Family Meal Plan #18
Two weeks of family dinner menus in this one, plus some school day meal prep, and a bonus ice cream recipe.
Two weeks of meal plans, plus some update on school day meal prep, and a bonus ice cream recipe.
First week menu:
Sunday: burgers
Monday: budget paella
Tuesday: carnitas taco bar
Wednesday: oven fried chicken, potato salad, kale salad
Thursday: takeout Chinese
Friday: frozen pizza
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: carbonara
School day breakfast and lunch prep:
Smoothie packs: bags of of frozen fruit & greens, just the right amount to dump in a bullet blender and combine with a yogurt and a juice for two servings of smoothie.
Egg bites: I’ll share my recipe for these soon, but you can google plenty if you want.
Burritos: When I make Mexican rice and black beans I always make extra and then I can make up a stack of bean burritos. They freeze great so the kids can just take one out of the freezer to defrost before School.
Tuna salad: Easy to make quick sandwiches for a few days if the tuna is already made.
Boiled eggs: Great for snacks or quick egg salad.
Rice crispy treats: A first week of school treat!
Second week meal plan:
Monday: baked potato bar
Tuesday: chicken taco bar
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: egg roll in a bowl stir fry
Friday: homemade pizza
Saturday: Mac & cheese & nuggets
Sunday: roasted salmon and veggie fried rice, and homemade ice cream
More detail about the meals:
Paella:
I called this budget paella because I kinda did it on the cheap and took some shortcuts. I asked for ideas on Threads about meals to feed a crowd and someone suggested they made paella with packaged yellow rice. Well I had just happened to buy some so I thought I would try it. It was super easy and turned out great. I made the yellow rice per the package, with some chicken broth and diced veggies, and I added pieces of Costco rotisserie chicken and cut up polish sausage. I kept it not spicy because I was feeding kids, and served it with a bottle of hot sauce on the side.
Carnitas taco bar:
This is my favorite thing to make for a crowd. It’s so easy to make and everyone always loves it. To make carnitas I use pork butt or shoulder. I usually by the whole big ones, but lately I have been getting what is called country style pork ribs, which aren’t actually ribs but are just thick cut strips of the pork butt. It's nice because it just shortens a step and the pieces cook faster. I season the pork well with cumin, chili powder, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper. Sometimes I throw in a cut up onion and a cut up orange, and then I cook until the pork is falling apart. Low and slow in the oven is my favorite way, 300 for 5-6 hours. I keep it covered for most of the time and then uncovered for about the last hour to let the juices concentrate. If you like some little crispy bits you can turn up the heat for the last little bit. Shred it up with tongs and serve with all your favorite taco fixings.
Oven fried chicken, potato salad, kale salad:
I had actually intended to actually fry this chicken, but I got lazy at the last minute and stuck it in the oven instead. I did you classic buttermilk overnight marinade, which makes it so tender and juicy. You can find plenty of recipes for this online, but I just did buttermilk with a little salt and pepper, and then I made a mixture of flour, seasoned bread crumbs, salt to coat the chicken pieces in. On the side was my classic potato salad for which no recipe exists but maybe someday I’ll write it. The secret is the juice from a jar of dill pickles. I mixed that with mayo, chopped up boiled egg, chopped celery, some dill, salt, pepper, and a little celery salt. I cannot abide sweet potato salad, it must be tangy and salty. I also strongly recommend you cook the potatoes in very salty water, it adds so much flavor. Some famous chef said salt should be IN the food, not just ON the food and I totally agree.
Carbonara:
I think I’ve written about this before, so just a quick recap. I use my one pot pasta method for this, and add about a half cup extra water because the carbonara sauce is made with starchy pasta water. Cook the bacon ahead of time, leave a little bacon grease in the pan, and add the pasta and water. When the pasta is mostly done I take out a half a cup or so of that starchy water and whisk it with several eggs and a generous handful of shredded parmesan or Romano, some salt and pepper. Turn off the burner and then pour that “sauce” back into the hot pasta, along with chopped bacon, and toss it around with tongs to cook the eggs and coat the pasta. Top with a little more cheese and fresh ground pepper. Some people add cream to this, but I don’t think it’s strictly necessary.
Baked potato bar:
There are plenty of ways to cook baked potatoes, but I’ll keep coming back to the old school oven method. Perfect potatoes that are creamy on the inside with flavorful and slightly crisped skin. I wash the potatoes, dry them, poke with a fork, rub all over with olive oil and then generously season with kosher salt. Baked on a parchment lined baking sheet for one hour. I do 350 for small/medium potatoes and 375 if I get the really big ones. I try to get all the potatoes about the same size so the cooking time is the same for all. I serve these with a variety of toppings to suit everyone’s taste. I made extra bacon the night before to have on the potatoes, and I had some extra polish sausage to use. My husband and I like cheesy broccoli on ours, I used to buy frozen broccoli in cheese sauce, but really it’s just as easy to microwave plain broccoli and then stir in a little American cheese to melt and become the cheese sauce.
Chicken taco bar:
Easiest dinner ever - frozen pieces of chicken and a can of enchilada sauce. This time was boneless thighs and red enchilada sauce, but I do it with all kinds. You can do this in the instant pot, in a pot on the stove, slow cooker, or in the oven. Just cook until the chicken is falling apart.
Egg roll in a bowl:
Another one that’s always a hit and so easy. You can google recipes, but I don’t use one. It’s a great way to make an asian rice bowl type meal when you have ground meat you want to use. I use the food processor to chop up whatever veggies I’ve got - this one had broccoli, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, onions. Saute it all together in sesame oil and season generously with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, white pepper, sometimes a little fish sauce and lime juice is nice.
Roasted salmon:
People do too much to salmon, in my opinion. I don’t need elaborate recipes or lots of seasoning. I want to taste the salmon. I season with just salt. I pretty much always cook whole filets. I like to start with the fish at room temp, it cooks more evenly. Take it out of the fridge about an hour before you want to cook, put in on a baking sheet on a piece of foil or parchment, and season generously with salt. To cook in the oven I do it very hot, like 500 degrees or as hot as your oven will go. This gets you as close to grilling as you can get in the oven. Put the pan in the upper third of the oven, for about 7 minutes for a thinner piece and maybe 9-10 minutes if it’s very thick.
Ice cream:
We really should be making more homemade ice cream. It actually is quite easy. And ice cream maker is one of the few single use gadgets I keep in my kitchen. I’ve kinda perfected my recipe over the years and my technique is a bit unconventional. I make a custard style ice cream but I’ve figure out how to not fuss with having to temper the eggs yolks. I make this base and usually divide it into three containers for three flavors.
Lisa’s Easy Custard Ice Cream Base
Ingredients:
4 cups of heavy cream
2 cups whole milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 large egg yolks
Instructions:
My technique is a little different but I think it’s much easier than having to add hot liquid a tiny bit at a time to temper the eggs.
Combine milk, sugar, and salt in a pot and heat over low heat just enough to get the sugar and salt fully dissolved.
Turn off the heat and stir in your cold cream.
Add the egg yolks directly to this mixture and whisk well to combine.
Turn the burner back on to medium/low and whisk / stir constantly as this heats up and begins to thicken, to about 175 degrees.
Turn off heat and continue to stir for a few minutes as it starts to cool.
Transfer to containers and let cool completely in the fridge before freezing in your ice cream maker.
Now you have your cooked ice cream custard base that you can add flavors to. Of course you need an ice cream maker. I have had mine for 20 years and it’s still going strong, here is the current model of the one I have.
Until next week!
Phew, I think that’s all for this time. Lots of pictures!
Family Meal Plan #17
Simple meal plan for the week.
A quick post with a simple family menu for the week.
On the menu this week:
Sunday: pasta with bolognese sauce, salad with berries & lemon vinaigrette
Monday: chicken & thai basil stir fry, coconut rice, crispy salt and pepper tofu
Tuesday: fish tacos
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: lasagna with béchamel and leftover bolognese
Friday: pizza
Saturday: salmon
Ask Lisa: #02
This week's reader question is about how to manage family meal planning with a picky eater.
Real answers to your questions, from one busy mom to another.
This week’s question:
Q: How do I plan family meals when one of my kids is such a picky eater?
A: I see this question so much in social media and parenting groups.
It can be really hard to manage family meal planning when some of you like a wide variety of foods and some of you have a very limited list of what feels safe to eat, but I have figured out several ways to navigate this that work for my diverse family.
Here are my top suggestions:
1) Make deconstructed meals.
Plan to make the foods you like to eat and cook, but figure out how to deconstruct the components of that meal and serve it as a make-your-own bar style of dinner.
The easiest example of this is instead of a loaded one pot pasta with the noodles and sauce and meatballs and veggies all mixed together and topped with cheese, serve all of those components separate. If someone just wants pasta with cheese, they can do that. If someone wants just meatballs and sauce and veggies but no pasta they can do that. But if the meal you wanted was all of it together, then you still get to have that.
Everyone is happy.
Other ideas for this type of meal include taco bar, baked potato bar, ramen soup bar, rice bowl bar. Make a list of all the meals you like and see how many you can figure out how to separate into a deconstructed bar. You’ll probably be surprised at how many you come up with.
Cooking this way is also awesome for meal prep, because if you’ve made extra of the separate components each night, then you can easily combine those things in new ways for probably several more different meals. You can even incorporate this strategy into your meal planning, so that you are planning ahead to cook extra of some basic components.
2) Have an available safe food for the picky eater.
I always try to make sure there is something available for the meal that my pickiest eater will eat.
If I really wanted to make that one pot pasta or a loaded casserole or spicy gumbo, then I will always have something available that is separate. This brings us back to my tip above about making extra.
Did you know that plain pasta and rice freeze really well?
Make extra when you’re cooking and freeze some in single serving portions. Then you can always pull out a bag of cooked pasta for that one kid who is going through their “nothing but buttered noodles” phase. I also recently discovered these pouches of single serving pre-cooked pasta and I always make sure I have some in my pantry. My picky eater makes this for herself often, just a minute in the microwave and a little butter and she has a dinner she is happy with.
3) Let them eat cereal.
There. I said it. Maybe an unpopular opinion? But I don’t care what your mother-in-law says, a bowl of Cheerios is not an unhealthy dinner. I don’t buy cereal that I’m not ok with my kids eating, so super sugared cereals aren’t an option here, but a healthier whole grain cereal is always an available meal choice.
Teach them how to slice a banana, or have some cut fruit or a container of blueberries available. Have them set their place and bring their cereal bowl and a pitcher of milk and their fruit to the dinner table and eat it with the rest of the family. They are getting a balanced meal, and they are still learning about healthy eating by seeing what you serve and what the family is eating. Nobody is feeling shamed for their food choices, and you’re not feeling guilty about them not getting a healthy meal.
I can almost guarantee you that eventually they will feel brave enough to try what the family is eating because you are leading by example and without pressure or shaming.
Have a Question?
Ask me anything. Do you need lunch packing advice or meal planning suggestions? Or do you have other food or family management related questions? My goal is to be your resource for tips and advice - from a mom who has been there, and done that.
Reply to this email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media, and your question could be featured in next week’s newsletter.
Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration.
➡️ Follow Me on Instagram | ➡️ Follow Me on Facebook | ➡️ Follow Me on Threads
Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!
– Lisa
Tip of the week #02
Double the recipe. Future you will be very happy to have an extra prepped meal in the freezer.
Tip of the Week:
This weeks tip seems like an obvious one at first, so let’s unpack this because there’s so much more to it than you might think.
Always Double The Recipe.
I know, doesn’t sound like much of a tip, right? But I’m a busy mom, and any time I can take a shortcut that saves me time in the kitchen, I’m definitely going to do it. Cooking extra is one of those shortcuts, and for me it is the foundation of a lot of good things.
First, I think leftovers are what makes the world go ‘round.
We often eat leftovers for breakfast and lunch, I love having healthy homemade foods in the fridge that my family just needs to heat up. Some of my kids prefer having warmed up leftovers for breakfast instead of more traditional breakfast foods. My husband works from home, and I’m still here homeschooling one kid, so it’s really nice to not have to make lunch every day. And we do a clean-out-the-fridge leftover night once a week. It gives me a night off from cooking.
Second, some of our favorite home cooked meals take a bit of mess and time to make.
But it’s not twice as messy or twice as time consuming to make twice as much. So double that recipe. Make enough meatballs for two dinners and stick half in the freezer. Prep an extra bag of marinated chicken. Make an extra meatloaf. Cut up extra meat for that sheet pan dinner. Freeze all these things and so many more.
Future you will be so happy to already have some prepped meals in the freezer during those weeks when the family schedule gets out of control, If you prep extra at the same time that you’re cooking that dinner then you can fill your freezer one meal at a time without having to spend a whole weekend afternoon on meal prep.
Third, making extra is one of my keys to lunch packing success.
When I say double the recipe, I’m not just talking about dinner. I’m talking about everything.
If you’ve browsed my lunches you’ll see that a lot of them are based on homemade items - I pack muffins, pancakes, pasta, meatballs, quesadillas, pizza, even cheeseburgers, and so much more. All of these things can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge or freezer.
Lunch packing is quick and easy if you have healthy homemade items ready to just grab and go. I even pack just straight up dinner leftovers directly into lunch containers instead of putting them away in bigger storage containers. I make several dozen muffins at a time, mountains of pancakes and waffles. I make extra sandwiches if I’m making them for lunch at home, also extra quesadillas.
