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.

That’s all for this week! Happy cooking.

~ Lisa

Family Meal Plan #29

Another week meal plan for you. These are the actual dinners I cooked for my family in a week. Sometimes the dinners are more elaborate, but most of the time my goals are simple but flavorful meals that give my family a balance of nutrition without a lot of work. I hope my dinner plans help you find some ideas or inspiration for how to feed your busy family.

Here’s what we had this past week:

Sunday: Wild rice & broccoli casserole, sheet pan chicken & apple sausages

Monday: Dumpling soup

Tuesday: Taco casserole

Wednesday: leftovers

Thursday: Mac & cheese for the kids (mom and dad were out)

Friday: homemade pizza

Saturday: Broccoli beef, and crispy salt & pepper tofu

Sunday: Enchiladas from the freezer

A few details about the meals:

Wild rice & broccoli casserole. I don’t know why, but I am never successful with rice casseroles that start with uncooked rice and have it all cook together in the oven. I always end up with mushy rice around the edges and crunchy undercooked rice in the center. I’d blame it on an uneven one, but I’ve had the same issue with three ovens now so I can’t blame it on the equipment. It’s operator error. Anyway, when I make rice casseroles these days I usually start with cooked rice. This was a bag of a wild rice blend, I cooked it in some homemade chicken broth for extra flavor. I mixed the cooked rice with some frozen broccoli, sautéed chopped mushrooms and shallots, a bit of frozen riced cauliflower, canned cream of mushroom soup, and some shredded cheese. No quantities because I’m not following a recipe, but I’m sure you can find plenty of wild rice casserole recipes around. This kind of dish is also a great one to use up little bits of leftover veggies - I actually also mixed in some chopped up leftover asparagus. I love these kinds of dishes for getting veggies in the family - you can mix a lot of finely chopped veggies in with rice and soup and cheese, and nobody even notices they’re there.

Dumpling soup: Another favorite that needs no recipe. Frozen Asian style dumplings (pot stickers, gyoza) are one of the best soup shortcuts ever. My favorite frozen dumplings are from Trader Joes, but you can do this with any kind you like. Start with some good flavorful broth, I had homemade broth but you can use canned also, add veggies, frozen dumplings, and whatever flavors and seasonings you like. I went with a bit of a Thai style for this one - lemongrass, lime juice, coconut milk, fish sauce, along with ginger and garlic. I like to slice my veggies in thin strips for this, and for this one I used carrots, king oyster mushrooms, and cabbage. You can serve it with a bottle of hot sauce for those that want theirs a little spicy, or oyster sauce for those that want to add a little sweet/savory/umami flavor.

Taco casserole: Maybe I should call this burrito casserole, because it’s basically everything I love in a good loaded burrito, minus the big tortilla. Casseroles are one of my favorite ways to use up bits of leftover things and make them seem new. In this case I had some leftover brown rice, chicken that had been cooked in green enchilada sauce, chopped lettuce and tomato from a previous taco night. I combined all that with a couple cans of black beans, some cilantro, a little salsa, mixed it up well and dumped into a greased casserole dish and topped with shredded cheese. Since everything in it was already cooked it just need to heat up long enough to get hot and bubbly and melt the cheese.

Enchiladas: When I make things that are a little more labor intensive, like enchiladas, I always make extra. Because it isn’t twice as much work to make twice as much - you’ve already got the mess out, so just whip up and extra pan of something. Enchiladas are one of my favorite things to make extra of, and they are great to have in the freezer. This week I had two pans in the freezer - one chicken and one made with smoked pork. We went to a movie and I didn’t feel like cooking after, so it was great to have these handy.

Broccoli beef: I actually used a piece of chuck roast for this, sliced very thin. A secret to tenderizing beef like this for asian recipes is baking soda. Sounds weird, but it works. Something about changing the ph softens the proteins. Anyway, thin sliced beef in a bowl, seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and garlic powder, white pepper, a little soy sauce, corn starch, and a sprinkling of baking soda. Let that all sit for a couple of hours. This time I seasoned the broccoli with sesame oil and oyster sauce. I spread all those out on a couple of sheet pans and cooked in a 400 degree oven for maybe 20-ish minutes, stirring and turning over about halfway through. You can do the beef and the broccoli all on one pan, but I’m cooking a large quantity so I spread it out over two.

Crispy salt & pepper tofu: My recipe for this tofu is here. The difference this time though was that I deep fried it instead of using a pan on the stove. I got a deep fryer for Christmas and it’s great. It makes this recipe much quicker and less messy. My original recipe used kosher salt and white pepper, but I’ve since discovered Penzey’s Szechuan pepper salt and it kicks this dish up a notch. The Szechuan pepper is not spicy but it has such a unique flavor and really makes this amazing. I make a lot of this because we love it. It’s delicious leftover too, just not still crispy.

