Meal plan #14: 7-day dinner menu

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.