Especially as kids get older, having a stack of pre-made sandwiches in the fridge is great. Now that I’ve got a mix of kids at school and at home, when I’m making a sandwich for my homeschooler I always make a few extra for my high schoolers for lunch the next day.
Fourth - Cooking extra of popular kids foods is really helpful if you have a picky eater. I talk more about this in my post about meal planning with a picky eater, so you’ll definitely want to click on over to read that post.
You will never regret having extra sandwiches in the fridge, especially if you have teenagers.
Have a Question?
Ask me anything. Do you need lunch packing advice or meal planning suggestions? Or do you have other food or family management related questions? My goal is to be your resource for tips and advice - from a mom who has been there, and done that.
Reply to this email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media, and your question could be featured in next week’s newsletter.
Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration.
➡️ Follow Me on Instagram | ➡️ Follow Me on Facebook | ➡️ Follow Me on Threads
Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!
– Lisa
Family Meal Plan #16
Weekly thoughts and updates, plus our meal plan for the week.
One week family menu.
My meal plans are real - this is what my family is actually eating every week.
Here’s the menu for this week (plus a couple extra days):
Thursday: Chicken & vegetable stir fry, with crispy salt and pepper tofu
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Salmon, mixed green salad with strawberries
Sunday: Carnitas taco bar
Monday: Salmon patties (with leftover salmon)
Tuesday: Green enchiladas (with leftover carnitas)
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: pasta with pork & veggies
Friday: Pizza again
Extra: We also made beignets for a treat.
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A bit more about each meal:
I don’t always have this extra, but this week I’ve described each of these meals for you in a lot more detail. I hope you enjoy!
Thursday: stir fry and crispy tofu.
I don’t have a recipe for stir fry, you can find plenty on google or pinterest, but I think it’s one of those things that once you’ve made it a couple times you really don’t need a recipe. I cut up whatever meat I’m using into bit size pieces, and then I season that with a bit of salt and pepper, a little sesame oil, sometimes a little soy sauce, and then I add a couple spoons of corn starch to coat it - and here’s the real trick: baking soda. There’s chemistry here that I don’t bother to get into, but I think it changes the pH of the meat and tenderizes it. The amount I use depends on the type of meat. For chicken that’s already pretty tender, I use just a little, maybe a teaspoon. For beef or pork I will use a bit more. Mix it all well to coat and refrigerate for a few hours until ready to cook. Then I just brown all those bites of meat in batches in a little oil. Meanwhile I’ve chopped all my veggies, and the selection is a little different every time. This week I had onions, celery, carrots, cabbage, a little zucchini, some broccoli, and always plenty of garlic and ginger. After the meat is done I dump all the chopped veggies in the pan and saute them until they are starting to get tender. Then add the meat back in and a little something for sauce. Sometimes I just use a little bottle oyster or hoison or black bean sauce. This week I mixed about a cup of chicken broth with a little cornstarch, some soy sauce, white pepper, and a little oyster sauce and stirred that all in to coat everything. Easy and pretty fast. Although I always make a mess of the stove.
Crispy salt and pepper tofu is one of our current favorite things. It seems like no matter how much I make, it always gets devoured. I’ve written up my recipe and that will be posted soon.
Friday is pizza day.
Always and forever. My people expect pizza on friday. Sometimes it’s delivery, sometimes it’s frozen, but most of the time it’s homemade. I make a lot, usually 4 or 5 pizzas, because we love leftover pizza. We have a mix of preferences here so I usually make two thicker crust, and two or three thin crust. The thicker crust are usually cheese, or sometimes one will be half cheese and half with other toppings. Most of the time these days I am using my sourdough for the crust which is just done by feel and no recipe, but my basic yeast bread and pizza dough recipe can be found here. This is my tried and true basic recipe that never fails. The toppings are a bit different each time, there’s always some pepperoni and onion and tomatoes in the mix, and then it’s whatever else I have that I sounds edible on a pizza. My sauce is a simple one: crushed tomatoes, a little olive oil, salt, thyme, rosemary, garlic. I’ll post an actual recipe one of these days.
Saturday: salmon and salad
I’ve cooked salmon a million ways and I will always come back to my stance that simplest is best. I like to actually taste the fish. Lately my seasoning is just salt, nothing else. I usually get whole filets, season them well with salt, and then cook in a very hot oven (like 550 convection) for 5-10 minutes depending on how thick the fish is.
The salad is one I’m obsessed with this summer. Spring mix greens, blueberries, strawberries, pickled red onion, salted pistachios, bacon crumbles, and a lemon vinaigrette dressing.
I also made a simple white pasta for the kids. My one-pot pasta method, with some butter, cream, and salt. Never fails to please the kids, and I’ve found that even though they don’t like to admit it, most adults love this pasta too.
Sunday: carnitas
Tuesday is usually taco day at our house and my kids were a little stressed that I was serving tacos on a sunday. But our guest was leaving monday and I knew he wanted some mexican so I did it anyway.
Don’t leave me nasty comments about how any of this is not traditional, I never pretend to be Mexican or to make anything the traditional way. I cook what tastes good to me.
So anyway, my latest method for carnitas is to buy the pork country style ribs at costco. They’re not actually ribs - it’s just cut strips of the pork shoulder. I used to always buy the whole shoulder, but it’s a mountain of meat and I don’t always want that much. The ribs cut is usually the same cost per pound and it’s a more manageable quantity. I season these pretty simply - salt, pepper, cumin, a little chili powder, sometimes a bit of garlic and onion. Sometimes I cut up an onion to throw in there, sometimes I quarter an orange. I use all kinds of different cooking methods, but this time it was in a deep casserole dish, covered well with foil, and in the oven at 300 degrees for several hours, until the meat was falling apart. Then uncover and turn up the oven to about 375, use tongs to break up the meat, and cook another half hour or so to let the juices evaporate and the meat brown a bit.
We serve this with a selection of usual taco fixings - tortillas, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, lettuce, salsa, chips - as a taco bar and everyone makes their own. It’s one of my favorite meals to make for a crowd.
Monday: salmon patties
I know some will scoff at the idea of even having leftover fish, but I always buy a little extra salmon and cook more than we will eat that night because I want to make salmon patties. I keep them simple, the fish, a little diced onion, egg, breadcrumbs, a bit of garlic salt.
We had these with a kale & quinoa salad and the leftover pasta from the salmon dinner, reheated with a bit of cream.
Tuesday: enchiladas
Another meal made with the leftovers - the extra meat from the carnitas dinner, mixed with chopped onion and shredded jack cheese, and layered with green enchilada sauce, tortillas, and more jack cheese, cooked until browned and bubbling. This is a very easy meal to make if you have extra cooked meat of any kind. Sometimes I roll them into ‘real’ enchiladas, but sometimes I just layer it all like a casserole because it’s much faster and tastes just as good. Just go easy on the cheese. I know as Americans we love our cheese, and I love to drape everything in cheese just as much as the rest of you, but meat enchiladas really should be mostly about the meat and sauce and tortilla, with just a little cheese at each layer.
Wednesday is always leftover night here. We have scout meetings that night and need to eat fast and get going, so it’s nice to have lots of options we can easily heat up. I always make extra of everything so we have plenty.
Thursday: pasta with pork & veggies
This was an accidental dinner once that my family loved so much that it’s now become something that is regularly requested. It’s a great one to make when you need to clean the veggies out of your fridge and you don’t have a whole lot of other stuff. I brown some kind of ground meat, usually pork, or a pork sausage is best. This week I had a package of breakfast sausage so I used that. After the meat is browned I add a variety of chopped veggies. The first iteration of this had just onions and cabbage, and that is a really great combo with pork. These days I find it a fun challenge to see just how much veggies I can pack in here and have the kids still love it. This week I had onions, cabbage, zucchini, baby kale, mushrooms. I feel like there was more but I’m not remembering now. Get all the veggies sautéed until soft, sometimes I add a little butter, and then the real secret is canned soup. I don’t use a whole lot of this stuff but this is one occasion where I love it. It’s a quick way to make a yummy meal. My choice for this is Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic. It’s all about the roasted garlic flavor here, so try to find that one and always keep some in your pantry. I usually don’t add any salt until after I’ve added the soup, because the sausage + canned soup is often all the salt you need. After the sauce (aka, soup) is in, then it’s time for the pasta and there are two ways I do this. You can either just cook pasta separately (or it’s a great way to use up leftover pasta), or you can now do my one pot pasta method - just add it all right in the pan: one pound of pasta and four cups of water. It soaks up the flavor of the meat and veggies and soup as it cooks and it’s delicious and always a crowd pleaser.
That brings us back to friday and pizza again.
Extra treat: beignets
This is a fun one that we’ve made a few times now. My kids love the beignets that we get in New Orleans Square at Disneyland, so when we found the recipe in the Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook we definitely had to make them. While this isn’t a fast recipe to make, it isn’t hard. And it makes a lot. We made the mistake of doubling the recipe the first time and we ended up delivering beignets to all our neighbors because there was no way we could eat them all. Sometimes we even make them Mickey shaped using a Mickey cutter, sometimes we just cut them in squares. They all taste great no matter what. This dough also holds well in the fridge for a couple days, which I recommend because they really are best when they are fresh, so don’t cook more than you plan to eat while hot. We made the dough and cooked half on Thursday, and then cooked the second half on Sunday. Deep frying can be intimidating at first, but if you have a good thermometer that makes it easier. I don’t have a deep fryer, I just use a pot on the stove.
Notes from the kitchen table: no. 06
Welcome back to school season, a simple but super important cooking tip, help with meal planning for picky eaters, and more.
Hi there,
Everyone who is going back to school is back now, right?
This is when it gets crazy for a lot of us. I have three in school now, and one still homeschooling. We’ve started having a family meeting once a week just to review the calendar, because it has exploded. With school events, scout activities, social activities, our calendar is suddenly full, and we even make an effort to not sign up for a lot of stuff.
Do you do family meetings? I would love to hear about those, or other strategies that work for organizing your busy family.
Are you getting fall weather yet? Here in the Sierra foothills we are definitely still having summer, and still loving it. I love every season here, but it seems like whatever season we are in becomes my current favorite. I love the warm days and clear nights, the swimming pool weather, the garden at its peak.
My homeschooler and I are working on getting back into our homeschool schedule and we’ve started planning weekly field trips. Planning is so much easier with just one. Last week we visited the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento - it’s one of our favorite spots, so well done with so much interesting history.
Once nice thing about having three back in school is that I have time again finally to get back to this blogging thing, and I am really enjoying the process of bringing this old blog back to life for you. I’ve been working hard lately refreshing things, updating old posts, and getting some new content up there.
Ok, so what’s in this week’s issue:
First up this week is a simple tip that applies to both family dinner and lunch packing, plus my thoughts on a common a reader question about a challenge that so many parents face, a fun lunch idea, a few blog posts and social media highlights, and as always our weekly meal plans.
Make sure you don’t miss a weekly update - click here to subscribe to my substack and you’ll get these updates in your inbox. The archive of all my weekly updates and past meal plans will always be available on the blog as well.
Let’s dig in!
Tip of the Week:
This weeks tip is a short one at first, so let’s unpack this because there’s so much more to it.
Always Double The Recipe.
I know, doesn’t sound like much of a tip, right? But I’m a busy mom, and any time I can take a shortcut that saves me time in the kitchen, I’m definitely going to do it. Cooking extra is one of those shortcuts, and for me it is the foundation of a lot of good things.
First, I think leftovers are what makes the world go ‘round and what keeps the trains running on time. We often eat leftovers for breakfast and lunch, I love having healthy homemade foods in the fridge that my family just needs to heat up. Some of my kids prefer having warmed up leftovers for breakfast instead of more traditional breakfast foods. My husband works from home, and I’m still here homeschooling one kid, so it’s really nice to not have to make lunch every day. And we do a clean-out-the-fridge leftover night once a week. It gives me a night off from cooking.
Second, some of our favorite home cooked meals take a bit of mess and time to make. But it’s not twice as messy or twice as time consuming to make twice as much. So double that recipe. Make enough meatballs for two dinners and stick half in the freezer. Prep an extra bag of marinated chicken. Make an extra meatloaf. Cut up extra meat for that sheet pan dinner. Freeze all these things and so many more. Future you will be so happy to already have some prepped meals in the freezer during those weeks when the family schedule gets out of control, If you prep extra at the same time that you’re cooking that dinner then you can fill your freezer one meal at a time without having to spend a whole weekend afternoon on meal prep.
Third, making extra is one of my keys to lunch packing success. When I say double the recipe, I’m not just talking about dinner. I’m talking about everything. If you’ve browsed my lunches you’ll see that a lot of them are based on homemade items - I pack muffins, pancakes, pasta, meatballs, quesadillas, pizza, even cheeseburgers, and so much more. All of these things can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge or freezer. Lunch packing is quick and easy if you have healthy homemade items ready to just grab and go. I even pack just straight up dinner leftovers directly into lunch containers instead of putting them away in bigger storage containers. I make several dozen muffins at a time, mountains of pancakes and waffles. I make extra sandwiches if I’m making them for lunch at home, also extra quesadillas. Especially as kids get older, having a stack of pre-made sandwiches in the fridge is great. Now that I’ve got a mix of kids at school and at home, when I’m making a sandwich for my homeschooler I always make a few extra for my high schoolers for lunch the next day.
Fourth - Cooking extra of popular kids foods is really helpful if you have a picky eater. Keep reading below for more thoughts about that.
You will never regret having extra sandwiches in the fridge, especially if you have teenagers.