That’s all for this week. Enjoy.

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.

That’s all for this week!

Family Meal Plan #26

Welcome to our family menu!

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.

You can find all of our past meal plans here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

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On this menu:

We’re getting into fall meals now, slower cooked things, more sauces and spices, foods that just sound warm and cozy. Here’s what we ate last week:

• Moroccan pork butt & roasted veggies

• Broiled salmon, roasted broccoli, steamed rice

• Shredded pork tacos

• Clean out the fridge pasta casserole

• Homemade pizza

• Bolognese with homemade pasta

• Japanese Curry with chicken and vegetables

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

Moroccan Spiced Pork Butt

I talked about this one last week, so you can read that detail here.

Salmon, broccoli, rice

I see so many delicious recipes for salmon but honestly I think most of them are a waste of time. If I’m going to spend the money on good fish, I want to taste the fish. I cook salmon a very simple way 99% of the time. Seasoned only with a little salt, on a sheet pan in the top third of the oven, broil for 5-7 minutes depending on how thick it is.

With this salmon we had roasted broccoli. This time the broccoli was seasoned with sesame oil, fish sauce, and a salt & Szechuan pepper blend.

Shredded pork tacos

For this I sliced some pepper and onions and tossed those with olive oil, salt, and cumin, and cooked them in the oven until soft. Then I added the leftover pork from earlier in the week and seasoned it with a bit more cumin and let all cook together until the onions were caramelized and the meat was hot and getting browned around the edges.

For a side I tried a packaged cuban black beans and rice. I’ve never used this before and it was really good and so easy!

Pasta casserole

This was one of those clean out the fridge kind of meals. I had three different kinds of leftover pasta, some leftover meatballs, and a few bits of other things. I chopped up the meatballs and added some tomato sauce, mixed in all the leftover pasta, a bit of cottage cheese, a bag of frozen spinach, and put it all in a casserole dish and topped with bread crumbs and cheese.

Bolognese and homemade pasta

For both the pasta and the sauce I used recipes out of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. It’s my favorite cookbook and my go-to for basically everything. I don’t follow the bolognese recipe exactly, but it’s a really good starting point. I added sweet potato to it this time, instead of carrots, and I used a combination of ground beef, ground pork, bacon, and a little Italian sausage.

Japanese curry

This Japanese curry is one my family’s favorites and it is requested often. I love this sauce because it’s easy and you can make a delicious meal with basically whatever protein and vegetables you have in your house. This time I used chicken breasts, eggplant, zucchini, cabbage, and onions. I always keep this sauce mix in my pantry. It comes in a variety of spice levels but we usually stick with the mild flavor. It’s not traditional, but I usually add a can of coconut milk to the sauce, we like it that way. Served with steamed rice, this time I made brown rice for something different. It’s even better leftover.

That’s the week!

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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 the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #25

Welcome to our family menu!

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.

You can find all of our past meal plans here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

On this menu:

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

This one is a little different because this wasn’t just one week - here is a list of some of the things that have been on our dinner table lately, in no particular order:

• Pasta blanco (white pasta), creamed spinach, nuggets

• Teriyaki tofu

• White pasta, nuggets, creamed spinach, and a big salad

• Slow cooker butter chicken, with coconut tofu saag

• Yellow coconut curry chicken meatballs with udon noodles

• Moroccan spiced pork butt with roasted vegetables

• Moroccan spiced roasted veggie soup

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

White pasta, creamed spinach, nuggets.

Not every meal is gourmet. Sometimes nuggets from the freezer are where it’s at, paired with some quick and easy pasta and spinach and it’s a balanced meal that everyone loves.

The pasta: I like to call it pasta blanco because it feels fancy, and my Italian family told me that’s what they call pasta served with butter and cream. But let’s be honest, we’re basically talking about buttered noodles here. This version is a staple in my house, I make this at least once a week, often twice. I use my no drain pasta method - butter, 1 pound of pasta, 4 cups of water, a couple pinches of salt, cream. Melt the butter, get the pasta coated, add the water and salt. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the water is mostly absorbed, then add a bit more butter, a splash of cream, and more salt if needed. It’s quick and easy. I make this for the kids but every time I serve this and adults are around the adults devour even more than the kids. It’s just simple and satisfying and comforting, and goes with basically everything.

With this meal I made a quick and simple creamed spinach. This is just a bag of frozen spinach in a pan with about a tablespoon of butter and a little salt, stir it around until the spinach is getting hot and some of the liquid is cooking off, add a bit more butter, a splash of cream, a dash of nutmeg if you have it, pepper, and a little parmesan cheese if you like.

