What Lisa Cooks

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Family Meal Plan #22

Lisa Marsh

Welcome to our family meal plan!

This is a real reflection of what my family actually eats—some weeks I’ve got recipes to share, sometimes there are photos, and other times it’s just me giving you the rundown of what I made. I hope these menus give you some fresh ideas or inspire you as you’re planning your own meals. Feel free to adapt or follow along however it works for you—because meal planning should make life easier, not harder!

From one busy home cook to another, let’s make dinner a little less stressful together.

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On the menu this week:

(see below for a notes about some of the meals)

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

Big Meatballs were just a combination of ground beef, pork, and chicken, seasoned with garlic salt and held together with egg and almond flour. I cooked them on a sheet pan in a 350 degree oven for a half hour, then I poured tomato sauce over them and cooked for another half hour. They were quite simple and really delicious.

Teriyaki is one of our favorite meals and one of the easiest to make. I seasoned thin sliced chicken breasts with a little garlic salt and let them sit for a couple hours, then cooked them in the oven at 375 for about 15 minutes, then put teriyaki sauce over the top, added broccoli to the sheet pan, and cooked for another 15 minutes. The tofu is literally just sliced extra firm tofu with teriyaki sauce and cooked in a hot oven until it’s bubbly and a little browned, it’s the easiest thing in the world and one of our favorites. I used a homemade teriyaki sauce for this but only because I was out of my favorite bottled sauce so I whipped on up to imitate it. It was pretty good.

Chicken Tacos: Monday night when I cooked the chicken for teriyaki I cooked a bunch extra that was just seasoned with garlic salt. For tacos I chopped up that chicken and seasoned it with a little cumin and chili powder and just warmed that up in the microwave. Super easy, and served with the usual taco fixings.

“Thai inspired” soup was really one I just made up as I went along. I was thinking of the tangy coconut lemongrass soup you can get in a Thai restaurant, but wanted it to be a whole meal. No recipe here, just a little of this and a little of that until I liked how it tasted. I seasoned chicken broth with fish sauce, soy sauce, white pepper, ginger, garlic, coconut milk, and lime juice, and I added pork, lots of mushrooms, frozen spinach, and some riced cauliflower.

Chicken Shawarma: The schawarma recipe from The Mediterranean Dish is one of the few that I come back to regularly. It’s easy and delicious. I usually try to make a lot extra, but I leave out the cayenne to make it not spicy. The tahini dressing is from Love and Lemons and I follow it pretty closely but this time I used some coconut aminos instead of maple syrup because I wanted the hint of sweet without the sugar.

I make a tzatziki inspired cucumber yogurt sauce that is not so traditional but I love it - grated cucumber, plain yogurt, a bit of cumin, salt, and some finely diced preserved lemon with a little of the brine from the jar. The preserved lemon gives it a really unique flavor. Sometimes I make this with a dairy free plain cashew yogurt and honestly my family can’t tell the difference between the dairy version and the non dairy version.

Carrot Hummus was the new superstar here. I had seen a mention of it somewhere and wanted to try it, I looked at several recipes but didn’t really find one I liked so I just made it up. Basically you make it like any favorite hummus recipe (with tahini, salt, lots of lemon juice and fresh garlic) but instead of chickpeas I used roasted carrots and garlic. I tossed the carrots and whole garlic cloves with olive oil and a bit of salt and roasted them until golden and soft, and the pureed everything together in the food processor like I would with any other hummus. I will make this again and try to write out a recipe because it was amazing.

Moroccan Pork Shoulder: We had guests for dinner so I wanted to make something that felt special without a lot of work. A big roasted pork shoulder is often my go-to in these situations. This time I did it Moroccan flavored, using this recipe that I have made many times and adapted over the years. These are the kinds of meals that I love to make for a crowd, because it tastes amazing and is always really impressive, but is super simple and mostly hands off. The star of the show is this Moroccan inspired spice rub that I’ve adapted from a few other recipes and put my own spin on. I’ve made this many times over the years and it never disappoints. For veggies this time I did sweet potatoes and cauliflower, with some onions and garlic. I served all this with more of all the sauces that I made extra of the night before.

Moroccan Spiced Roasted Veggie Soup: I took all the leftover roasted sweet potatoes, cauliflower, onions, and garlic and put that in a pot with chicken broth and more of the moroccan seasoning and let it simmer for a bit and then pureed. We had this for lunch two days in a row and it was amazing. I think I’ll be roasting more veggies with that seasoning soon so I can make soup again.

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.

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Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!

– Lisa