Featured Blog Posts:
Several posts I want to share with you this week!
In keeping with the leftovers and cooking extra theme above - here’s a popular post on my blog featuring a school lunch made of dinner leftovers. I show you in this post how easy it can be to pack a lunch while you’re cleaning up from dinner. Check it out ➡️ Easy Leftovers for Lunch
I promised last week that I would share my tips and ideas for after school snacks. I’ve got a long blog post with loads of snack ideas that I’ve just refreshed and updated for you. Check that one out here ➡️ Quick and Easy After School Snack Ideas
Last week in my social media highlights section I mentioned a thread where I asked for suggestions for meals using ground beef and got lots of great ideas. I compiled all those ideas into a blog post with links to loads of recipes. There are so many good ideas here, you’ll definitely want to bookmark this to refer to when you are meal planning. ➡️ Read the blog post
I also told you about the thread where I asked about favorite cookbooks - and I’ve got those books now all listed in one blog post and I also created an amazon list with all the books, so you can go right now and add them all to your wish list. ➡️ Read the post, or shop the Amazon List.
Reader Q&A:
Q: How do I plan family meals when one of my kids is such a picky eater?
A: I see this question so much in social media and parenting groups. It can be really hard to manage family meal planning when some of you like a wide variety of foods and some of you have a very limited list of what feels safe to eat, but I have figured out several ways to navigate this that work for my diverse family. Here are my top suggestions:
1) Make deconstructed meals.
Plan to make the foods you like to eat and cook, but figure out how to deconstruct the components of that meal and serve it as a make-your-own bar style of dinner. The easiest example of this is instead of a loaded one pot pasta with the noodles and sauce and meatballs and veggies all mixed together and topped with cheese, serve all of those components separate. If someone just wants pasta with cheese, they can do that. If someone wants just meatballs and sauce and veggies but no pasta they can do that. But if the meal you wanted was all of it together, then you still get to have that. Everybody is happy.
Other ideas for this type of meal include taco bar, baked potato bar, ramen soup bar, rice bowl bar. Make a list of all the meals you like and see how many you can figure out how to separate into a deconstructed bar. You’ll probably be surprised at how many you come up with.
Cooking this way is also awesome for meal prep, because if you’ve made extra of the separate components each night, then you can easily combine those things in new ways for probably several more different meals.
2) Have an available safe food for the picky eater.
I always try to make sure there is something available for the meal that my pickiest eater will eat.
If I really wanted to make that one pot pasta or a loaded casserole or spicy gumbo, then I will always have something available that is separate. This brings us back to my tip above about making extra. Did you know that plain pasta and rice freeze really well? Make extra when you’re cooking and freeze some in single serving portions. Then you can always pull out a bag of cooked pasta for that one kid who is going through their “nothing but buttered noodles” phase. I also recently discovered these pouches of single serving pre-cooked pasta and I always make sure I have some in my pantry. My picky eater makes this for herself often, just a minute in the microwave and a little butter and she has a dinner she is happy with.
3) A bowl of cheerios is not an unhealthy dinner.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, and I don’t care what your mother-in-law says, it’s ok to let them eat cereal for dinner sometimes. I don’t buy cereal that I’m not ok with my kids eating, so super sugared cereals aren’t an option here, but a healthier whole grain cereal is always an available meal choice.
Teach them how to slice a banana, or have some cut fruit or a container of blueberries available. Have them set their place and bring their cereal bowl and a pitcher of milk and their fruit to the dinner table and eat it with the rest of the family. They are getting a balanced meal, and they are still learning about healthy eating by seeing what you serve and what the family is eating, nobody is feeling shamed for their food choices, and you’re not feeling guilty about them not getting a healthy meal. I can almost guarantee you that eventually they will feel brave enough to try what the family is eating because you are leading by example and without pressure or shaming.
Lunchbox Inspiration:
Weekly lunch packing inspiration and ideas.
Here is a quick and easy lunchbox idea: Sandwiches don’t always have to be boring. A fun twist on a simple sandwich is to use mini bagels instead of bread. Kids love bagels. Making lunch fun and cute isn’t hard, really takes no extra time, but does make it much more likely that your kiddo is going to want to eat it.
I shared an example of this lunch on my Instagram today - check it out ➡️ Easy Bagel Lunch
I also wrote a quick blog post with this lunch - and even included a fun little video about how to make it and links to supplies I use to make it easy and fun.
Meal planning:
Updates on our weekly meal plans.
I’m doing Whole30 this month, which means I’m not having any grain or dairy or sugar or alcohol, and a few other things. But I still have a family to feed so I just have to get a little extra creative with my meal planning. If you’ve planned ahead it’s pretty easy to adapt your meals to work. My biggest meal planning tip for when you are trying to eat a little different from the family is the same as my first tip above - deconstructed meals. I’m planning meals for this month that are easy to take apart into components. So the family can still have spaghetti and meatballs, and I am very content with my bowl of spinach and meatballs.
Here’s an overview of what we had for dinner last week, and a peek at what is on my list for the coming week. I’ve included links to pictures and recipes where I have them.
Last week’s menu:
If you compare the actual to what I had planned from last week’s update, there are always some differences. But the beauty of meal planning is that you’ve already got some ideas figured out, so even if you need to rearrange or change things up, you aren’t starting from zero. Here’s what we actually ate last week:
Sunday: Salmon, pasta, green salad with berries & lemon vinaigrette.
Monday: Chicken with basil and garlic, zucchini patties, sliced tomatoes
Tuesday: Fish tacos (fish sticks for kids, leftover salmon for adults, I had mine as a salad)
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Baked pasta with cheese sauce, chicken, tomatoes & basil; Cobb salad
Friday: A frozen pizza for the boy, a salad for me (the others were camping)
Saturday: Leftovers for the boy, a salad for me
On the menu this week:
Here’s the menu this week. Check back next week for the actual list of what we ate, we’ll see how well I managed to stick to the plan.
Sunday: Big meatballs, pasta, spinach
Monday: Teriyaki chicken, rice, broccoli
Tuesday: Chicken tacos
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Thai basil, chicken, & lemongrass soup (my garden is overflowing with Thai basil)
Friday: Homemade pizza
Saturday: Chicken shawarma, flatbread, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, etc.
Sunday: (we have company) Moroccan spiced pork shoulder, roasted veggies, couscous, maybe a kale salad
Social Media Highlights:
Here are some highlights from my recent social media activity.
If you’re not already on Threads, come on over and join the conversation!
This week I asked for ideas for cooking a whole chicken, and folks came through with some awesome recipe links that you’ll definitely want to grab. ➡️ Click here to read that thread.
Seems like the excitement is mostly happening on Threads these days, but I’m posting almost daily on instagram too. That’s the spot to see what we’re having for dinner in almost real time, so be sure to follow me there too.
Here’s a fun one - this is my first year with a garden at our since we moved here three years ago. Something I’ve always wanted to grow is melons, but I never could grow them where we lived before because it wasn’t warm enough. I have finally had success with growing melons and I’m seriously giddy about it. I shared a couple of pics of my melon bounty here and here.
Coming Next Week:
Next week I thought I would share some of my favorite protein packed lunch ideas, maybe some school day breakfast suggestions, and some of my favorite household cleaning hacks. And always answers to reader questions, meal plan updates, and more. What would you like to hear more about? Be sure to check back and subscribe so you never miss an update.
And coming soon - hopefully - I’m working on a series of blog posts all about my simple meal planning method. What’s funny is that the method is really simple but somehow writing the blog posts isn’t.
Have a Question?
Ask me anything. Do you need lunch packing advice or meal planning suggestions? Or do you have other food or family management related questions? My goal is to be your resource for tips and advice - from a mom who has been there, and done that.
Reply to this email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media, and your question could be featured in next week’s newsletter.
Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram and Threads for daily tips and inspiration.
➡️ Follow Me on Instagram | ➡️ Follow Me on Threads
Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!
– Lisa
Tip of the week #01
The genius tip for tuna melts that kids will love.
Genius tips from my kitchen to yours.
This weeks tip: My easy trick for tuna melts that kids will love.
I love a good tuna melt, but the problem with a lot of them is that the tuna kinda falls all over the place. This can make them a little challenging for a lot of kids to eat.
Many years ago I figured out the easiest hack to make perfect tuna melts for kids - with just the right amount of melty, gooey, cheesiness, in a format that won’t have the tuna falling all over them.
So here’s the secret:
Instead of using a slice of cheese on top of the tuna, mix in shredded cheese with the tuna.
It seems so simple but I’m telling you it’s brilliant. Now when you grill your sandwich the cheese melts all throughout the tuna.
Not only does this taste amazing, because you get a much more even mix of tuna and melted cheese in every bite, but it actually makes the sandwich less messy. It’s less messy because the melted cheese holds the whole thing together. This works especially well if you let the sandwich and melted cheese cool just a bit before serving, so it firms up a little and holds together really nicely.
Kids love tuna this way, something about melted cheese just makes everything more kid friendly. But we like it so much that this is how I make tuna melts for my husband and I now as well. You can do this with just about any kind of cheese, for kids I usually use whatever bag of shredded cheese I’ve got. For adults I sometimes use a nice sharp cheddar or something with a little more flavor.
As far as the tuna mix itself, just make it however you normally do. We like our tuna very simple most of the time, just a good mayo and a little garlic salt. I usually cut back on the salt a bit when I’m adding cheese because cheese is already pretty salty.
And if you don’t already know the secret for really crispy grilled sandwiches, I’m about to blow your mind…
It’s mayonnaise.
On the outside of the bread.
My readers seem to be split about 50/50 on this one - you’ve either never heard of this in your life, or you know it and love it. There’s no in between. Mayo instead of butter or oil on the bread or in the pan will give the outside of your grilled sandwich that crunch that you think only restaurant melts can achieve. Now you know.
I hope you enjoy this quick tip - let me know if you try it!
Favorite Ground Beef Recipes
Family - and budget - friendly ground beef dinner ideas and recipes.
Stressed about the price of meat these days?
You’re not alone.
Meat has gotten so expensive, I hardly ever buy big pieces of beef any more. When I buy beef these days it’s usually ground beef, so I needed more ideas for budget friendly meals using ground beef.
I got a little tired of my usual ground beef dinner recipes, and I suspect you probably do too.
So I did my new favorite thing - I reached out to my followers on Threads and asked for their favorite ground beef recipes. My friends did not disappoint with suggestions for ways to use ground beef, I got so many suggestions for budget friendly ground beef dinner recipes.
Are you following me on social media? Click on over to follow me and join the conversations.
What follows below is the list of all the ground beef ideas my crowdsourcing came up with. This list includes so many favorites, quick and simple ground beef recipes, comfort food ground beef recipes, one pot ground beef recipes, and so many more family friend ground beef dinner ideas.
I’m linking recipes where I have them, and keep checking back to see if there’s more.
Ground beef dinner ideas:
Chili: chili with ground beef is actually my favorite kind. It’s somehow just more comforting. I have a recipe here on the blog that we love. I’ve made this for years so this one isn’t new to me, but it’s at the top of my list to recommend to you. This is a family friendly chili that my kids, and anyone else I have ever made it for, absolutely love. It’s full of flavor but not spicy. Try serving it in bread bowls, or with hot dogs. I’m on team no beans in chili, but feel free to add beans if you like them.
Stuffed eggplant: This recipe with spiced beef and pine nuts sounds amazing. Based on Yotam Ottolenghi’s lamb-stuffed eggplants.
Meatloaf: so many amazing recipes out there! Here is a great recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen. You can also take any favorite meatballs recipe and cook it as a loaf as well. I’ve done that many times when I wanted the flavor of my favorite meatball recipe but didn’t feel like taking the time to make the balls.
Meatballs: another one with practically limitless options. Our family favorite meatball recipe is from an old Moroccan cookbook that I’ve had for years. It’s no longer in print but you can find used copies of it. I highly recommend this book anyway, it’s got so many amazing recipes. I also have another favorite meatball recipe here on the blog, it’s a very basic recipe that’s super easy to adapt. You can also generally take any favorite meatloaf recipe and make it into meatballs instead.
Meat sauce / Bolognese / Ragu: these sauces are another favorite of ours and they are so versatile. I usually make a huge batch of it and we will have it one night on pasta and then later in the week I will make lasagna with it. A lot of recipes call for a variety of ground meats, but you can use just ground beef and it will still be delicious. My favorite bolognese recipe is in another of my favorite cookbooks - How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman
Hamburgers - need no explanation! There are so many options, I don’t think my kids could ever get tired of them. You can get creative with toppings to keep it interesting.
Picadillo - this is a new one to me, so I am looking forward to trying it. It’s a Latin dish with ground beef and spices and olives, some versions have potato too. In my brief searching, it seems like Cuban versions don’t have potatoes, while the Mexican style includes potatoes. Here’s one that looks delicious without potatoes, and here’s another that has potatoes. We’re going to have to try it both ways I think.
Shepherds pie: always a favorite. I think a lot of families have their own recipes for this, I’ve made it a lot and don’t usually follow a recipe. But if you’ve never had it, or never made it - you must give it a try. It’s basically a savory mixture of ground beef, veggies, and gravy - like a thick stew - topped with seasoned mashed potatoes and baked. Classic comfort food. Some will say that with beef it’s technically cottage pie, and shepherds pie is lamb. I say call it whatever you like. Here’s a great recipe from The Wholesome Dish.