Teriyaki Tofu bowls

This teriyaki tofu is one of the easiest things I make and maybe one of the most popular in our house. If you think you don’t love tofu, I encourage you to try it this way. Tofu really just takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it in, so cooking it with a really flavorful teriyaki sauce makes it taste amazing. For this meal I literally just slice the tofu, put it in a baking dish, and pour teriyaki sauce over the top, and cook in a hot oven (375-400) for 15 -20 minutes until the sauce is bubbly and the edges of the tofu are getting a bit browned.

You can do this with a favorite bottled teriyaki sauce or make your own. It’s surprisingly easy to make, you can try my favorite recipe here. I usually try to keep a jar of this in my fridge at all times, because it makes for such an easy weeknight dinner. It’s an easy recipe to customize to suit your tastes.

I serve this with steamed rice and a variety of other toppings & sides. This time we had broccoli and edamame (both from the freezer), spring greens, sliced tomato and cucumber, steamed rice, and furikake. Furikake is a Japanese seasoning for rice that my kids love - there are different varieties but our favorite is this one that is a mix of dried seaweed, sesame seeds, a little salt and sugar. It’s a simple way to make a scoop of plain rice a lot more interesting.

Slow cooker butter chicken, and a coconut saag with tofu.

I very loosely followed this recipe for the butter chicken. I used riced califlower so it all cooked into the sauce, and I never bother with unsalted butter for things like this, salted butter is better. I also used pieces of pre-cut frozen chicken breast, I got a bag of them at Costco and it made this really easy. For the saag - which is a greens/spinach dish - I mostly made it up as I went along, but this recipe is pretty close to how I made mine, with frozen spinach and minus the chili paste and sugar. I really liked both of these and will definitely do them again. Maybe next time I’ll take a picture.

Yellow coconut curry chicken meatballs with udon

I’ve been obsessing over the idea of this meal for a few weeks, ever since I saw this recipe. I didn’t really follow that recipe, but I made up my own and I was very happy with it. We all love meatballs here, so it’s fun to try new ways to make them.

This dish will work with essentially any asian style chicken meatball recipe you like, and any coconut curry recipe - just make those two and put them together with some veggies and serve over noodles. For mine I didn’t really follow a recipe, but I made the meatballs with mostly ground chicken and a little ground pork, green onions, mushrooms, ginger, garlic, panko breadcrumbs, and soy sauce. I browned the meatballs first in the oven before adding them to the curry sauce. I made a fairly basic yellow curry sauce with lots of onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander and a bit of salt, some chicken broth and coconut milk, and thickened with a little corn starch. I added the cooked meatballs to the curry sauce along with some chopped up bok choy and green onions, and then served it all with cooked udon noodles. It was seriously delicious.

Honestly you could probably do this with frozen meatballs from the store (I just wouldn’t buy an “Italian” style for this) and a packaged curry sauce and I bet it would be almost as good and take you about 5 minutes to throw together.

Moroccan spiced pork butt and roasted veggies.

Pork butt is one of my favorite things to cook when people are craving a big pile of meat. And this was also one that was taking up space in my freezer. I’ve done this one a few times and it never disappoints. I shared a basic recipe here for how I do the meat, and here is the spice rub recipe I use. I cooked the meat on top of a pile of chopped veggies - this time it was cauliflower, sweet potatoes, red and yellow peppers, onions, and garlic. I like to serve this with flatbread, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, and a few sauces. This time I did a simple tzatziki style cucumber yogurt sauce with preserved lemon, and a roasted carrot lentil hummus.

The hummus was a happy accident. I made a roasted carrot hummus a while back that I loved and I was going for something similar to that. Basically you just take any favorite hummus recipe and swap out some or all of the the garbanzos for roasted carrots and garlic. It’s an amazing flavor. This time I intended to do it with the roasted carrots and garbanzos, but after I got everything else in the food processor I went to the pantry for a can of garbanzos only to find that I didn’t have any! So I used a can of lentils instead. It turned out great actually and I will totally do that again. I doubt anyone could tell the difference.

Moroccan spiced roasted vegetable soup.

Honestly my family doesn’t love the roasted vegetables with the pork as much as I do, so there’s always a lot leftover. For the second time now I have turned all those soft roasted veggies into an amazing soup. This is so easy - literally just dumping all the leftover veggies in a pot, with a lot of the juices from cooking, and enough broth (this time I used homemade chicken broth) to get the consistency right. I heated it all up and pureed with my immersion blender, added a dash more seasoning, and that’s it.

That’s the week!

