Family Meal plan #28
After another break from this blog (it seems I need one every now and then) I’m back with another meal plan. I’ve been cooking of course, and planning our dinners ahead of time most weeks, just not getting on here and sharing them. But here is a mid-winter dinner menu, what we had for dinner last week. Not a lot of pictures for this one, sorry. It’s really hard to take decent food pics in the middle of winter when the natural light is gone by dinner time.
The menu this week:
Sunday: Cottage pie
Monday: Kale & sausage soup
Tuesday: Chicken tacos
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Egg roll in a bowl (with ground beef)
Friday: frozen pizza & Costco Caesar salad with rotisserie chicken
Saturday: Broiled salmon & asparagus, lemon parmesan pasta
The details on the meals:
Cottage pie:
If you know Sheperd’s pie, then you know cottage pie. It’s the same except Shepard’s pie is ground lamb and cottage pie is ground beef. Either way - a savory stew made of minced meat and veggies with a flavorful gravy, topped with seasoned mashed potatoes and baked. I don’t really follow much of a recipe, but here is one that is quite similar to how I make it. This is a great one for a sort of clean out the fridge meal, because it’s pretty flexible and you can add some of those leftover bits of veggies that you’re not sure what to do with.
Tuscan kale and sausage soup:
A comforting meal for a cold wet winter day. I mostly followed this recipe, but probably didn’t pay much attention to the exact quantities, and I left out the potatoes. I also used a combination of homemade chicken broth and the last of some smoked turkey broth which gave it such amazing flavor, and I added a little cabbage because I like cabbage in soup. It was really good and I made enough that I had it for lunch several days throughout the week.
Chicken tacos:
One of my top favorite things to do is toss a bunch of frozen chicken in a pot with enchilada sauce. It’s the easiest thing to make, and full of flavor, and always a hit here. This week I used chicken thighs and green enchilada sauce, and I sliced up an onion in with it. This is my favorite brand of enchilada sauce, but I’ll use others if I don’t have this one, my local store doesn’t carry it so I have to order it online. I don’t add any extra seasoning because canned enchilada sauce is usually plenty salty. Let it cook until the chicken is falling apart, and maybe reduce the sauce a bit if it’s too liquidy for you. You can cook in the oven or on the stove top, or all day in the slow cooker, and you can even do this in the instant pot. Shred the chicken and serve with all your favorite taco fixings.
Egg roll in a bowl:
A perennial favorite for my family. I follow the basic idea of the recipe here from Nom Nom Paleo, but I tweak it a lot based on what I have in the house. It’s pretty foolproof and quite flexible. I don’t always leave it strictly paleo, sometimes I do splash a little soy sauce in there. This week I used ground beef.
Chicken Caesar:
Friday was Costco day, and I don’t cook and go to Costco in the same day. But one of my favorite dinners when I’ve been to Costco is to get their big Caesar salad and a rotisserie chicken, and pick the chicken off to have on top of the caesar. It doesn’t get any easier and the price of those chickens is one of the few great bargains left in the world.
Broiled salmon:
I got salmon (well technically steelhead, but looks and tastes like salmon) at Costco. I’ve tried a million ways to make salmon over the years and keep coming back to the very simplest way that is my family’s favorite. I lay the filets out on a baking sheet, season generously with salt, and cook under the broiler for 5-7 minutes, depending on how thick it is. I think overcooked fish is a crime, it needs to be just barely cooked through. We had this with some nice baby asparagus cooked also on a sheet pan with olive oil, salt and lemon juice, pasta (described below) and a salad with berries and lemon vinaigrette.
Lemon parmesan pasta:
I use my no drain pasta method for this, and when the pasta is just about finished add a few tablespoons of butter, a sprinkle of salt, a splash of cream, zest of one lemon, a tablespoon or so of lemon juice, a few grinds of black pepper, and a couple generous sprinkles of grated parmesan cheese. Mix it all together well and serve. My kids love this and the lemon makes it pair really nicely with salmon.