Stuffed peppers: ground beef, rice, spices, cheese - what’s not to love? You can find a million recipes if you do a quick search, here’s one that looks great to me, from WellPlated.com.
Homemade crunch wrap supremes: Ok this was a new one to me. It’s a Taco Bell thing and I don’t eat at Taco Bell, but a homemade version sounds amazing. A loaded ground beef taco in a crispy taco shell, then wrapped in a flour tortilla and fried. Sounds too good to be true! Here’s a recipe that sounds amazing, from Spend With Pennies.
Tacos: obviously, the possibilities are endless. You can season up your ground beef really well, or you can keep it super simple. I do it all ways - sometimes with lots of chili powder and cumin and garlic, but sometimes with just a little salt and pepper and I let the toppings and salsa add the extra flavor. You can of course use packaged taco seasoning, but I stopped buying that years ago when I realized it was just as easy to season it myself.
Nachos with seasoned ground beef topping: anything you can put in a taco, you can put on top of nachos instead. It’s a fun way to mix it up.
Tamale pie: believe or not, I’ve actually never made this! But I’ve had it and it’s delish. Kinda like a tex-mix Shepards pie - a spiced ground beef and veggie mixture, with corn bread on top. Here’s a recipe that sounds fun.
Goulash (the American kind): I had to specify this because Hungarian goulash is a whole other kind of thing. But American goulash is a more eastern US regional thing, so I’ve actually never had it but it sounds amazing. It’s like a spiced tomatoey ground beef sauce with elbow macaroni pasta and it sounds like the kind of thing my family would love. Here’s a one pot version from Rachel Cooks, where the pasta cooks in the sauce, and you know that’s right up my alley.
Lasagna: the ground beef lasagna I grew up with was very American, which I didn’t realize until well into adulthood. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t delicious. I mentioned above that I make a lasagna sometimes with bolognese, and it is amazing. But you can also do the more classic American style with browned ground beef layered in between the layers of pasta, sauce and cheese. Or you can make a simple ground beef tomato sauce. Here’s a great simple recipe for a ground beef lasagna from Jo Cooks.
Unstuffed peppers: all the goodness of the stuffed versions, but maybe a bit easier cooked together in one pot. Here’s a recipe that sounds simple and easy.
Stuffed cabbage rolls: I love these but I haven’t made them in years, I really need to do it again. Here’s a recipe that sounds very easy and budget friendly from Spend with Pennies. There are also “unstuffed” versions of recipes like this, a quick google search will bring you several options.
Lettuce wraps: lettuce wraps of all kinds are among my favorite things. I love all the flavors in these, and how versatile they can be. You can search and find dozens of recipes, but here’s one that sounds particularly delicious.
Japanese curry: My kids love the flavors of Japanese curry. You can buy the sauce in cubes that you melt into a sauce. It’s so versatile, you can use the sauce with any combination of protein and veggies that you like. We buy the mild version, my grocery store usually carries it, but you can order it online if you can’t find it. This is a staple that I always keep in my kitchen because it’s such an easy weeknight dinner. The recipe is on the box - you just brown your meat and veggies, and add the sauce and liquid. I love to also add coconut milk to give it an extra creamy flavor.
Bibimbap / Korean beef bowl: oh another favorite. Spiced ground beef served with a variety of sides and toppings, on a bowl of rice. Another that is really flexible and great for weeknights, you can cook it up very fast or make ahead. Here’s just one recipe, but there are so many more if you search.
Stroganoff: a family classic. Typically this is made with strips of beef but I think it’s just as good with ground beef. I used to make this all the time while camping, it’s an easy one pot camping meal that everyone loves.
Salisbury steak: I have fond memories of having this in TV dinners as a kid (I’ve just dated myself), but I’ve never tried making it, and why not? A seasoned beef patty, browned and served with mushroom gravy and probably some mashed potatoes. This is going on my list for a winter comfort food meal. Here’s a great recipe from Recipe Tin Eats.
Sloppy joes: an old school school cafeteria classic that can be made so much better at home. Ground beef in a hearty tomato sauce served on a toasted hamburger bun. Natasha’s Kitchen is one of my favorite food blogs and I’m sure her version is amazing.
Loco moco: I may have accidentally saved the best for last. If you’ve never had loco moco, you’re in for a treat. This is a Hawaiian classic comfort food - a ground beef patty, served over a scoop of rice, with a mushroom gravy and a fried egg. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Here’s a simple classic version that you need to try.
I hope this has given you lots of great ideas for your weeknight budget meal planning.
Happy cooking!
Everyone’s Favorite Cookbooks
I recently asked my followers on social media to tell me their favorite cookbooks of all time. More specifically - if you could only have one cookbook, what would it be?
The result was a very fun conversation about cookbooks and so many great recommendations. Lots of folks even showed me pictures of their cookbook shelves.
I compiled the results of all the cookbooks recommended into one list here for you. This is a great one to save and share, full of ideas to add to your own wish list. I personally already have a lot of the books on this list, but not all, so I’ve added quite a few to my own wish list as well.
If you want to see them all in one place - you can click here to get my amazon store list with all the books in one place. Otherwise keep scrolling to see all the books.
There you go! You reached the end. I hope you enjoy this list and have found a few to add to your personal wish lists. Bookmark this page and come back, I’ll add more as I get new recommendations.
Notes from the kitchen table: no. 05
top lunch packing tips, reader questions, what we've been eating, meal plans, and more.
Hi there,
If you’re in the US (which I think most of my followers are) - I hope you enjoyed a relaxing Labor Day weekend!
Some of us have already started back to school, but for many of you, this week marks the start of back-to-school season—so it’s the perfect time to focus on making our days as stress-free as possible. In this week’s letter, I’m sharing my top tips for easy lunch packing, the most frequently asked lunch packing reader question, a super simple lunch idea, and an update on our weekly meal plans.
Make sure you don’t miss a weekly update - click here to subscribe to my substack if you aren’t already, and you’ll get these updates in your inbox. The archive of all my weekly updates and past meal plans will always be available on the blog as well.
So let’s get into this tasty week!
Tip of the Week:
I’m going to start sharing some of my favorite time saving tips with you every week.
This week, sticking with the back-to-school theme, it’s actually 5 tips to get you started: my top five tips for easy school lunch packing. Packing lunches doesn’t have to be a hassle, and these tips are my favorite ways to make lunch packing easier, quicker, and more enjoyable for both you and your kids.
Here are my top five tips for easy school lunch packing:
Don’t overthink it.
Have a plan.
Shop and prep ahead of time.
Buy the right lunch packing supplies.
Pack lunch ahead of time.
If you want to know the detail behind each of these tips and how I implement them - click on over to the blog to read my full blog post.
Check out the full tips here ➡️ Top 5 Tips for Easy School Lunch Packing
Want even more? Download my Top Five Tips for Easy School Lunch Packing eBook for an in-depth guide to making school lunches a breeze.
Reader Q&A:
Answers to your questions!
Q: How Do I Keep Apples from Turning Brown in My Kids' Lunches?
A: This is the question I get most often when I share lunches on my social media! Seems like brown apples is a big concern for a lot of folks. Keeping apples fresh and crisp in your child’s lunchbox is easier than you might think! I’ve seen lots of folks share all kinds of tips for this, but I’ve never seen anyone else recommend my method. My go-to method is so simple, and has always worked for me, and is basically just involves using a really sharp knife. I’ve got a whole blog post about this if you want to read more.
For more details, check out the full post here: How to Keep Apples from Turning Brown.
Lunchbox Inspiration:
Weekly lunch packing inspiration and ideas for you.
Here is a quick and easy lunchbox idea: Try leftover pizza for lunch! Kids love pizza, and if you plan ahead and make extra it makes for a super simple lunch. Cut into strips or bites to make it easy for them to eat fast at lunch time, pair with some fruit and maybe a veggie, and lunch is done. You can check out an example of this in my latest instagram post. If you don’t have leftover, but you want to send pizza for lunch - just cook a frozen pizza, there are loads of good ones out there.
I shared an example of this lunch on my Instagram today - check it out ➡️ Pizza bites for lunch
Meal planning:
Updates on our weekly meal plans.
Here’s an overview of what we had for dinner last week, and a peek at what is on my list for the coming week. Feel free to borrow our menu or use these ideas as inspiration for your own meal planning. I’ve included links to pictures and recipes where I have them.
Last week’s menu:
I don’t usually make separate dinners for adults and kids. We had guests over the weekend so our weekend meals were a little different than usual. Here’s what we actually ate:
Monday: Gumbo (maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t? see below)
Tuesday: Ground beef tacos
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: chicken & tofu stir fry
Friday: the kids had frozen pizza, the adults had the Costco street taco kit
Saturday: the kids had Costco chicken pot pie, the adults went out
Sunday: Salmon, rice, green salad with berries & lemon vinaigrette.
Monday: Chicken thighs with basil & garlic, zucchini patties, sliced tomatoes, white pasta.
On the menu this week:
Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the menu for my family this week. Once again our weekend is a little off, I’ve got four out of six of us gone on scout camping this weekend. Check back next week for the actual list of what we ate - sometimes I don’t follow the plan exactly.
Tuesday: Fish tacos. Fish sticks and Salmon, with all the taco fixings
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Seared ahi tuna bowls, with greens, rice, edamame, cucumbers.
Friday: Pizza for the boy, chop salad for mom
Saturday: Mac & cheese for the boy, another big salad for mom
Sunday: Meatloaf, probably some roasted veggies and pasta
Social Media Highlights:
Here are some highlights from my recent social media activity.
This week it’s all about Threads - I love asking questions there, I get such a great variety of answers from people. If you’re not already on Threads, come on over and join the conversation!
Regarding the gumbo mentioned above - I wasn’t able to get okra, and I asked my followers if it’s still gumbo without okra. As you can imagine, the answers varied. ➡️ Click here to read that thread.
Recently I asked followers about their absolute favorite cookbook, and the responses were great. I’ve now got a whole new wish list of books I want, and I’ll probably summarize these into an upcoming blog post soon. ➡️ Click here to read that thread.
I also asked for suggestions for meals using ground beef and got lots of great ideas. Meat is so expensive these days, but ground meat is usually a bit less, so it’s great to have some fresh ideas for how to use it. ➡️ Click here to read that thread.
Finally - here’s one where I asked folks about their favorite last minute dinner to make when they haven’t planned ahead. You know I’m big on meal planning, but sometimes plans change or I get behind. This is a great list of ideas. ➡️ Click here to read that thread.
Coming Next Week:
Next week I plan to share some of my best ideas for after school snacking, more lunch packing tips and ideas, answers to another common reader questions, meal plan updates, and more. Be sure to check back and subscribe so you never miss an update.
Have a Question?
Ask me anything. Do you need lunch packing advice or meal planning suggestions? Or do you have other food or family management related questions? My goal is to be your resource for tips and advice - from a mom who has been there, and done that.
Reply to this email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media, and your question could be featured in next week’s newsletter.
Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram and Threads for daily tips and inspiration.
➡️ Follow Me on Instagram | ➡️ Follow Me on Threads
Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!
– Lisa
Ask Lisa: #01
A super simple tip to keep apples from turning brown.
Real answers to your questions, from one busy mom to another.
Since I've started sharing the lunches I pack for my kids, I get a lot of questions about how I do things. One of these days I will write a post with all of the frequently asked questions. There is one question that I get more often than any other, by far...
What do you do to keep the apples from turning brown?
It's a funny thing, it's not something I ever thought about until people starting asking. Brown apples was something I had never had a problem with. But it seems to be a pretty common problem, so I wanted to try to figure out why.
My first answer was: I do nothing.
I assumed it was maybe the type of apples I was buying.
I buy only organic apples, and I tend to go for the more tart varieties, like Fuji or Gala. But then I heard from folks that they purchase those kinds too, and they turn brown.
I can literally cut apples and store them in the fridge for days without them turning brown.
Why do my apples not turn brown?
Then one day I quickly cut up an apple with a regular table knife. And the apple turned brown very quickly. It occurred to me, maybe the knife had something to do with it. I almost always cut them with a very sharp knife, but that day I hadn't.
So I did a little experiment.
These two apples were both cut 24 hours before the picture was taken.
The one on the left was cut with the table knife. The one on the right was cut with a very sharp chef's knife. I think it's a pretty big difference between the two.
So there you have it - maybe the knife is the difference.
Because really, there is nothing else I do to them other than cut with a good sharp knife.
The apple on the left was cut three days before, the one on the right was cut just before the picture was taken. Not much difference.
Get yourself a good knife and a good sharpener, and maybe you'll never have to hassle with brown apples again.
Pizza Rolls
Recipe for easy homemade pizza rolls. A homemade spin on a kid food favorite that the whole family will love. Easy and fast to make.
Easy homemade pizza rolls are a family favorite.
This post was updated Sept 2024.
Pizza rolls are easy to make, kids love them, adults love them, and the possibilities for customizing are practically endless. I shared a picture on my Instagram and Facebook pages of my kids lunches with these pizza rolls and I got so many requests for the recipe!
Pizza rolls are one of my favorite things to pack for lunch - really anything in the pizza for lunch category is always a hit with the kids.
The full pizza rolls recipe is at the end of this post, so keep reading because I’ve got lots of handy tips for you about how to make these. But if you really want to just skip to this easy recipe, you can click the button below.
You can make these with as little 3 items from your fridge, only a few minutes to put together.
You could totally go make some of these now and be eating them in 20 minutes - that's how fast! And as with most of my favorite recipes - the ingredients here are very flexible.