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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 the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #24

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.

You can find all of our past meal plans here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

On this week’s menu:

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

• Sunday: Burgers

• Monday: Chicken sausages and zucchini patties

• Tuesday: Chicken posole

• Wednesday: Leftovers

• Thursday: Cabbage roll casserole

• Friday: Frozen pizza and bag caesar salad

• Saturday: Slow cooker Moroccan chicken

• Sunday: Cajun spiced meatballs, roasted tomato sauce, pasta

• Extra: banana chocolate chip muffins

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

Sunday: an easy meal of frozen burgers. I had both chicken patties and salmon burgers from Costco, so I just tossed those on the grill and served with the usual burger fixings.

Monday The packs of chicken sausages from Costco, tossed on a baking sheet and roasted until browned and splitting, along with some zucchini fritters and pasta. I make my zucchini fritters very much like the ones in this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, although sometimes I add in another veggies that need to be used, like cabbage or onions or broccoli.

Tuesday Chicken posole. Posole (or pozole) is a Mexican stew, think of it a bit like a tortilla soup, but what makes it posole specifically is the addition of hominy. I have a recipe for a pork posole posted here, but this one was even easier - basically just chicken broth, enchilada sauce, canned hominy, some cabbage and onions. What really makes is great is all the toppings - chips, sour cream, cheese, I like shredded cabbage, green onions.

Wednesday is our usual leftover night.

Thursday I used the leftover sausages from Monday and chopped them up and mixed with rice, cabbage, and some fresh tomato sauce and baked it all together with bread crumbs on top. We can call it a cabbage roll casserole, because the flavor and texture of the cabbage & rice and tomato reminded me of those cabbage rolls my grandma used to make. No real recipe here, and it was just ok, not sure if I’d make it again.

Friday was a frozen pizza night after the end of a very full week.

Saturday was the star of the week. A new recipe that is instantly a new favorite. I made up a Moroccan spiced slow cooker chicken and it was one of the best things I’ve made in a long time and so easy!

Sunday was another new one - Creole spiced meatballs. I don’t have a recipe but really it was too easy. I combined ground beef and turkey in the usual meatball fashion, with some diced onion, eggs, and breadcrumbs. For seasoning I just used a whole bunch of my favorite Creole seasoning, which made it all really easy and very tasty. We had these with an amazing fresh roasted tomato sauce, pasta, and some frozen spinach that I cooked with just a little butter and salt.

Extra meal prep: I made up a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins for school morning breakfasts this week. I’ve adapted this recipe so many times that I felt it was time for a new write up, so there’s a new blog post up with this version of the banana bread recipe.

That’s the week!

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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 the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #23

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.

You can find all of our past meal plans here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

On this week’s menu:

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

• Sunday: Leftovers

• Monday: Baked mac & cheese, lemon dijon chicken breasts, tomato, basil, and avocado salad

• Tuesday: Chicken tacos

• Wednesday: Leftovers

• Thursday: Seared ahi tuna bowls

• Friday: Homemade pizza and a big salad with my lemon vinaigrette.

• Saturday: Costco chicken pot pie & salad

• Sunday: Burgers

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

Sunday we had leftovers. A little unusual for us but I had cooked so much the week before that the fridge was too fun with leftovers to make anything new. Yay for me - I get an extra night off from cooking!

Monday I was actually again using up some leftovers. I don’t always figure the amount of pasta right, so I had a lot of already cooked pasta that needed to be used. So I made a quick baked Mac & cheese with riced broccoli and a bread crumb crust. You can see this one on Instagram for a little more description of how I made it.

To go with the pasta I also cooked some chicken breasts. I like to cook extra chicken because we use it up in all kinds of ways for lunch. I did these similar to my lemon-dijon chicken thighs recipe, but cooked at 350 convection for 30 minutes.

I made a quick salad with some tomatoes and basil from the garden, a couple ripe avocados, a little shallot, and dressed with just balsamic vinegar and a lemon olive oil.

Tuesday was chicken tacos again. This time I took some already cooked chicken, chopped it up a bit, and added it to a pot with enchilada sauce to simmer for a while. Very easy and we had it with all the usual taco fixings.

Wednesday is our usual leftover night.

Thursday I made one of our all time favorite meals: Seared Ahi Tuna bowls. If you can get some nice pieces of ahi tuna, this is a great simple way to prepare it that feels like a high end restaurant meal but is actually super quick for a weeknight dinner. I’ve got the tuna recipe here. I serve this with a spread of options so everyone can make their own bowl. We have rice & mixed salad greens, tomatoes, edamame, scallions, and tofu. Sometimes it’s just cubed plain tofu but this time I made my favorite Crispy Salt and Pepper tofu. I always have to at least double that recipe because my family devours it. I also made a quick cucumber salad and a simple soy ginger dressing, I don’t have exact recipes for the salad and dressing, but loose directions for those are below.

