Family Meal Plan #30
I don’t always stick very closely to the meal plan I sketched out the week before, but this week I actually did.
Here’s what I cooked for my family last week.
Scroll down for details about some of the meals.
Monday: Chicken and Rice soup, Greek (avgolemono) style
Tuesday: Ground beef tacos
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Moroccan inspired chicken
Friday: Homemade pizza
Saturday: Pot roast
Sunday: Lasagna
Details about some of the meals:
Chicken and Rice soup, Greek Style: You can look up recipes for this traditional Greek chicken soup called Avgolemono, but I didn’t really follow one. A lot of the recipes you will see have orzo in it, but I had leftover rice that needed to be used so I put rice in mine. I had bought rotisserie chickens at Costco the week before, so I had homemade broth and the last of the cooked chicken that needed to be used, so along with the rice already cooked this made for a very easy dinner. When I add cooked chicken to a soup I like to add it last, so it doesn’t get overcooked in the pot. So basically I just combined the broth with the rice, diced carrots, lemon juice (and I added a little zest) a little salt and pepper and let that all simmer for a bit. The real unique thing about this soup is the eggs - you beat eggs and then temper them slowly with hot broth, and then pour that combination back into your pot. It thickens the soup and gives it a texture that makes it seem like you added cream, when you didn’t. After the eggs are in and thickened, stir in the chicken and that’s basically it. I had some fresh dill from a neighbor so I added that before serving which added a nice extra bit of flavor. We had it topped with a little grated parmesan, and some freshly baked bread.
Ground beef tacos: You don’t need me to tell you how to make this. Browned and seasoned ground beef, with all the taco fixings. I don’t buy taco seasoning, I think it’s unnecessary. We just brown the ground beef and season it with salt and pepper, sometimes garlic salt, sometimes cumin. Keep it simple.
Moroccan inspired chicken: I won’t claim any kind of authenticity here, so this is inspired by moroccan recipes. I seasoned chicken thighs (some boneless skinless, some not) with my Moroccan seasoning blend, and browned them in the oven. While the chicken was browning I did the rest in a big cast iron dutch oven on the stove. I sauteed a bunch of sliced onions, added a little chopped garlic and parsley. When the onions were soft I added a couple cans of garbanzo beans and a couple cans of chopped tomatoes, and a couple pieces of preserved lemons finely diced. I simmered that all together for a bit, added part of a bag of greens that needed to be used, and then placed all the browned chicken pieces on top. I put the pot in the oven to let the chicken braise and finish cooking in the sauce. We had this with some couscous.
Homemade pizza: I don’t have a pizza dough recipe for you because I make my sourdough by feel. But I did do a couple things a little different this week. For a while now I have been adding olive oil to my dough when I am making it for pizza. But this week I left out the oil. I think the resulting dough was better, more chewy and crispy. I also did a different sauce than usual. I normally make a homemade sauce starting with canned crushed tomatoes that I season with olive oil, salt, garlic, thyme and rosemary. But I was out of the crushed tomatoes I like so this time I just used canned tomato sauce and didn’t do anything to it, just straight from the can to the pizza. At least one of the teenagers declared that she liked it better. It certainly was easier, so it’s good to know they like it. I still prefer the other sauce though, so I’ll maybe alternate moving forward.
Pot roast: Your standard low and slow cooked pot roast with carrots and potatoes. The secret I discovered recently to great flavor in the meat and the resulting gravy is to add a LOT more onions than you think you need. Your recipe maybe calls for one onion, I’m telling you to use three or four. They disintegrate and fall apart so it’s not like you’re eating a lot of onion. But all that slow cooking leaves you with amazing flavored broth, almost like a French onion soup type of broth. Thicken this with flour and you get a wonderful gravy. I’ve been experimenting with multi-grain bread lately so we had some homemade multi-grain sourdough rolls with our dinner.
Lasagna: There are a million ways to make lasagna and I don’t care what anybody says there’s no wrong way. I’ve never met a lasagna I didn’t like. But one of my favorite ways is the simplest - just layers of pasta, a simple tomato sauce, béchamel, and a little bit of cheese. This is not a cheese heavy lasagna, it’s more about the creamy sauce. You can find a recipe for béchamel in many places, in my opinion it is one of the basic sauces that everyone should know how to make. For this lasagna I layered the pasta, tomato sauce and béchamel in many layers with some basil leaves in one layer, a little cottage in another layer because it needed to be used, a sprinkling of mozzarella on another layer, and a little parmesan on top. We had this with more of the rolls from the night before.