I think these might be one of the perfect kid foods.
They're small enough for little hands, they are not messy, they seem to travel and keep well, and - best of all - they taste like pizza!
A few tips about how I make these pizza rolls.
Because my goal with this recipe is to have something that comes together super fast and easy, I go with a packaged dough most of the time. Usually I use a can of crescent roll dough from Trader Joe's. But use any quick and easy dough you like.You could also use biscuit dough, or certainly if you have homemade dough, go for it!
If I'm buying pre-made dough I try to look for one that's not got too much nasty stuff in it. The TJ's brand is not too bad. It's not as easy to handle as some others (maybe because it's missing some of the chemical dough conditioners and junk), but for this recipe that's ok. You're not actually making crescent rolls with it.
For the sauce I used a canned pizza sauce or sometimes just plain tomato sauce. Any kind you like will do. I use traditional mozzarella for ours most of the time, but any flavor if cheese you like would be great too.
The amounts of the sauce and cheese are also flexible - it's really about your personal taste. Just don't add too much - you don't want to squish it all out when you cut.
These are such great kid food, my kids scarf them up.
But the husband and I eat our fair share too. I think they are a perfect make-ahead item for kids lunches.
Everybody loves homemade pizza rolls!
Let's be honest - a big green salad with a few of these on the side, doesn't that sound like a perfect weeknight dinner? These freeze great. Whenever I make them I always at least double the recipe and I put a bunch in the freezer.
It doesn't get any easier for packing a school lunch - to pull out a few of these, throw in a few carrots and a little fruit, and lunch is done.
Pizza Rolls Recipe
Easy Homemade Pizza Rolls
A crowd pleasing favorite!
ingredients:
- Dough - 1 can of prepared crescent roll dough. Or any other dough of your choice.
- A little flour (any kind will do - it's just for rolling the dough)
- A few tablespoons of pizza sauce (or just plain tomato sauce)
- About 1/3 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, or whatever cheese you like.
- Other fillings of your choice - cut into small pieces (pepperoni, ham, veggies, etc.)
instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Take the dough out of the can, sprinkle both sides with a little flour
- Fold it over on itself once or twice (otherwise it's trying to come apart at the seams)
- Roll out into a rectangle until it's about 1/4 inch thick
- Spread pizza sauce or tomato sauce thinly and evenly across the whole piece of dough
- Sprinkle cheese evenly
- Add other toppings as desired
Start rolling from the long edge, you want your final roll to be long and narrow. Try to get it as tight as you can without feeling like you're squishing it.
- At this point if you've handled it a lot and you feel like your dough is getting too soft to slice, stick it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so to firm up.
- Slice into 3/4 inch pieces with a very sharp knife.
- Lay your cut rolls out evenly on a baking sheet - either spray with a bit of cooking spray or line with parchment
- Bake at 350 for about 12-14 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and dough is golden brown.
NOTES:
Double or triple or quadruple this recipe and make lots extra. These freeze great and are perfect for the lunch box.
Notes from the kitchen table: No. 04
What we're having for dinner, a little garden update, a fun announcement, and some pictures.
It’s been an interesting week here in the Sierra foothills - after the hottest July in California ever, we are now having some very unusually cool weather. I’m not ready for summer to be over, but I will admit that it’s a nice change from the heat for a few days. We’re supposed to get back to summer weather next week, but here’s today’s view from the kitchen table, with some actual rain falling on the pool in august.
We’ve had a full week of three back in school full time and that’s taking some getting used to. It’s so strange to have the house so empty all day - after 5 years of homeschooling it is an adjustment to have them gone all day.
I realized another aspect of having three of four kids in school that I hadn’t anticipated - we are going through the leftovers much more slowly. I always cook a lot so we have leftovers to eat for lunch. With all 6 of us home all day (homeschooling and husband working from home) we eat a lot of leftovers for lunch. But now with three in school and just three of us at home for lunch we suddenly have too many leftovers in the fridge. I’m going to have to adjust my cooking a bit.
Now that I have more time on my hands with three out of four kids out of the house, I am working on getting this blog. and my social media back in fighting shape. If you aren’t following me on Instagram and Threads, now would be a great time to start. I am posting a lot more regularly now, including sharing a lot of my past lunch pictures. You can find me on both platforms at @whatliscooks.
Things are getting interesting in my little garden. My melon plants have taken off. I planted a variety of small watermelon and a variety of cantaloupe. There are a couple of surprises here - first of which is the size. I thought these varieties were both for small melons. But I’ve got some huge and still growing melons out there. Second is I’ve realized I have no idea how to tell when they are ripe, so some googling is in order. And third, I had no idea how these vines would spread all over everything. It’s fine, it was an empty space and it looks nice all green, it was just a surprise. As far as the rest of the garden goes, I think the hottest ever July affected things a bit, a lot of the plants definitely struggled with the heat. But now that the weather has been a bit more normal the last couple of weeks, they are looking better.
The other awesome surprise in the garden has been the zinnias. This is my first time ever growing zinnias and wow they just don’t quit. I have had fresh flowers every day. I absolutely love them. Unfortunately so do my cats. It’s like catnip to them. They will not leave them alone, so I have had to put the bouquets in my bedroom and keep the door closed. But having a nice bouquet of flowers on your dresser is not the worst thing ever.
We are still enjoying lots of pool time, except for those few cooler days. Another thing I love about living here is all our little wildlife sightings. This past week I saw a bobcat, which are very rare to see here, and a giant jackrabbit. And always the deer. But I finally saw a baby deer, the first one so far this year. Their mommas keep them very well hidden for so long. I also finally saw a preying mantis for the first time this year. In years past we have seen dozens and dozens of them all summer, so I’m not sure why they are so scarce this year.
Here’s the big news: I’ve written an ebook! This is hopefully the first of many. Ebooks seem popular now and I thought it would be a great way to share all my 15+ years of experience in packing school lunches. The first book is just a taste of all the wealth of knowledge I’ve gathered in packing lunches over the years - my top 5 tips for school lunch packing. I hope you’ll check it out. I’ve also updated a few of my basic lunch planning printable, and I’ve created a new section of the website to start offering all of my printable things for downloading. I make templates and pages for everything around here - packing lists and meal plans and chore charts and more. People always seem impressed when they see them so why not share. Look for more to be added there over time.
Ok, now on to the meal planning section.
On the menu this past week:
Sunday: oven roasted salmon and veggie fried rice
Monday: pasta with bolognese sauce, garlic bread
Tuesday: enchiladas - chicken, and black bean (two separate kinds, not combined)
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: lasagna, made with the bolognese and a béchamel and roasted eggplant and squash
Friday: frozen pizza and bagged caesar salad
Saturday: leftovers again because we are swimming in them and we don’t waste food here
For the upcoming week here is my current plan:
Sunday: pasta with ground pork & sautéed cabbage
Monday: gumbo, or something gumbo adjacent but I won’t claim it’s authentic
Tuesday: ground beef tacos (are we calling these white people tacos now?)
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: seared ahi tuna bowls, with greens, edamame, tofu, rice
Friday: pizza, probably homemade
Saturday: still debating between shawarma or butter chicken
That’s all for this week.
A gallery of pics from the week, in no particular order, is below. See you soon.
Lisa
Notes from the Kitchen Table: no. 03
A lot of stuff about food - meal plans for a crowd - the end of summer break.
Well it seems I still haven’t gotten into a regular schedule here, but I’m working on it. That might have been an ambitious goal during summer break. The last two weeks of summer break were very busy, trying to cram it all in before three of mine went back to school.
We had friends visiting, a family of five, so I was cooking dinners for 11 people, details on all the meals are below. And lots of pictures of some of the fun we’ve had.
We had lots of pool time, a couple of trips to our beautiful Yuba River, went to the county fair. We did a couple of movie nights by the pool which was utterly amazing - the best movie viewing experience ever. Such a perfect summer night activity. It was a super fun way to close out the end of summer break.
I got my crazy little dog in the pool. Well almost in the pool. He has discovered that he likes floating on an inflatable with me and it’s totally adorable.
The deer have come back, we didn’t see them as much for the past month or so, maybe because it was so hot. But these last few days have been cooler and I’ve seen a lot of deer.
Cooking for the crowd was fun. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out what to cook that will 1) appeal to a lot of people, and 2) not have me in the kitchen for hours and hours. So it’s all about easy, crowd-pleasing dinners, which are some of my favorite kind to cook.
Here’s the recap of what we had, with more details following below:
Sunday: burgers
Monday: budget paella
Tuesday: carnitas taco bar
Wednesday: oven fried chicken, potato salad, kale salad
Thursday: takeout Chinese
Friday: our company left and we were all exhausted so it was frozen pizza
Saturday: leftovers
Sunday: carbonara
Now to the start of another week, and the last couple days before school started.
One of my girls has been in high school for two years, and my next two were about to start high school after homeschooling for five years. To say they were nervous was an understatement. We’d done everything we could to get them ready, so we tried to enjoy the last couple of quiet days at home.
I did a lot of food prep to get ready for school. My goal is to make it easy for my teens to get up and have a healthy breakfast and grab a healthy lunch, and to help minimize their stress especially at the start of a big new adventure.
Here’s what I prepped for them for school days:
Smoothie packs: bags of of frozen fruit & greens, just the right amount to dump in a bullet blender and combine with a yogurt and a juice for two servings of smoothie.
Egg bites: I’ll share my recipe for these soon, but you can google plenty if you want.
Burritos: When I make Mexican rice and black beans I always make extra and then I can make up a stack of bean burritos. They freeze great so the kids can just take one out of the freezer to defrost before School.
Tuna salad: Easy to make quick sandwiches for a few days if the tuna is already made.
Boiled eggs: Great for snacks or quick egg salad.
Rice crispy treats: A first week of school treat!
For dinner this week I’ve stuck to some comforting favorites:
Comfort food is what kids need the first week of school.
Monday: baked potato bar
Tuesday: chicken taco bar
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: egg roll in a bowl stir fry
Friday: homemade pizza
Saturday: Mac & cheese & nuggets
Sunday: roasted salmon and veggie fried rice, and I’m making homemade ice cream, by request from a couple of kids.
In other news:
I have for the first time in my life, at 53 years old, successfully fried eggs in a cast iron pan with exactly zero sticking. If you’ve tried and failed with cast iron, you’ll know what an accomplishment this is. It’s now my new favorite thing.
Back to lunch packing:
Now that I have three back in school I thought I’d get back to sharing some of my old lunch packing pics and tips. If you need help figuring out lunch ideas, you should definitely follow me on Instagram because I’l be sharing there. And as always you can find all my lunch posts here on the website.
Meal planning for the coming week:
Here’s what’s on our menu this week. I’m trying to get back to having my kids each help with dinner one night a week. They are all teens now so I have three motivations for this:
They really do need to start learning how to cook.
It’s nice to have a little help and they are actually helpful now that they are older.
Selfishly, it’s a really nice way to get 1:1 time with each teenager. That’s a rare commodity these days.
So I let my helpers choose which night they wanted, and I’m trying to have them participate a bit in choosing the meal we are cooking on their night. Here’s the menu:
Sunday was roasted salmon and veggie fried rice.
Monday: Pasta with bolognese sauce, garlic bread
Tuesday: Chicken & black bean enchilada (using leftover chicken and black beans). Not sure yet if I’ll do real rolled enchiladas, or a layered enchilada casserole. Or sometimes I more of what some people would call a wet burrito, where the fillings are wrapped up in flour tortillas. It’s usually a game time decision.
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Lasagna, made with the bolognese from Monday and a béchamel, and probably some grilled zucchini or eggplant, or maybe both.
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: probably burgers, I have some salmon and some chicken burgers from Costco.
More detail about the meals I cooked the past two weeks:
Paella:
I called this budget paella because I kinda did it on the cheap and took some shortcuts. I asked for ideas on Threads about meals to feed a crowd and someone suggested they made paella with packaged yellow rice. Well I had just happened to buy some so I thought I would try it. It was super easy and turned out great. I made the yellow rice per the package, with some chicken broth and diced veggies, and I added pieces of Costco rotisserie chicken and cut up polish sausage. I kept it not spicy because I was feeding kids, and served it with a bottle of hot sauce on the side.
Carnitas taco bar:
This is my favorite thing to make for a crowd. It’s so easy to make and everyone always loves it. To make carnitas I use pork butt or shoulder. I usually by the whole big ones, but lately I have been getting what is called country style pork ribs, which aren’t actually ribs but are just thick cut strips of the pork butt. It's nice because it just shortens a step and the pieces cook faster. I season the pork well with cumin, chili powder, garlic, onion, salt, and pepper. Sometimes I throw in a cut up onion and a cut up orange, and then I cook until the pork is falling apart. Low and slow in the oven is my favorite way, 300 for 5-6 hours. I keep it covered for most of the time and then uncovered for about the last hour to let the juices concentrate. If you like some little crispy bits you can turn up the heat for the last little bit. Shred it up with tongs and serve with all your favorite taco fixings.
Oven fried chicken, potato salad, kale salad:
I had actually intended to actually fry this chicken, but I got lazy at the last minute and stuck it in the oven instead. I did you classic buttermilk overnight marinade, which makes it so tender and juicy. You can find plenty of recipes for this online, but I just did buttermilk with a little salt and pepper, and then I made a mixture of flour, seasoned bread crumbs, salt to coat the chicken pieces in. On the side was my classic potato salad for which no recipe exists but maybe someday I’ll write it. The secret is the juice from a jar of dill pickles. I mixed that with mayo, chopped up boiled egg, chopped celery, some dill, salt, pepper, and a little celery salt. I cannot abide sweet potato salad, it must be tangy and salty. I also strongly recommend you cook the potatoes in very salty water, it adds so much flavor. Some famous chef said salt should be IN the food, not just ON the food and I totally agree.
Carbonara:
I think I’ve written about this before, so just a quick recap. I use my one pot pasta method for this, and add about a half cup extra water because the carbonara sauce is made with starchy pasta water. Cook the bacon ahead of time, leave a little bacon grease in the pan, and add the pasta and water. When the pasta is mostly done I take out a half a cup or so of that starchy water and whisk it with several eggs and a generous handful of shredded parmesan or Romano, some salt and pepper. Turn off the burner and then pour that “sauce” back into the hot pasta, along with chopped bacon, and toss it around with tongs to cook the eggs and coat the pasta. Top with a little more cheese and fresh ground pepper. Some people add cream to this, but I don’t think it’s strictly necessary.
Baked potato bar:
There are plenty of ways to cook baked potatoes, but I’ll keep coming back to the old school oven method. Perfect potatoes that are creamy on the inside with flavorful and slightly crisped skin. I wash the potatoes, dry them, poke with a fork, rub all over with olive oil and then generously season with kosher salt. Baked on a parchment lined baking sheet for one hour. I do 350 for small/medium potatoes and 375 if I get the really big ones. I try to get all the potatoes about the same size so the cooking time is the same for all. I serve these with a variety of toppings to suit everyone’s taste. I made extra bacon the night before to have on the potatoes, and I had some extra polish sausage to use. My husband and I like cheesy broccoli on ours, I used to buy frozen broccoli in cheese sauce, but really it’s just as easy to microwave plain broccoli and then stir in a little American cheese to melt and become the cheese sauce.
Chicken taco bar:
Easiest dinner ever - frozen pieces of chicken and a can of enchilada sauce. This time was boneless thighs and red enchilada sauce, but I do it with all kinds. You can do this in the instant pot, in a pot on the stove, slow cooker, or in the oven. Just cook until the chicken is falling apart.
Egg roll in a bowl:
Another one that’s always a hit and so easy. You can google recipes, but I don’t use one. It’s a great way to make an asian rice bowl type meal when you have ground meat you want to use. I use the food processor to chop up whatever veggies I’ve got - this one had broccoli, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, onions. Saute it all together in sesame oil and season generously with ginger, garlic, soy sauce, white pepper, sometimes a little fish sauce and lime juice is nice.
Roasted salmon:
People do too much to salmon, in my opinion. I don’t need elaborate recipes or lots of seasoning. I want to taste the salmon. I season with just salt. I pretty much always cook whole filets. I like to start with the fish at room temp, it cooks more evenly. Take it out of the fridge about an hour before you want to cook, put in on a baking sheet on a piece of foil or parchment, and season generously with salt. To cook in the oven I do it very hot, like 500 degrees or as hot as your oven will go. This gets you as close to grilling as you can get in the oven. Put the pan in the upper third of the oven, for about 7 minutes for a thinner piece and maybe 9-10 minutes if it’s very thick.
Ice cream:
We really should be making more homemade ice cream. It actually is quite easy. And ice cream maker is one of the few single use gadgets I keep in my kitchen. I’ve kinda perfected my recipe over the years and my technique is a bit unconventional. I make a custard style ice cream but I’ve figure out how to not fuss with having to temper the eggs yolks. I make this base and usually divide it into three containers for three flavors.
Lisa’s Easy Custard Ice Cream Base
Ingredients:
4 cups of heavy cream
2 cups whole milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 large egg yolks
Instructions:
My technique is a little different but I think it’s much easier than having to add hot liquid a tiny bit at a time to temper the eggs.
Combine milk, sugar, and salt in a pot and heat over low heat just enough to get the sugar and salt fully dissolved.
Turn off the heat and stir in your cold cream.
Add the egg yolks directly to this mixture and whisk well to combine.
Turn the burner back on to medium/low and whisk / stir constantly as this heats up and begins to thicken, to about 175 degrees.
Turn off heat and continue to stir for a few minutes as it starts to cool.
Transfer to containers and let cool completely in the fridge before freezing in your ice cream maker.
Now you have your cooked ice cream custard base that you can add flavors to. Of course you need an ice cream maker. I have had mine for 20 years and it’s still going strong, here is the current model of the one I have.
Until next week!
Phew, I think that’s all for this time. Lots of pictures!
Notes from the kitchen table: no. 02
What’s happening in the home and kitchen this week, and some meal plans.
Hello -
A shorter update today than I plan to normally do, and more of just a brain dump, and a bit late, because I’ve got a lot going on this week.
I have three heading to school in a couple of weeks. This is new for us - we’ve been homeschooling for many years now. One started high school two years ago, but I was still homeschooling three. Now I’ve got two more going to high school and I will just have one left at home this year. It’s an exciting new phase for all us. I’m not a fan of school starting in August though, if we’re being honest. When we lived in Seattle school still started after Labor Day, and that still seems more right to me. Middle of august still feels like the middle of summer. Oh well, it is what it is so we’re making the best of it.
So a theme in our house this week is getting ready for school. Especially for the two that haven’t been since third grade - there’s a lot of uncertainty happening and a bit of stress. I think they will do great though. We’ve done a bit of school shopping, we need to figure out what they want to do about lunch. I’m sure the first few weeks will be a little exhausting as they adjust to the schedule.
We have lots of critters around our place. It’s one of our favorite things about living here. Very common visitors are deer, small birds, ravens, butterflies, squirrels, frogs, lizards. Sometimes we see skunks, eagles and hawks. Less often and more exciting are when we get to glimpse the occasional owl, bear, coyote, fox, raccoon. We wait excitedly for the baby deer, their mommas keep them well hidden. And just the other day for the first time we got to see a little bobcat. A few critter pictures are in the album at the end.
Two of my kids are involved in local theater, and one is currently in a summer production. This is tech week, and if you’ve got theater kids you probably know that it’s a bit like finals week or crunch time. Rehearsals every day leading up to opening night of the show. It’s her first musical and we are really excited to see how she does.
We’ve had big wildfire burning a ways north of here. No danger to us but the view of the smoke clouds have been impressive.
Out in the yard we’ve been doing a bit of clean up in preparation for friends coming to visit - we’ve raked a new path through our woods and my husband put in some steps up to the path and to the house from where our friends will be parking their RV while they visit.
I’ve made a trip to Costco in preparation for having a house full. I have a love / hate relationship with that place. It can be fun, but also so overwhelming. I try very hard not to impulse buy and focus just on the bulk food that really is a better deal than elsewhere. But it is a bit fun to browse. ;-)
On the menu this week:
Sunday: pasta with bolognese sauce, salad with berries & lemon vinaigrette
Monday: chicken & thai basil stir fry, coconut rice, crispy salt and pepper tofu
Tuesday: fish tacos
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: lasagna with béchamel and leftover bolognese
Friday: pizza
Saturday: salmon
Next week we’ve got houseguests, friends from Seattle visiting, a family of 5. So I’ll be cooking for 11 people. My goal when cooking for a crowd is to make things that are easy to feed a lot of people but don’t require working in the kitchen for hours and hours. I like to enjoy my time with my friends. I’m still tweaking the details but my tentative plan includes burgers, carnitas, fried chicken, maybe gumbo or paella, pizza, and maybe we’ll all go out one night.
Just a quick one so signing off. More next week.
Easy lemon vinaigrette
Easy lemon vinaigrette salad dressing. A must have staple of a dressing for all your every day salads. This is bright and tangy and tastes like summer freshness in a jar.
This lemon vinaigrette is a must have staple in my kitchen. I make a jar of this easy lemon salad dressing almost every week and I use it for many meals. As with everything I do, it’s a very versatile recipe that can be customized to your own tastes. I love the lemony tartness of it on all kinds of salads.
I’ve written out this recipe in a reasonable size quantity for you as I think most people probably won’t use quite as much as I do. But if we’re being honest I usually triple or quadruple this amount in a quart sized jar because I use so much of it.
I use this on a wide variety of salads, but it also makes a great marinade. I also love to marinade chicken in it or use it to baste on chicken or fish as it cooks. It’s also really great on grilled or roasted veggies.
Lemon Vinaigrette Ingredients:
Oil
Olive oil is my usual pick for this but of course even olive oil has a large variation in flavor. Pick one that you like the flavor of. I really don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. You can also experiment with other oils, avocado oil is a nice neutral oil if what you really want to taste is lemon, or a combination of oils is nice too.
Lemon juice
Fresh squeezed is where it’s at. I wouldn’t recommend making salad dressing with bottle lemon juice. This dressing is all about that fresh lemon flavor and you won’t get that out of a bottle. You can freeze fresh lemon juice though, and that will always give you better flavor than bottled. I’ve also made this with Meyer lemons which is really nice, and I’ve mixed in just a little bit of other citrus juice like tangerine a couple of times too. This kind of recipe is all about customizing to your personal tastes.
Garlic & Shallots
Fresh is best! I wouldn’t recommend using jarred garlic for this, but if you can find the little frozen cubes those are great, or my store recently has had a tube of crushed garlic that really seems like the next best thing to fresh. Shallots are lovely finely chopped, if you don’t have them I would just skip this rather than substitute with onion.
Worchestershire sauce
This gives a nice bit of extra depth of flavor that you really don’t obviously notice is there but I do notice that something is lacking when I leave it out. I sometimes substitute with Bragg’s Aminos instead for just a slightly different flavor.
Dijon mustard
Really needs no introduction, a little mustard adds such a nice flavor. Usually it’s just enough that you don’t obviously taste it, but every now and then I add extra, especially if I’m using this as a marinade instead of on a salad.
Salt and pepper
To taste, of course. There’s no right or wrong here. I like mine salty but you might not. My usual go-to is kosher salt, but any kind you like will do. I’m partial to white pepper lately, I think it’s a richer and yet somehow also milder flavor.
How to make it:
The simplest way is to just dump everything in a jar and whisk or stir with a fork. This is how I do it most of the time. But if you prefer a more emulsified dressing, you can add the oil last so it sits on top and then use an immersion blender to mix. If you start with the blender at the bottom and move very slowly up the jar it will emulsify without having to add the oil a little at a time.
I think the dressing is fine out on the counter for a day or two, but since I make a large quantity at once I usually store this in the fridge. If you’ve used an extra virgin olive oil your dressing will probably solidify in the refrigerator, so I just try to remember to set it out on the counter about an hour before I intend to use it.
Every Day Simple Lemon Vinaigrette
Ingredients
Instructions
Notes
As with all of my recipes, this one is very versatile and you can adjust any of the ingredients to your liking. More or less garlic, substitute vinegar of your choice for some of the lemon juice, use avocado oil instead of olive oil, or a combination of oils, etc. Sometimes I swap out the worchestershire sauce and use Bragg's Aminos instead. It gives a nicely different little umami flavor.
I especially love this on a salad of spring mix greens with strawberries, crispy prosciutto, and pistachios.
Notes from the kitchen table: no. 01
Weekly thoughts and updates, plus our meal plan for the week.
New feature here that I am really going to try to keep up with. This will be back to more of an old school blog style - longer form writing about what’s on my mind each week. I’ll write about what’s happening in the kitchen, in the garden, things I’m loving, and who knows what else. This one is a bit more than a week because I’m catching up, but I’ll try to find a regular week day moving forward.
Notes from the kitchen table because that’s literally where I sit when I write. It’s my favorite spot in the house, next to a big window that looks out over my swimming pool and forest. I’ll tell you some stories about what we’ve been up to, talk a lot about the food, and reward you with some pictures at the end.
Last week was a mix of activity. Summer time, we’re trying to beat the heat and enjoy the pool, and take advantage of the slow unscheduled days while we can. We had a house guest for part of the week so that influences my cooking a bit. When we have guests my goal is to figure out meals that will feel special, something that the guest(s) might not normally have, but that don’t have me working in the kitchen for hours. I like to be able to actually enjoy time with my guests, and not exhaust myself working. But I also like it when our friends and family get to experience what our real life is like, so I don’t try to cook things that I normally wouldn’t make.
This particular week we had one guest - my younger brother visiting who lives in Italy. I try to avoid making pasta for Italians, because I feel like I could never even come close to what they eat at home. But they don’t get as much Asian or Mexican style meals at home, so we focus on more in that direction.
I did make our usual Friday pizza, not something I would do for a lot of guests because it is a bit of work, but for just one extra person it’s ok. Keep reading to see what I cooked for the week.
Besides cooking, here’s just a bit of what’s been happening around here: (some pictures at the end)
My garden is starting to come along nicely. Learning to garden in the California heat is a bit different. Some things seem to really be liking the heat and a few are struggling. I’m super excited about my melons. Living in Seattle we never had enough heat to grow melons so it’s fun to try something new. I’ve had a few little tomatoes already, but hopefully lots more to come. I’ve picked lots of bunches of herbs already. I’ve got a baby eggplant and some tiny cucumbers and a couple of tiny squash. Lots of promise. The weather is not quite as hot for the next week so we’ll see how things do.
We’re in the heart of wildfire season now, but we haven’t had anything near us that was bad so far. There is a big fire burning now up by Chico, and we had scouts at a scout camp near there. My oldest scout was working at the camp for the summer but she had just come home a few days before that fire broke out. They did finally shut down and evacuate the whole camp though, so all the other staff and scouts are out safe. We’re in the flight path out of the air attack base for this part of the state, so we an always tell when a fire is kicking up because the Cal Fire aircraft head out right over our house.
We’ve been spending time in the pool basically every day. Having a pool is a lifelong dream of mine and we finally made that come true last year. It wasn’t finished in time to enjoy it most of the summer, so this is really our first full summer with the pool. It’s totally changed our lives and I feel so incredibly lucky to have it.
Where we live is a close drive to the amazingly beautiful South Yuba River. This is one of my favorite things about our move to California - being able to go swim in a river in the summer with water that is actually warm. It’s truly amazing. It’s not usually warm enough, or low enough to be safe for swimming, until late July, so we’ve just started our river swimming this week and we’ve been twice. Even though we have a swimming pool now which I LOVE, there’s still always going to be something extra special about swimming in a natural body of water. It’s healing for the mind and spirit. I can be in the worst mood ever and after swimming in the river I feel like a new person.
Now on to the food content. Here’s what we ate this past week:
Thursday: Chicken & vegetable stir fry, with crispy salt and pepper tofu
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Salmon, mixed green salad with strawberries
Sunday: Carnitas taco bar
Monday: Salmon patties (with leftover salmon)
Tuesday: Green enchiladas (with leftover carnitas)
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: pasta with pork & veggies
Friday: Pizza again
We also made beignets for a treat.
A bit more about each meal:
Thursday: stir fry and crispy tofu.
I don’t have a recipe for stir fry, you can find plenty on google or pinterest, but I think it’s one of those things that once you’ve made it a couple times you really don’t need a recipe. I cut up whatever meat I’m using into bit size pieces, and then I season that with a bit of salt and pepper, a little sesame oil, sometimes a little soy sauce, and then I add a couple spoons of corn starch to coat it - and here’s the real trick: baking soda. There’s chemistry here that I don’t bother to get into, but I think it changes the pH of the meat and tenderizes it. The amount I use depends on the type of meat. For chicken that’s already pretty tender, I use just a little, maybe a teaspoon. For beef or pork I will use a bit more. Mix it all well to coat and refrigerate for a few hours until ready to cook. Then I just brown all those bites of meat in batches in a little oil. Meanwhile I’ve chopped all my veggies, and the selection is a little different every time. This week I had onions, celery, carrots, cabbage, a little zucchini, some broccoli, and always plenty of garlic and ginger. After the meat is done I dump all the chopped veggies in the pan and saute them until they are starting to get tender. Then add the meat back in and a little something for sauce. Sometimes I just use a little bottle oyster or hoison or black bean sauce. This week I mixed about a cup of chicken broth with a little cornstarch, some soy sauce, white pepper, and a little oyster sauce and stirred that all in to coat everything. Easy and pretty fast. Although I always make a mess of the stove.
Crispy salt and pepper tofu is one of our current favorite things. It seems like no matter how much I make, it always gets devoured. I’ve written up my recipe and that will be posted soon.
Friday is pizza day.
Always and forever. My people expect pizza on friday. Sometimes it’s delivery, sometimes it’s frozen, but most of the time it’s homemade. I make a lot, usually 4 or 5 pizzas, because we love leftover pizza. We have a mix of preferences here so I usually make two thicker crust, and two or three thin crust. The thicker crust are usually cheese, or sometimes one will be half cheese and half with other toppings. Most of the time these days I am using my sourdough for the crust which is just done by feel and no recipe, but my basic yeast bread and pizza dough recipe can be found here. This is my tried and true basic recipe that never fails. The toppings are a bit different each time, there’s always some pepperoni and onion and tomatoes in the mix, and then it’s whatever else I have that I sounds edible on a pizza. My sauce is a simple one: crushed tomatoes, a little olive oil, salt, thyme, rosemary, garlic. I’ll post an actual recipe one of these days.
Saturday: salmon and salad
I’ve cooked salmon a million ways and I will always come back to my stance that simplest is best. I like to actually taste the fish. Lately my seasoning is just salt, nothing else. I usually get whole filets, season them well with salt, and then cook in a very hot oven (like 550 convection) for 5-10 minutes depending on how thick the fish is.
The salad is one I’m obsessed with this summer. Spring mix greens, blueberries, strawberries, pickled red onion, salted pistachios, bacon crumbles, and a lemon vinaigrette dressing.
I also made a simple white pasta for the kids. My one-pot pasta method, with some butter, cream, and salt. Never fails to please the kids, and I’ve found that even though they don’t like to admit it, most adults love this pasta too.
Sunday: carnitas
Tuesday is usually taco day at our house and my kids were a little stressed that I was serving tacos on a sunday. But our guest was leaving monday and I knew he wanted some mexican so I did it anyway.
Don’t leave me nasty comments about how any of this is not traditional, I never pretend to be Mexican or to make anything the traditional way. I cook what tastes good to me.
So anyway, my latest method for carnitas is to buy the pork country style ribs at costco. They’re not actually ribs - it’s just cut strips of the pork shoulder. I used to always buy the whole shoulder, but it’s a mountain of meat and I don’t always want that much. The ribs cut is usually the same cost per pound and it’s a more manageable quantity. I season these pretty simply - salt, pepper, cumin, a little chili powder, sometimes a bit of garlic and onion. Sometimes I cut up an onion to throw in there, sometimes I quarter an orange. I use all kinds of different cooking methods, but this time it was in a deep casserole dish, covered well with foil, and in the oven at 300 degrees for several hours, until the meat was falling apart. Then uncover and turn up the oven to about 375, use tongs to break up the meat, and cook another half hour or so to let the juices evaporate and the meat brown a bit.
We serve this with a selection of usual taco fixings - tortillas, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, lettuce, salsa, chips - as a taco bar and everyone makes their own. It’s one of my favorite meals to make for a crowd.
Monday: salmon patties
I know some will scoff at the idea of even having leftover fish, but I always buy a little extra salmon and cook more than we will eat that night because I want to make salmon patties. I keep them simple, the fish, a little diced onion, egg, breadcrumbs, a bit of garlic salt.
We had these with a kale & quinoa salad and the leftover pasta from the salmon dinner, reheated with a bit of cream.
Tuesday: enchiladas
Another meal made with the leftovers - the extra meat from the carnitas dinner, mixed with chopped onion and shredded jack cheese, and layered with green enchilada sauce, tortillas, and more jack cheese, cooked until browned and bubbling. This is a very easy meal to make if you have extra cooked meat of any kind. Sometimes I roll them into ‘real’ enchiladas, but sometimes I just layer it all like a casserole because it’s much faster and tastes just as good. Just go easy on the cheese. I know as Americans we love our cheese, and I love to drape everything in cheese just as much as the rest of you, but meat enchiladas really should be mostly about the meat and sauce and tortilla, with just a little cheese at each layer.
Wednesday is always leftover night here. We have scout meetings that night and need to eat fast and get going, so it’s nice to have lots of options we can easily heat up. I always make extra of everything so we have plenty.
Thursday: pasta with pork & veggies
This was an accidental dinner once that my family loved so much that it’s now become something that is regularly requested. It’s a great one to make when you need to clean the veggies out of your fridge and you don’t have a whole lot of other stuff. I brown some kind of ground meat, usually pork, or a pork sausage is best. This week I had a package of breakfast sausage so I used that. After the meat is browned I add a variety of chopped veggies. The first iteration of this had just onions and cabbage, and that is a really great combo with pork. These days I find it a fun challenge to see just how much veggies I can pack in here and have the kids still love it. This week I had onions, cabbage, zucchini, baby kale, mushrooms. I feel like there was more but I’m not remembering now. Get all the veggies sautéed until soft, sometimes I add a little butter, and then the real secret is canned soup. I don’t use a whole lot of this stuff but this is one occasion where I love it. It’s a quick way to make a yummy meal. My choice for this is Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom with Roasted Garlic. It’s all about the roasted garlic flavor here, so try to find that one and always keep some in your pantry. I usually don’t add any salt until after I’ve added the soup, because the sausage + canned soup is often all the salt you need. After the sauce (aka, soup) is in, then it’s time for the pasta and there are two ways I do this. You can either just cook pasta separately (or it’s a great way to use up leftover pasta), or you can now do my one pot pasta method - just add it all right in the pan: one pound of pasta and four cups of water. It soaks up the flavor of the meat and veggies and soup as it cooks and it’s delicious and always a crowd pleaser.
That brings us back to friday and pizza again.
Extra treat: beignets
This is a fun one that we’ve made a few times now. My kids love the beignets that we get in New Orleans Square at Disneyland, so when we found the recipe in the Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook we definitely had to make them. While this isn’t a fast recipe to make, it isn’t hard. And it makes a lot. We made the mistake of doubling the recipe the first time and we ended up delivering beignets to all our neighbors because there was no way we could eat them all. Sometimes we even make them Mickey shaped using a Mickey cutter, sometimes we just cut them in squares. They all taste great no matter what. This dough also holds well in the fridge for a couple days, which I recommend because they really are best when they are fresh, so don’t cook more than you plan to eat while hot. We made the dough and cooked half on Thursday, and then cooked the second half on Sunday. Deep frying can be intimidating at first, but if you have a good thermometer that makes it easier. I don’t have a deep fryer, I just use a pot on the stove.
For next week:
If you’re still reading this far, here are some thoughts about what might make it on the menu next week.
I’ll probably make a similar stir fry and tofu again, because it was so good and I keep thinking about it. But I have an overabundance of Thai basil, so I need to figure out if that will be good in the stir fry. Tuesday is always tacos, and I try to mix it up. We haven’t had fish tacos in a while so maybe we will do that. We have guests again coming next weekend so I will try to make a trip to Costco later in the week, which usually means I’ll get a couple of rotisserie chickens and we will have a couple of meals out of that. Sometimes when I’m feeling uninspired I will ask the family what they’ve been craving. Recent requests have included spaghetti with meat sauce, some kind of curry, grilled sausages, turkey burgers, so some of those items might show up on the menu next week.
As promised, some pictures…
Meal plan #15: 7-day dinner menu
A family dinner meal plan for the week, with some notes and links to recipes.
Family meal plan for the week:
Sunday: Sous-vide tri tip and baked potatoes
Monday: Salmon and caesar salad
Tuesday: Costco chicken pot pie
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Pork & broccoli stir fry, salt & pepper tofu
Friday: frozen pizza
Saturday: Moussaka with pasta & greek salad
Keep reading for all the details about each dinner.
And now for the details…
Sunday: Sous-Vide Tri Tip and Baked Potatoes
I go a year or more forgetting I have a sous-vide machine, but it’s such a great way to cook bigger pieces of meat. If you’ve never cooked this way, I recommend you try it. My sous-vide machine is several years old now and I’m not sure that model is still sold, but there are lots of great options on Amazon if you click here. I usually use this kind of container to do the cooking in, but you can see from the pic that I did these in a big pot because I needed more room. I love that big pot though, it’s a Lodge brand enameled cast iron and I use it several times a week lately.
My local store has had a great price on tri-tip lately so I’ve been buying them a lot. I’m not sure if this is a common cut of meat everywhere, but it’s been popular in California for a long time and I think it’s becoming more well known. It’s the tip of the sirloin, and is called tri-tip because of it’s triangular shape. It’s typically grilled, seared at a high temp, and left rare to medium rare in the middle, and served sliced thin, often on fresh rolls as like a steak sandwich. I’m not a big griller - even though I’ve been cooking for decades I feel like grilling is just not something I good at, I have a knack for setting my grill on fire. So I like to look for other ways to cook meat like this. The sous-vide is a great way to do it.
This is the recipe I loosely followed, I put a little butter in the bags with the meat as well as the seasoning in this recipe, and I cooked two because leftover steak is never a bad thing. The flavor was really great and I will definitely do it this way again, although it was maybe a tiny bit more rare than my kids like it so I’ll probably cook it a degree or two hotter next time.
Tip: leftover steak makes the best quesadillas. I chopped up a bunch of the leftover sliced steak and made a big stack of steak quesadillas one day for lunch. One reason I like to leave meat like this on the more rare side is so that when we have it left over it just cooks a bit more but still doesn’t get too done.
Monday: Salmon and Caesar Salad
I went to Costco on Monday so we got a couple of salmon filets and their big container of Caesar salad. As much as I like to get creative, my people like their salmon very simple. I drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle a little salt, sometimes a squeeze of lemon, and put in a very hot oven for 5-7 minutes. I prefer this over grilling (see above comment about always catching my grill on fire), even though I usually manage to fill the house with smoke and set off alarms when I put oily fish in a super hot oven. You can do this with the broiler too, but then my house gets even more smokey. Oven grilled salmon and Caesar salad is such a simple and delicious meal.
Tuesday: Costco Chicken Pot Pie
Tuesday is usually taco day in our house but we had a meeting at the high school, and I’d just been to Costco, so it was easy to just cook the pot pie in the late afternoon and leave it for the people to serve themselves whenever they wanted dinner. I try not to buy too many already made things at Costco, but the chicken pot pies are so good that I'm pretty much not allowed to come home from Costco without them. I always get two and cook both because we will eat a whole one for dinner and the second is ready for leftovers. My family eats it for breakfast.
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Pork & Broccoli Stir Fry, Crispy Salt & Pepper Tofu, Steamed Rice.