Friday was homemade pizza. I make a sourdough crust. No recipe, sorry, I just make it by feel. I usually make four pizzas - two thick crust pan pizzas and two thin crust pizzas cooked on a baking steel. Everybody is happy.

Saturday we had Costco chicken pot pies and a salad. If you’ve never tried the chicken pot pie at Costco then you definitely must. I make a pretty darn good homemade pot pie, but the Costco ones are equally amazing and already made for you. They are a treat for me to have a night off from cooking. I always buy two because we will eat a whole one for dinner but the family always wants leftover so I have to get a second one so we can have it leftover.

Sunday we had burgers. I had a variety of frozen burgers so I cooked up several of a few different kinds - chicken, salmon, and veggie.

That’s the week!

Here are those loose recipes for the cucumber salad and soy-ginger dressing I mentioned above:

Cucumber salad:

• Thin sliced cucumbers

• Shallot

• Seasoned rice vinegar

• Sesame oil

• Soy sauce

• Optional: Garlic, sesame seeds, Furikake

This is one of my favorites and super easy to make. I usually do 2 big cucumbers and one small shallot, a couple tablespoons of the seasoned rice vinegar (important that you get the seasoned one, otherwise you’ll want to add a little sugar), a couple dashes each of sesame oil and soy sauce. Taste and adjust the dressing to your liking. You can add a little garlic, some sesame seeds, or our favorite is Furikake, which is a Japanese seasoning blend usually served on rice but I think it adds a nice flavor to the cucumbers.

Soy Ginger Dressing:

• Soy sauce

• Sesame oil

• Avocado or other neutral oil

• Fresh ginger

• Seasoned rice vinegar

• Lemon juice

This is another that I usually don’t measure. You can make as much as you like, it’s great on salad or as a dipping sauce for anything Asian. I generally do about equal parts oil to vinegar/lemon/soy. For the oil half you can use all sesame oil if you like that flavor, or use a mixture of sesame plus another neutral oil. For the other half I do about equal parts soy sauce, rice vinegar, and lemon juice. I like the bright tang of lemon juice, but you can play around with this and see what you like. The real star of this is the fresh ginger - grate it very fine, I use a micro grater. Start with maybe a half a teaspoon to about a cup of the oil+vinegar and see if you want more. We like ours rather gingery.

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 the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #22

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.

And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

On the menu this week:

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

• Sunday: Big meatballs, pasta, spinach

• Monday: Teriyaki chicken and broccoli, teriyaki tofu, brown rice

• Tuesday: Chicken tacos

• Wednesday: Leftovers

• Thursday: Thai inspired lemongrass soup with steamed rice

• Friday: Homemade pizza and a big salad with my lemon vinaigrette.

• Saturday: Chicken shawarma, flatbread, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, tahini dressing, tzatziki, carrot hummus (so good! see below)

• Sunday: Moroccan spiced pork shoulder, roasted veggies, couscous, kale salad with tahini dressing

• Lunch: Moroccan spiced roasted veggie soup with the leftover veggies

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.

Reply to the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #20

My weekly family meal plans are the actual menus I have used for our family dinners. I hope you find them helpful. 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, but a lot of my cooking is just figuring it out as I go, based on many years of cooking experience. If you ever have a question about anything you see here, please reach out (lots of ways to contact me below).

The menu for the week:

I don’t usually make totally separate dinners for adults and kids, but were planning for guests and the timing was going to be challenging so I needed to be flexible.

• Monday: Gumbo

• Tuesday: Ground beef tacos (are we calling these white people tacos now??)

• Wednesday: Leftovers

• Thursday: chicken & tofu stir fry

• Friday: frozen pizza for kids, Costco street taco kit for adults

• Saturday: Costco chicken pot pie for kids, dinner out for adults

• Sunday: Salmon, rice, green salad with berries & lemon vinaigrette.

• Monday: Chicken thighs with basil & garlic, zucchini patties, sliced tomatoes, white pasta.

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 the newsletter email, post a comment, or hit me up on social media. I’ll do my best to answer, and your question could be featured in my newsletter.

Don’t forget to follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads for daily tips and inspiration, and subscribe to the newsletter to get my weekly updates right in your inbox.

➡️ 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 #21

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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 one member of the family is trying to eat a little different from the family is the same as my first tip in my latest Ask Lisa post about how to meal plan for a picky eater - it’s deconstructed meals. Click over to read that post for a little more explanation of how I approach this type of meal planning.

