Big time. It was nearly 8:00 by the time anyone even thought about dinner.
To get a meal on the table as quickly as possible, I made just one incredibly delicious thing: Pasta with Tomato Ginger Salsa & Creme Fraiche. It may not look like much but it sure is satisfying and plate-licking good. It’s an all-time favorite of mine. You really should try it next time you’re in a pinch, or right now.
And because my daughter has been so good and helpful lately, here is the photo she requested I post:
