Meal plan: week of January 14, 2019 (what?!)
When you’ve had a fully delightful grandparental invasion that lasts for an entire joy-filled month, let me just tell you that the letdown when everybody goes is real and dire. The kids are all, “YOU AGAIN, MAMA?!? Where are my constant sources of entertainment and joy?!?” I’m all, “YOU AGAIN, CHILDREN?!? Where is my backup, how do I run this place ON MY OWN?!?” My partner is all, “I’M GOING TO WORK.” [Just kidding, he’s awesome, I don’t run this place on my own, but you know what I mean.]
Good times all around.
Turns out cooking for two littles and two bigs is much less exciting than cooking for grateful and admiring grandparents, and even less exciting than eating the beautiful dinners that my mother-in-law made for us. Getting back into the swing of our usual family dinners has been a bit of a drag. I’m over our usual standard fare; if I willingly eat another of my black bean burritos in the first quarter of 2019 I’ll be shocked.
I have a few goals for 2019: I mentioned yesterday that I’m avoiding purchasing anything in those single use wrappers. Last year I very generally tried to avoid purchasing any foodstuffs made with gluten – not because I was trying to avoid gluten but because I wanted to make anything that involved gluten. This year I’m going to target that a bit more and avoid buying bread (duh) but also pasta. I have a freezer full of homemade pasta that my MIL – a true wonder in the kitchen – left for us, and I’m determined to keep that going. We’ll see; Friday night #backpocketpasta means we go through a lot of the stuff, but it is also true that fresh pasta is basically a different food than the packaged stuff.
How’s your culinary 2019 kicking off?
Monday. We got a bunch of potatoes in our box last week, and more scheduled to arrive today, so I’m going to make baked potatoes and pile chili on top. The hitch is I don’t actually have a vegetarian chili recipe to lean on. I’d like to do it in Potsy, using dried beans, but will need to cobble something together. If you have any recipes for me, please! Share!
Tuesday. I’ll make a vegetarian quiche tonight, probably using whatever vegetable dregs I can dig out of the produce drawer. I use the formula from Mollie Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest, usually with yogurt. And I make a delicious no-roll sourdough crust to hold it.
Wednesday. This day is sort of my nemesis as of late, as we get home super late from climbing class and I have all of about 30 minutes to get dinner on the table. So tonight I’m going to repurpose the leftover chili from Monday and make a Dutch baby topped with chili. I’m generally pretty bad at thinking across days like that, which is goofy since I meal plan every (ok, most) weeks. Another resolution for 2019!
Thursday. Smitten Kitchen has a recipe for sushi takeout cobb salad in her Smitten Kitchen Every Day book. All the ingredients seem like things my family likes, so I’m going to make it, but serve it over rice.
Friday. Back Pocket Pasta day, and I’m going to try Colu Henry’s butter basil pesto because I love simple pesto and this one sounds especially lush. Especially over thin linguini freshly made a couple of weeks ago!
What are you cooking this week and do you have a vegetarian chili recipe to share with me?