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.

I’ve included links to pictures and recipes where I have them.

Here is the menu:

• 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

Make sure you are following me on Instagram and Facebook to see the actual meals we are having in (almost) real time.

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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 the newsletter 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 #19

On the menu this 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

Family Meal Plan #18

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

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

Family Meal Plan #16

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.

Make sure you are subscribed to my weekly newsletter so you never miss a meal plan update.

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.

Meal plan #15: 7-day dinner menu

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

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

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. 

Meal Plan #13: a full month menu

Another full month meal plan, but this time I’m showing you how I do it by hand in a journal.

I’m all about full month meal planning, I think it helps save a lot of money and avoid getting in a rut. Sometimes my meal planning is fancy, and sometimes it’s quick and dirty, like this. In my bullet journal I have just pasted a blank month calendar template. I’ve written before about how I try to meal plan with a general “theme” for each day of the week. It helps me focus and figure out ideas. So as you can see in the picture, I write the theme above the day column for the month.

I typically only plan out the main dish for the meal. The sides tend to sort themselves out. I always try to make sure we have a vegetable, so if there isn’t a vegetable component of the main dish then I will usually either just add a salad or some roasted veggies.

meal plan #12: one month family dinner plan

A meal plan for a family using a monthly meal planning template.

Drum-roll please....My meal plan for four weeks.  

Yes, four weeks.  I know, you're thinking "how does she do that?".  But honestly I find it to be easier than having to figure it out every week.  I don't do this because I am super mom.  I do it because I am lazy, and I don't like having to do the same work over and over again every week.

I figure it out once, and I'm good for a month.  And if I don't feel like doing it again, I can just use the exact same one.  It's been a month since we've had these meals, so they will all seem fresh again.  Seriously I think you could probably use the same four week meal plan all year long, and maybe just make a few seasonal adjustments (like, I'd take out the soup in the summer and maybe do a salad bar instead, and I'd probably swap the roast chicken for grilled chicken). 

We are in the middle of this right now, I'm just a little behind on posting.  It's working really well so far and making my life a lot easier. For some reason, printing on colored paper just makes it seem more important. 

Rather than bore you with all the lengthy explanation in this post, I wrote a whole other post about the why and how of meal planning for four weeks at a time.  

You can read all about it here (or click that image over there ==>>)

But for this post, I thought I'd just cut to the chase and get you straight to what's on my plan. This is an easy meal plan for our busy family. Down below I've got a little more detail on some of the dinners, and you'll find my Pinterest board with links to lots of recipe ideas for the things that are on my plan.  

And really I didn't mean what I said above about my longer meal planning post being boring.  I think it's all pretty useful information and you should totally read it.  I don't want you to just copy my meal plan, I want you to feel really good about making your own.  So go for it - and be sure to share it with me!

Now, on to this month's plan: 

View fullsize

What about the recipes?

Most of my meals are not following recipes. They are just old standards that I know how to cook and I know everybody likes. If you are just getting started with meal planning, or if you just have a super busy life, then I highly recommend that most of the meals you put on your plan be these kinds of meals.  Don't make life harder on yourself than necessary. Cook what you know and love. 

But when I do need a recipe I consult Pinterest. I think it's the easiest place to look for lots of good options. 

I've put together a Pinterest board for you to follow - this is where I will be posting any recipes I am using for the month, as well as a lot of recipes that I will use for just an idea or a guideline, but maybe not follow exactly.  

If you want to follow along with my plan, this should give you a good idea of the kinds of things I'm cooking.  If you see something on my plan that I haven't pinned a recipe for, please feel free to ask me for one.  I'd be happy to help you find one if I can.

A little more detail about some of the meals on this month's plan:

• The One Pot Macaroni and Cheese is my own recipe.  I haven't done a blog post about it yet, but I'm working on it.  I did post it on FB and Instagram though, and I've put a link to that on the Pinterest board.  I need to get that recipe actually blogged, I think it might be my masterpiece.  ;-) 

• For ground beef tacos, I actually don't even use taco seasoning most of the time. Just ground beef, browned and seasoned with salt and pepper.  Put some meat in a warm corn tortilla and top it with the works.  It's simple and wonderful. Also, bonus to keeping it simple - if you brown up a bunch of ground beef and keep the seasoning more generic, then you can use it for another meal.  You'll see that I have beef tacos one night, and Asian rice bowls the next night.  Simple browned ground beef, reheated with a bit of soy sauce added, makes an awesome addition to a simple rice bowl.  But if you really want a taco recipe, I have included a couple of ground beef taco links on my Pinterest board. 

