The weekly menu

Another post with our dinner meal planning.  Kinda.  These weeks have been weird with some nights away (visit to my parents’ house) and family staying with us and a few nights of me eating solo (Kyle doing business stuffs), which makes for a difficult game plan.  I totally relied on scrounging up leftover scraps to create not that innovative meals, but it was also in an attempt to be slightly more frugal after some splurging for birthday shenanigans.  These are the meals I’ve managed to capture over the past week (and a half?).

This salmon dish was from a long time ago.  We always have frozen salmon in the freezer.  I thawed three filets and made patty-cakes’ separately.  For the adults’ fish I made a faux hollandaise/aioli thing with mayo, mustard, and garlic infused olive oil.  I baked it with broccoli, too.

Yums.

Kyle was out of town this night so I made a Caesar salad with leftovers (rotisserie chicken from when Kyle’s parents were visiting, romaine lettuce, Caesar dressing, nooch, and avocado just for kicks).

Another leftover creation with quinoa, collards, and chicken apple sausage.  Similar to Mexican bowls and salmon dinners, this meal is an easy peasy go-to because we always always have chicken sausage on hand (it’s P’s favorite), quinoa in the pantry, and something green in the fridge.  More importantly it is a dish that every one of us likes and eats.

Collards are the bees knees.  We have a crap ton growing in the garden and P likes them both raw and cooked.

First time doing a whole chicken in the crock pot!

Last friday the Whole Foods #onedaysale was for organic whole chickens ($1.99/lb).  I put quartered onions, baby carrots, and as many cauli florets as I could fit on the bottom and then added the chicken on top (breasts down, not that it matters).  Poured some olive oil on, sprinkled on some salt and herbs (bay leaves, thyme, sage, pepper) and let it cook all day.  Easy as that!

It was the most tender thing ever and fell apart as I put a fork into it.

I split the leftover meat in half, reserving some for a recipe later in the week and leaving the rest on the pot with the remaining veggies and broth.  Then I added celery, rice, and water and let it cook overnight.  The next day I added a dash of heavy cream (we have it left over from the failed dairy trials) and viola – another meal!  I think this will be mostly for Kyle’s lunches because I don’t feel like testing my gut with dairy right now, but who knows.  I may just give in since my pregnancy symptoms are just as erratic as any IBS ones I have from time to time.

Burgers and spinach salad.  In the salad was avocado, slivered almonds, and pomegranate arils with a home-made lemon vinaigrette (with our meyer lemons).

Turns out, P loves burgers.  No shock there.  I’ve really only given him ground beef before, but I made his into a burger patty this time and he was super excited about it the whole time it was cooking.

The patties were: 1 lb organic grass fed ground beef, 1 egg, and salt…then after I shaped his and set them aside, I added white pepper and dried basil to ours.  I haven’t found any spices that are made in allergy free facilities so it’s hard to know what’s safe for P in terms of spices/seasonings.  In any event, he loved the burgers.

Kyle had his with cheese and BBQ sauce on a sourdough roll, but I had mine plain over the salad.  [I had a mini carb fest an hour before dinner because I graze in small portions all day long, so I didn’t feel like a bun]

This is a Cooking Light recipe for Kale Caesar Quinoa with Roasted Chicken.

I used a pre-made Caesar dressing from WF and leftover chicken and swapped walnuts for slivered almonds because of what we had on hand (and Kyle said he would prefer almonds to walnuts) and it was great.  I also nixed the parmesan cheese.  Yummy and easy.  Can you tell my preggo laziness is at it’s prime right now?  Energy level = negative four.

Salmon pasta with GF spaghetti and kale topped in a creamy dijon tarragon sauce I made up on the fly.

I didn’t measure anything (standard) but added Green Valley organic lactose free sour cream, dijon mustard, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, dried tarragon, garlic infused olive oil, salt and pepper in a jar and added it after P had had his share of the fish and noodles.

He ate most of my fish so that’s why my piece is so small.  I made up for it in chocolate later though.  🙂

For the record, we are NOT eating turtles.  But now P knows another letter.  I know, I’m random, but he just wants to learn all the time so the actual dinner menu got erased for an impromptu lesson.  Forgive the bragging, but I think he may be ready for kindergarden in a week.  😉

Another sausage skillet stir fry kind of meal.  These are just too easy and yummy to dismiss.  P ate every part of this including the wild rice which he thought was fun since we got a library book a few weeks ago called “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” and he figured the rice was the kind that Mr. Tiger ate.  Otherwise it was just broccoli and TJ’s chicken apple chardonnay sausage.

Since that potentially was too plain for Kyle’s palate I scrounged through the fridge and found the rest of this sauce (from the honey chipotle chicken bowls) to pour on top of our servings.  So glad I doubled that sauce – it’s been awesome to add to things here and there.

The last of the leftover chicken went into this roasted carrot, chicken and grape quinoa salad bowl.

I made a few tweaks.

I nixed the slivered almonds (on accident – I just forgot to add them at the end).

And I swapped Green Valley organic lactose free sour cream for plain greek yogurt (we had some on hand to use up).

And I used collards (from the garden) in place of the recipe’s suggested greens.

I loved the combo of roasted carrots and grapes and the cumin and parsley were a nice change from the usual flavors I choose to cook with.  Kyle and I were both into it and basically ate all four “servings” that night.  Portion control who?

In truth, I’m not sure how much I will both sharing weekly meal plans in the next few weeks because I’m going to start phoning it in with the cooking.  I am exhausted by pregnancy and with only a few weeks to go, I would rather conserve my energy for other more important things.  Trader Joe’s has so many simple recipes on their site that use their (ready to go) products so that’s where I am thinking most of our meals will come from.  If you have other way way easy meal ideas feel free to share.