Meatless Monday…and Saturday and Sunday

Kyle was out of town Thursday through Monday and since I wasn’t cooking for our whole family, I found it harder to meal plan.  It’s weird.  I never understood the “cooking for one” dilemma previously, but it’s definitely easier to turn to less stellar options when you are only feeding yourself.  I can’t really figure out why I think this is the case.  Maybe because it’s annoying and hard to make one serving of something?  Is it though?  What did I used to do?  Go to the WF hot bar?  Probably.  I mean I could still make a full meal for just me and P…leftovers aren’t the end of the world…but there’s also the mental road block of feeling like it’s a hassle to prepare a huge thing for one person (he doesn’t eat assembled meals and I always keep at least some variety of his mis en place ingredients are pretty much always prepped and ready to go, so it’s kinda just me I’d be cooking for).  I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I kept ruling out dinner options because I just felt they were an unnecessary to-do given the party-of-one situation.  Big salad bowls with a bunch of random fridge stuff is what I do for lunch, but to do that again for dinner…I dunno, it just feels lame.  I guess I like cooking for a family now.

I wasn’t really going anywhere with that train of thought.

I’ll share this (family) meatless Monday meal in a sec, but first I’ll blab a bit about the weekend and those meals.

So the crappy thing about the weekend was I got some bizarre food poisoning slash GI bug (I KNOW!  AGAIN!!) and felt like death for most of Friday night and all of Saturday.  So freaking hideous.  I ate very little on Saturday, and despite having access to the entire Whole Foods prepared foods section (post-grocery shopping treat for me) I really wasn’t that into anything I saw.  I reluctantly chose a tofu dish with some rice and broccoli, but really wasn’t excited about it in the least.  My stomach was definitely not in the mood for food.  The only thing that sounded halfway decent was green juice, but I didn’t get any…

I hemmed and hawed about whether or not eating this would be a good idea or not, but in the end I’m glad I ate it because (a) I enjoyed the flavor and forbidden (allergenic for P) ingredients; and (b) it didn’t hurt my stomach any more than it was already suffering (and I felt like I needed the calories).

The good thing about the weekend was I finally got this in the mail!

I’ve been lusting after this new cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen (along with Isa Does It and a few others) for a while now.  And I finally decided to just buy it for myself (truth be told I was waiting for Mother’s Day to come just in case, but apparently I’m not very good at dropping clues about cookbooks since I talk about food 99% of my waking hours).

I spent almost every moment the kids were sleeping to dive head first into the recipes.  I am so so excited to make, well, everything!  I have multiple bookmarked already.

The thing is, I’ve been really missing vegetarian (and vegan) fare.  And I’ve felt a yearning to return to it.  But it’s just so hard with all of P’s allergies.  It really doesn’t make sense for our family.  Especially since P loves meat.  Or at least he did.  He’s been kinda over it lately!  It’s so bizarre…first it was eggs…we used to go through two cartons a week and now we use a few for baking but otherwise nada.  I’m doing smoothies for breakfast and he’s doing whatever else.  No eggs.  Then he decided to break up with shrimp (another protein he used to take down by the ocean-full).  And lately it’s been chicken and pork too (more former faves)!  Even some of the processed things like chicken nuggets and sausage are out the window.  He still loves bacon, ground beef and a few others, but it’s definitely a big shift.  So I figured I may as well take advantage and make things I want since he isn’t digging the meat anyway.

P actually helped me pick out this recipe.  He likes looking at cookbooks too…ha.  In truth, he didn’t actually have a choice because I was browsing The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook while he was eating lunch so that I could get things started for our dinner later and I asked him what he wanted to eat.  I offered either brown rice or wild rice (he loves both) and he chose brown.  So then I flipped to the grain section of the book and read off some choices and ingredients.  He wanted carrots.  Soooo…

I cut a few corners to make it quicker (one of the several reasons the book is awesome is because it identifies which recipes are fast – in addition to vegan or gluten free).

I subbed kale for chard (we have SO much in the garden) and carrots for turnips (still have a lot of those too).  I also added the za’atar seasoning to the dish after P went to bed (it contains sesame seeds).

In terms of ingredients that P ate, he tried the turnips (not a fan), ate the greens raw (not roasted), ate a big bowl of rice mashed with avocado and olive oil and hep seeds, and refused eggs.  Good enough.

Chard, pre and post roasting.

Tofu on Saturday and a veggie rice bowl on Sunday, on a roll with the meatless meals…so why not continue with Monday night’s dinner too!?

So I did!

I bookmarked Kath’s Smoky Tofu Pasta Salad last week and as you can see it made it into the menu already.  Kyle was back home from his trip by Monday night so this was for both of us, but not P (he can’t have soy).

I made a few tweaks.  I used GF pasta (organic brown rice and quinoa from TJs) so P could have some before I dressed it.

And then I made the dressing lactose free by swapping the called for greek yogurt and using Green Valley organic lactose free sour cream.  And I added a lot more salt.

The best part about this was that it could be prepped in advance.  So even though P didn’t actually fall asleep during his nap time, I was at least able to use the quiet time while he was rolling around in his bed to make it and throw it in the fridge for later.

Oh hi tofu, you’re yummy.

Kyle and I both loved this.  I wouldn’t say it made 4-6 servings as Kath suggests, but perhaps that’s because Kyle and I don’t subscribe to “normal” portion sizes.

The rest of the weekly menu is a mix of vegetarian and meat-y fare, but I’m going to try to see how I can find a middle ground in balancing all of our dietary preferences and necessities going forward.