• Brat balls are my kids favorite.  I think we made this name up. Take raw bratwursts, squeeze them out of the casings into small meatball-sized lumps, and simmer in a pot of simple tomato sauce. It couldn't be easier.  It only takes about 15 minutes for them to be fully cooked, but if you let it simmer longer than you really get tons of flavor in the sauce.  I like to let them simmer for at least an hour if I can. Do this in your slow cooker if you like. 

• For the enchiladas and Mexican pizzas I make my own sauce. I've just found that even the most mild canned for jarred sauces are too spicy for my kids.  With with my homemade sauce they devour it up.  I make a big batch and freeze it.  I'll share that recipe ASAP, but in the mean time I've posted a similar recipe to my Pinterest board. 

• The chicken curry I usually make is with a packaged sauce mix. It's one of the very few packaged things I buy. It's an easy weeknight meal. We like a Japanese Golden Curry sauce. You just brown some meat, saute veggies, add the sauce with some broth and coconut milk. It's easy and so good. My secrets: the box says to add water, I use broth and coconut milk instead.  And I add a diced up ripe banana.  Trust me on this one.  It cooks in and dissolves and you'll never know it's there.  But it gives a wonderful hint of sweetness and a depth of flavor that you won't be able to identify. 

• Pot Sticker soup - think of it like Wonton soup, except its a big time shortcut because I'm using store bought pot stickers instead of wontons.  

• Coconut rice: this is just steamed rice with a can of coconut milk used in place of some of the water. I usually cook a lot of rice - three cups rice and 6 cups liquid.  So replace and equal amount of that liquid with a can of coconut milk, and add a little salt. 

• Salmon burgers are the frozen ones from Costco.  Also, a tip: these are great to keep on hand as an easy protein. Crumble one up on your rice bowl, or cut in pieces and put it in your taco or your lettuce wrap.  

Let me know if you have any questions!

Meal Planning Template: one month dinner plan template

Easy meal planning template to help you plan a full month of family meals.

I've been meal planning off and on for a long time.  As I've gone along, I've tried a lot of different methods and templates and I have really been refining my process as I go.  I've got it down pretty well now, to a system that I think is very quick and easy and actually makes meal planning doable for anyone, so I wanted to share with you a little about why and how I do it. 

First of all, I'll tell you up front: I'm never going to give you a precise meal plan with 28 recipes you've never tried before, and quantities, and a list of exactly what you should buy.  There are lots of sites out there that will be happy to sell you that.  But I actually think that isn't really going to work for most people.  Every family is so different. Everyone's tastes are different, schedules are different, needs are different.  I think that trying to follow a meal plan designed by and for someone else is going to set you up for disappointment.  You're not going to keep up with it and you are going to feel like you failed.  I don't want you to do that!  I want you to feel really good about making meal planning work for you.  I want you to feel that sense of accomplishment of knowing that you did it! 

The old idea of "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."  But my version would be "Give a mom a meal plan and you'll feed her kids for a week.  Teach a mom to meal plan and you'll feed her kids for a lifetime". (or at least a whole month!)

But why....

ORGANIZATION IS THE KEY TO BEING ABLE TO ACTUALLY ENJOY THE MOTHERING.

One of the biggest things I've learned as a mother of a lot of kids is that organization and planning are the key to keeping your head above water.  I've always been a pretty organized person by nature, but now I see it as critical to my sanity. Sure, you can get by without being organized, but I really believe that life is so much easier and more relaxed when everything is in its place, and you know ahead of time what needs to be happening and when.    

I find that I can enjoy my time with my kids so much more when I am not harried and disorganized and always running behind.  If I have a plan, and I know it will come together, then I can sit down on the floor and play with trains and fairies and not have to worry about what comes next, because I know I've already got it figured out. 

Why meal plan?

This whole idea couldn't be more true than in the area of family meal planning. Personally I find it very stressful to be approaching the end of the day having no idea what I am going to make for dinner, or to go to the store not really knowing what I'm shopping for. When I am out of the habit of meal planning, we don't eat as well and we spend too much.  I tend to shop to fill my fridge and pantry, with the goal of just having everything on hand to make whatever I might choose at the last minute.

But when I have a meal plan, shopping is easy and sticking to the budget is actually possible.  I work from my list and I don't impulse buy.  I can honestly say that in months when I am really on top of my meal planning I have spent almost half as much money on groceries as in the months when I am just buying whatever sounds good. 

Planning for a month changes everything.

No matter what 'system' you use, actually sitting down to do the plan can still be a bit of a chore.  So why not do this chore just once a month, instead of every week?  Think of the time you will save!  The real holy grail of meal planning, in my opinion, is to do it a month at a time.  When I do that, I LOVE it.  I love just looking at my plan and knowing what's for dinner for weeks to come. 

