The weekly menu

What.  A.  Week.

My little peach is having a rough one and it’s so hard to watch her be so miserable.  She’s normally such a happy baby, but ever since her 6 month shots she’s been fairly inconsolable.  If she’s not nursing, she’s not happy, which makes life with a toddler interesting.  I’ll spare details because I could vent forever, but I really only want to share the week’s eats, not the drama.  Just figured a little background might be necessary to explain why the dinner scene was not very elaborate.

Meatless Monday fo yo face.

This quinoa pesto bowl is (loosely) based on this recipe, which I saw once, bookmarked, and then never looked at again.  Meaning, I didn’t actually use that pesto recipe at all.

The pesto had kale, basil, parsley, garlic infused olive oil, walnuts, hemp seeds, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  No measurements but heavy on the oil.  I’m not sure if I mentioned it here before but Mr. P tolerates walnuts which is pretty fantastic news, but difficult to explain to him so we just don’t.  He still knows “no nuts” and I don’t know that he’s quite mature enough to comprehend the nuances of the kinds of nuts (although I could be wrong because he’s freakin’ brilliant).  Anyway, he helped me make this pesto by picking the basil from the garden.  I sneakily put the walnuts in the food processor before he saw them, but he also helped add the hemp seeds, salt and pepper and push the on and off/pulse button.  All this “helping” got him so excited that he wanted the meal right away (we were making it right after he woke up from his nap) so he had quinoa and pesto for lunch (not dinner like the rest of us).  Ha!  I love that he’s so into cooking!

I added the pesto to quinoa, stirred it all in, and then fried eggs the second before serving that evening. Kyle’s got parmesan too.

P had leftovers (the ones that I would have given him for lunch had he not eaten the pesto quinoa then).

Leftover grilled salmon, sautéed zucchini and bell peppers, and an unpictured bowl of rice with olive oil and salt.

Dessert!!  I really like these dark chocolate covered almonds that I got in my last Thrive order.  Totally going to reorder this coming week.  [They are now done-zo]

Paired with more chocolate (Divine mint infused bar) and candied ginger (also from my Thrive Market order).

I also baked double chocolate chip cookies for my K love.  Sometimes the baking bug strikes on the late night.  I never get an objections from my other half so I just go with it.

Tuesday was another recipe from It’s All Good.  PP going strong with the Asian chicken meatballs.

I couldn’t find organic ground chicken so I subbed ground turkey.  I also doubled the recipe because we eat a lot.  And used tamari to make it GF.

P helped by grating ginger and stirring.  And putting the lid on the pan.  😉

On the side I sautéed broccoli and carrots in oil and tamari.  Kyle and I used the leftover miso almond sauce from the weekend as a dipping sauce but the meatballs were so good they didn’t really even need it.

We all loved the meatballs.

Loved.  Six enthusiastic thumbs up from the family for Gwyneth’s recipe.

Wednesday was a crazy crazy day.  Which meant I turned to comfort food.  And the freezer.  Enter Vicolo pizza.

It has dairy and gluten and I didn’t even care.  I was so over the day.

We got these from Costco a while ago but shoved them in the freezer.  For a long time Costco stopped carrying our favorite Vicolo pizza, which was the vegetarian one with goat cheese (they only offered a sausage one instead).  Then we saw this Organic Spinach with Feta & Fresh Tomatoes a few months ago and got really excited.  It’s not the one we used to buy, but it’s still vegetarian, which is why we got it.  However I’m sad to say, I didn’t think it was as good.

It was too tangy – like the salty feta cheese wasn’t balanced out by other ingredients – and made it easy to eat a mere two slices.  P was kinda confused why we were eating different foods, which goes to show you how nice it’s been to eat the same thing (together) as a family.

P had leftovers – pork, broccoli and carrots, and pom arils.  Plus quinoa with olive oil.  He had seconds of the veggies and then had watermelon after.  I never mention this but I always give P a fruit after dessert – either dried or fresh.  It’s like a dessert (except he doesn’t know what the word “dessert” means, so he just sees it as the last course of his dinner).  He loves dates, dried apricots, and strawberries the most so I usually save those for dinner (as opposed to giving them to him for other meals/snacks during the day).  He’s easy to please.

Thursday was another doozy of a day, but I had my mom’s help for swimming in the morning.  We skipped her lessons and just came home after his, but she was still off the rest of the day.  Her fever returned and I basically spent the afternoon/evening trying to juggle entertaining the kiddos with cooking.  We made it to the park behind our house for a break while the onions simmered away, but I didn’t realize it was in the high 90s until we were already there so I kept it short.  Just enough time for P to run around and climb and use burn off some steam, but not too much to overheat V.

Got this mustard from Thrive.  It’s the perfect amount of dijon.  Mmmm…

Kyle loves creamy dijon chicken, so I added this bookmarked recipe to the weekly menu and then kinda did my own version of it.  I used both Earth Balance and garlic infused olive oil, nixed the cream, and added cornstarch in the end to thicken it all up.

My mini sous chef helped by adding thyme and parsley.  He also enjoyed watching me chop the onion with my silly goggles on. 😛

Served with rice and peas.

He had mashed avocado in his rice (in case you’re wondering why they are green).  He also ate the onions from my portion and had seconds of chicken.

Friday was leftover night.  Despite the fact that I pack Kyle’s lunches (usually with leftovers) we had too many odds and ends in small amounts in the fridge to justify making a new meal.

Plus I love ridding a bunch of tupperware…it’s such fridge purging therapy.  I’m a freak, I know.

Mine is above – leftover spring rolls and meatballs.

P finished off the pork, broccoli, watermelon, and had a few bites of my meatballs.  Plus a bunch of other random stuffs.

Kyle had the last of the sausage, kale, and sweet potato dish I made last week.  I also made couscous for him to bulk it up.

Let’s hope the weekend brings better health.  The house is way too low on chocolate to continue in this fashion.