I’m not sure I’ve ever used a recipe for a stir fry, but I’m sure there are plenty of good ones out there. I do pork for stir fry a lot, because it’s a relatively inexpensive meat and my family gets tired of chicken. Most of the time I end up just cutting up pork chops because I buy them in bulk at Costco, they’re a good price but my kids don’t love just eating a pork chop. I season the pork with soy sauce, garlic, white pepper, a little sesame oil, sometimes a bit of lime juice, maybe some onion powder, a little corn starch and a little baking soda. Let it all marinade for a while, and then cook in batches in hot oil in a hot pan. I like a mix of a little sesame oil for flavor, plus a high heat cooking oil.
Tip: I use baking soda to tenderize meat. You know that tender texture of the meat you get in dishes at the Chinese restaurant, that you can never seem to recreate at home? Well baking soda does this. Use it sparingly, just a teaspoon or so, but it makes a world of difference. It changes the pH of the meat and causes the proteins to relax. You can read a bit more about the science behind this here.
After you’ve cooked the meat, then you toss in the veggies to cook those. My stir fries always vary depending on what I have, but broccoli is common, onions, cabbage, sometimes carrots, celery. Season with ginger and garlic, some salt and white pepper. I like to cook the veggies until they are starting to soften but still have some crunch.
Then I add the meat back in, and the sauce. For the sauce I do about a cup of cold chicken broth and a teaspoon or so of corn starch - mix this well, and then add some flavoring. I love oyster sauce, it’s got a sweet, salty, umami flavor. You can add ginger, soy, whatever you like. Pour the mixture over the meat and veggies and stir to combine, and you’re done.
Next up - salt & pepper tofu. You can google for crispy salt and pepper tofu recipes, there’s a lot out there. But honestly how I do it is a lot simpler than most of them and we love how it turns out. I use extra firm tofu, I slice the block in half and stack it between some dishtowels for an hour or so to get some of the water out. Then I cut in cubes, toss in a bit of sesame oil, and then toss to coat in a mixture of corn starch, salt, and white pepper. Just season some corn starch with salt and pepper and dip a finger in to taste it, and add more seasoning if you need it. Then I fry the cubes of tofu in hot oil until golden on all sides. After I’ve cooked all the tofu I sometimes toss some chopped green onion and minced garlic in the oil just long enough to start to brown and sprinkle that over the tofu along with a generous sprinkling of coarse salt. It’s delicious. This is one you want to serve pretty quickly while it’s still crispy and hot. It’s still tasty leftover but no longer crispy.
I also served steamed rice with this. You can find my tip for perfect steamed rice in last week’s post.
Friday: Frozen Pizza and Bag Salad
Sometimes I need to take a week off from making all the homemade pizzas so we just go for frozen ones and a bagged Caesar salad.
Saturday: Moussaka!
I’ve never made moussaka before, but I started browsing some greek recipes recently (see last week’s post about making gyros) and was reminded that I really like it. Moussaka is described as like a greek lasagna, and I guess it’s sort of like that, in that it’s layered with a meat sauce and a bechamel. But there’s no pasta. It’s been years since I had moussaka, so I figured I would give it a try. One of the ways we save money in a big family, but still get to be foodies, is because I try to recreate a lot of my restaurant cravings at home.
Photo is from Themediterraneandish.com - source of the recipe. click the image to get the recipe.
This is the recipe I used and I would definitely do it again. I followed in fairly closely, except I added a bit more seasoning to the sauce because I was using ground beef and it doesn’t have as much flavor as lamb, and I made extra of the sauce. Also it seems like a mistake or oversight in the sauce section of the recipe that they don’t include salt at all. This sauce most definitely needs salt. I salt the meat a bit while it’s browning, then add all the spices and taste and salt some more.
This dish isn’t hard to make, but it’s not a quick weeknight meal. There are three separate components that each need to be cooked before you assemble the casserole. It’s a good one for a weekend when you have time to spend cooking. It would be great on a weeknight though if you made it all the components ahead of time.
We had it with buttered pasta on the side, and a greek salad of just cucumbers, tomatoes, greek olives, feta, and a simple olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.
That’s it for this week!
Meal plan #14: 7-day dinner menu
Another easy week of dinner ideas for the family.
One week family meal plan.
I’m back with meal planning for the family after a long break of not posting our dinner menus. I’m not doing a lot of original recipe creation these days, but trying a lot of recipes from other food blogs and customizing to our tastes. Read on to see what we had for dinner this week, with some links to recipes when I’ve used them.
The menu for this week:
Sunday: homemade vegetable beef soup with fresh rolls
Monday: spaghetti with jumbo baked meatballs
Tuesday: chili-lime chicken tacos
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: sheet pan beef with broccoli
Friday: pizza
Saturday: gyros with homemade flat breads and greek salad
Keep reading for the recipes I used.
Sunday: Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup
This was an all day affair because I decided to try making beef stock from scratch. I loosely followed this recipe for the stock. It turned out good but honestly was a long process and I’m not sure it was any better than a good quality stock I could buy at the store. Less expensive? Maybe, but the soup bones I bought weren’t as cheap as I would have hoped. Will I make it again? I don’t know.
For the soup I used this recipe. This was really good. I would not have thought to thicken this soup with a little flour, but somehow just that small addition makes a big difference.
We also had homemade rolls with this. I make these rolls using the Milk Bread recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. I double the recipe and make it into rolls instead of a loaf. The real secret is butter. Butter for kneading, butter while rising, butter when you roll them out and shape the rolls, brushed with butter before baking. We also like them with a little salt sprinkled on top just before baking. I first made these a couple of years ago for thanksgiving, after trying several recipes to find the perfect thanksgiving roll recipe, and they’re so good that they’ve become a bit of an obsession in our house.
tip: these rolls freeze great after baking. I’ve tried freezing the dough but it never rises quite as well. But if I bake a bunch extra and bag them in the freezer then my kids can just pull out and warm up one or two at a time.
Monday: Spaghetti & Jumbo Meatballs
We do a lot of deconstructed meals, so people can choose how they want to put their own plate together. So the pasta is served by itself, with a little butter and sometimes cream. The sauce is separate. The meatballs are separate. I thought it would be fun to make really big meatballs. I loosely followed this recipe for the meatball mixture, with a combination of ground beef, lamb, and pork, and just baked them 15-20 minutes longer because of the big size. I served some without sauce and put some in a dish with a simple tomato sauce over the top.
My tomato sauce is one I’ve kinda perfected over the years to be just how we like it. I use this basic recipe on pizza almost every week, and on pasta, meatballs, meatloaf. It’s just a big can of crushed tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon or so of fresh crushed garlic, a few dashes of ground thyme and ground rosemary, salt and pepper to taste. For pizza I just mix this up and spread directly on the pizza with no extra cooking. For other things I let it simmer in a pan for a bit.
Tip: when I make meatballs or anything similar, I ALWAYS at least double the recipe and freeze half. These things are kind of time consuming and messy, and it’s not twice as much work and mess to make twice as many, so it’s a really easy way to stash a meal in the freezer for another night. Put raw shaped meatballs on a tray and freeze, and then transfer to a ziplock bag once frozen. Then you can cook straight from the freezer, boil some pasta, heat up some sauce, and dinner is done.
Tuesday: Chili Lime Chicken Tacos
Taco Tuesday is a thing here, but I try to mix it up with different fillings every week. Chili lime chicken is a favorite. There are lots of chili lime chicken recipes out there, here is just one example. This is the kind of thing that once you’ve made it a few times you really don’t need a recipe. I’ve made this before and it’s been popular, but I made a bit of a mistake this time. I used a different chili powder than before and I didn’t taste to see how spicy it was before dumping a bunch in. It was spicy! The chicken still turned out good, and the spice was tolerable with lots of lettuce and sour cream in the taco.
We have this taco bar style with the usual topping choices - lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, sometimes avocado if I have them, sometimes chips and salsa or beans or rice on the side.
Wednesday: Leftovers
Wednesday night we have scout meetings so dinner is almost always leftovers. I always cook extra of everything so we have lots of leftovers to choose from.
Thursday: Sheet Pan Beef with Broccoli
I make a lot of stir-fries on the stove, but this was the first time I’ve done this kind of recipe in the oven. Sometimes I just get tired of cleaning the stove, so I look for oven recipes. I tried a version of this Sheet Pan Beef and Broccoli recipe from Nom Nom Paleo. I’ve cut way back on my carbs lately so I look at a lot of Whole30 and Paleo recipes for ideas. I mostly followed her recipe except I did use some soy sauce. After following a whole30 for a month already I realized that the one thing I really don’t want to live without is soy sauce. One thing I also added was just a bit of baking soda. It’s a secret to tender meat in things like this, or stir fries. A teaspoon or so of baking soda added to the marinade changed the pH of the meat and tenderizes the though fibers. It really makes a massive difference. Served with rice for the carb eaters, and a salad with a sesame ginger dressing.
Tip: my never fail method of rice cooking: Heavy bottomed pot, melt a little coconut oil, add rice and brown just a little, then add 2 cups of water for every cup of rice. I usually cook big pots of rice so 4 cups of rice and 8 cups of water. Let simmer uncovered until you can just see some of the rice coming up to the top of the water level. Then cover, turn heat to low, set a timer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes turn off the heat and leave covered until you are ready to eat. Perfect every time. I hardly ever rinse rice because my kids like it sticky. Rinsing gets rid of some of the excess starch that can make rice sticky.
Friday: Homemade Pizza
Friday is pizza night at our house. Always and forever. I would have a mutiny if there wasn’t pizza. Usually it’s homemade. Lately I rarely follow a dough recipe, I make sourdough pizza dough and just do it by feel most of the time. But here is my basic bread and pizza and everything dough recipe you can try, it’s my fallback if the sourdough isn’t behaving or I’ve forgotten to feed it. It’s a very basic bread dough that can be customized for a lot of uses. For pizza I add a couple tablespoons of olive oil and extra salt.
I usually make 4 pizzas. Always at least one cheese and one veggie, and the other two are combos with whatever I have around - usually some pepperoni and/or salami, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, sometimes ham and pineapple.
Saturday: Gyros with Flatbread and Greek Salad
I’ve never made homemade gyros before but I thought it sounded like fun to try. Saturdays are the day that I spend more time getting a little creative, and I’ve been into trying some Greek things lately.
Making gyros is a bit like making meatloaf, you season the ground meats and cook it into a loaf. Then let it chill and slice and fry the slices in a pan. I used this recipe here for the gyros, and of course made a lot extra to freeze.
For the flatbread, I again went back to my trusty basic dough recipe. A little extra salt and a bit of olive oil in this one, and then after it’s done rising you just pinch off small balls and roll them out as flat as you can and cook them on a hot oiled pan.
I served the gyros with the flatbread, chopped cucumber, tomatoes, and lettuce, some homemade tzatziki and homemade garlic tahini sauce.
The tzatziki is plain yogurt with grated cucumber, lemon juice, salt, and I add a little cumin which isn’t traditional but I like it.
The tahini sauce was leftover from this meal - I always make lots extra of sauce recipes so we can use it for another meal. This was really tasty and I’ve used this sauce on a lot of things.
Meal Planning Tips
Some quick thoughts about how I make meal planning easy.
How to create a meal plan for your family
If you spend too much time on Pinterest, you might get the idea that it's normal to be cooking a new recipe every night of the week, and always have a lovely menu planned for your family with a new dish every night. That's marvelous. But not real. I don't know anybody who actually does this. How can you? If you got kids and jobs and housework and all of the things, I think very few people have time to cook like that.
I'm not sure how we got to the point where we somehow started thinking that this is what we were supposed to be doing. It's not realistic, and I don't think any other culture in the world does this. Most other cultures around the world eat fairly simple diets - a routine formula that consists of a basic starch (noodles, rice, bread, pasta, potato, depending on what part of the world you are in) with simply prepared seasonal local vegetables, and a bit of meat if you can afford it. They repeat the same basic meals with the same basic seasoning and local spices almost every day, cooking more elaborate dishes only for guests and special occasions.
But somehow we have gotten away from this, and I think put way too much pressure on ourselves.
I see meal plans on Pinterest that promote "no repeats!", and I say no to that. We need repeats. Busy moms need predictably. Kids love predictably. They call it comfort food for a reason. When our lives are crazy busy, our days feel like we're living through a tornado, I think we need a meal plan of easy, predictable favorites that we know our family will love and we know we can get on the table quickly. We don't need "no repeats".
I think we're too conditioned to variety to be able to eat the same meal every day, but we can at least follow a repeatable and predictable schedule that makes meal planning a lot easier.
My practical method of meal planning for our busy family:
I follow a plan that sets a basic guideline or theme for each night of the week, and just repeat it week after week. I don't make the exact same thing each time, but it's usually just simple variations on the basic theme.
Monday: Soup or stew
Tuesday: Tacos, or Mexican
Wednesday: Something rice based, or Asian
Thursday: Pasta or kid food
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Leftovers
Sunday: Roast or grill, meat or fish
Monday is our full day, so a soup or stew that I can have made ahead when we get home late works really well for us and keeps us from eating out. On Friday pizza night we mix it up a lot - sometimes it's delivery, sometimes it's frozen pizzas from the grocery store, sometimes we make it completely from scratch and have fun putting lots of different toppings on. I switch the nights around occasionally, just depending on what our schedule is at different times of year, but the basic themes stay the same.
I have a page in my notebook where I keep lists of ideas for each theme - a list of my favorite easy soups to make, or variations on the taco theme, or simple Asian rice dishes. So then, when I am figuring out my meal plan for the month, it's really easy to just look through my lists and pick 4 from each category.