This is also the secret to saving money on groceries, and saving time on shopping.  If you buy for a month rather than a week, you can buy in bulk and plan multiple uses for larger quantities of foods.  When I plan this way I will go to Costco at the beginning of my month and buy all our meat and pantry items, and anything else that can be frozen. (My 'month' starts the week after my husband's mid-month paycheck - it's the check that we actually have some money to spend, because the mortgage and health insurance have been paid from the end of month check.)  I freeze meat, bread, tortillas, etc. and pull it out each week as I need it.  Then all I need to shop for each week is dairy and fresh produce, and whatever small things I might need for a particular recipe.  A big grocery trip and big bill once a month, but then just small grocery bills for several weeks after that. 

Give yourself a box to work in.

Whether you plan for a week or a month, one of my biggest keys to success is having a schedule of themes to follow. I assign a theme to each day of the week, according to our family schedule. We have days that are very full (with therapy and dance and soccer), and we have days with no extra plans. I work around those constraints to know which days I have time to cook and which days I don't, and choose my themes based on that. 

This is the schedule that's working for us right now:

• Sunday: Pasta (or something Italian-ish)

• Monday: Soup or stew (something I can make ahead in the slow cooker)

• Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! (or something Mexican-ish)

• Wednesday: Asian

• Thursday: Leftovers

• Friday: Pizza

• Saturday: Roast or grill some meat. 

When you do it this way, the meal planning seems so easy.  Now all I have to do is come up with 4 Pasta or Italian ideas, 4 soup or stew recipes, 4 Mexican meal ideas, and 4 Asian ideas... You get the idea.  It seems so much more manageable when I break it up that way.  I start with pencil and my ideas, and just start filling in boxes until it's all full. 

Of course this doesn't mean that you can't stray from your schedule. It's really there just to give you an easy place to start with coming up with ideas.  But if you have a recipe you want to try that doesn't fit your themes, then write it in. 

I follow a schedule for breakfasts and lunch too.  But those basically stay the same each week, so I don't plan individual meals against those.  For the kids breakfast I rotate through basically the same 5 things every week, maybe with a some slight variations.  I follow a theme for their lunches too.  So if you've paid attention you might notice that I always do breakfast-for-lunch on Wednesday, or some kind of sandwich on Friday.  That structure gives me a place to start, but the actual lunch is never really the same twice.  It works. 

Plan even more ahead, and be flexible.

I'm always looking at recipes.  It's just what I do. So if I come across an idea for something I want to make, then I want to add it to my plan.  On the back of my printed meal plan (which is always close by), I usually have a scribbled list under the heading "Next Month". I'll just jot down ideas as I come across them, and often by the time I get around to doing the next meal plan I've already got most of my ideas already figured out.  I also do the same for repeats - if I made something that was just a really big hit with the kids, then I definitely want to make that again. I'll just circle it on my plan, or add it to my "next month" list. 

The meal plan is never really totally set in stone.  Things get crossed off and rearranged.  Plans get changed.  But the nice thing about having planned and shopped ahead is that I've already got the food I need, so I can easily adjust to a change in plans.  If an appointment comes up, or a late meeting, I'll just push out a more complicated thing I had planned and pull out one of my quicker meal ideas instead.  By the end of the month my printed plan is always very well loved and scribbled on. 

What about the recipes?

I think a lot of people get stuck at meal planning because they think they have to have a new recipe to write in each box.  Don't do that to yourself! 

My meal plan consists of mostly old favorites, things I know how to cook without thinking about it, and things that I know my kids are going to eat. Honestly I only try a totally new recipe maybe a couple of times a month.  Often I try just a new or different twist on an old favorite - I know how to cook my version, but I will often look it up on Pinterest anyway, and try somebody else's version of an old favorite.

This is where the themes really helps. Once you have a general idea of what you're going to make, you can fill in a few old favorites under each category.  And then consult Pinterest for a few new ideas. 

I've got a ton of recipe ideas on my Pinterest boards.  If you're not already following me, you should be!  I also started a new board with links to recipes for the kinds of things that are on my current meal plan.  I think I'll add a new one each month, so you'll always have the archive of the recipes that went with each month's plan.

Ok, a lot of talk.  Now let's get to it. My templates.

click for the full Excel workbook

You can click each of the images below to get a pdf version if you want to just print it. But if you want to really go for it and edit your own, here is the link to the full excel workbook.  The workbook has three tabs - one is the filled out plan you see below, one is the blank template, and one is the blank grocery list template. You'll need Microsoft Excel to open it. 

Here is an example filled out four week plan, with daily themes: 

Here is the blank template