The weekly menu

I’m still way behind so I’m just trying to pump these posts out and share the eats.

This was a weekend breakfast so I got to sit and enjoy it a little slower than usual, but not too slow because we have swimming at 930 on Saturdays which is definitely a struggle from time to time.  V is a napping disaster, but whatever.

I couldn’t decide on which butter to use so I opted for both.  And used two forks in the process because I am too lazy to wash in between and obviously don’t want to cross contaminate the jars.

My sister came for the day so we all got lunch to bring home from farmer’s market (our post-swim tradition).

I got the “goat classic” from Fat Face, which I’ve gotten a few times before.  I also got a baguette from Flour Chyld Bakery.  I wish they were located in Davis so I could go there whenever I wanted.  They didn’t have the rolls I was looking for this time so the baguette was a consolation prize, but still lasted a few days paired with my kale salad lunches.

Kumquats still in bumper mode.  There are like hundreds more still on the tree.  Oy.

My sister stayed and watched (both!) kids while Kyle and I got out and tackled grocery shopping sans littles.  P slept through the entire afternoon but V took a bottle from her so that’s def something to celebrate.  And then we feasted on ribs and slaw for dinner.

P wasn’t into the ribs, so that was unexpected, but he did devour the cole slaw and seconds and thirds of it.

Dessert with a side of Housewives.  Now that’s a weekend done right.

A fresh banola batch under my belt made breakfast easy.  I’m loving the cream top full fat greek yogurt from TJs.  It doesn’t mess up my gut one bit.

Kale yeah.

If anyone is interested in a fun children’s book about food, I can definitely recommend Dragons Love Tacos which P got for his birthday.

It’s a cute story.  And despite living in California, P never knew what tacos were until we read it (shameful, really).  He knew every ingredient that went in the taco, naturally, but the shell and taco concept was foreign since he doesn’t eat anywhere but home and I’m not really in the business of frying my own taco shells just yet.  But anyway, he requested them after we had read the book a few times, so I added them to the weekly menu and voila!

He was a huge fan.  He started with one, even though he requested three.  And ended up eating…yep…three.  Pretty sure he ate more than I did.

I went back for a third, but still.  Impressive performance son.

He has requested it twice more since, so I can promise it will be a regular meal option.  Ours had ground beef, daiya cheese, lettuce, and avocado.  And “no spicy salsa” (you have to read the book).

Dessert plate.

Another morning, another batch of waffles.

This was equally as perfect as the last round, but I still didn’t write down the recipe.  Hand palm + face.  I think the thing that makes grain free waffles stick together so well and stay soft is making the batter in advance. The past few times I’ve made the batter at night and then stored it in the fridge overnight so the morning is really easy.  I just take it out first thing when I get up and then whenever it’s breakfast time, I get the waffle iron out and plug it in.  Game set match.

On this particular day I am SOOOOO glad I prepped this the night before.  I ended up having the most ridiculous night – chills, sweats, aches, all that jazz – and only 1.5 hours of shut eye overall.  And since Kyle was out of town, I basically spent the morning trying not to vomit or pass out.  It was bad.  Then I sucked it up, and took my kids to the zoo.  Because sometimes you can’t call in sick.

Lunch was the usual.  There was a (Flour Chyld) gluten free baguette on the side.

Things got better (for me) in the afternoon and I wound up getting some fresh air and exercise in when I took the kids out for a bike ride.

I pulled the bike trailer to Nugget market because who doesn’t want treats when they are sick?  I had planned on buying a yummy hot bar dinner because Kyle was out of town, but I ended up nixing the dinner and just getting kombucha.  New to me brand that I really liked.  We stopped at a park on the way home so P could kick around the soccer ball.

Since Kyle was gone I chose a meal that he would never tolerate.  As in cucumber.

All that was in this salad was chickpeas, avocado, and cucumber.  Then I added feta to mine.  P and I both loved this and bonded over some solo time since V was asleep.

Then I ate chocolate in bed until passing out at an embarrassingly early time.

Oh hi teeny tiny chocolate covered nothing.

I was hoping that my body was in recovery mode and an early bedtime would help me come back from the previous night/day’s yuck.  I thought that my clogged duct wouldn’t get worse, but in the end, it wasn’t just mastitis plaguing me.  Now I know that I was the first one of the family to get sick with an illness that ended up taking no prisoners, and it just happened to coincide with mastitis.  Double whammy, blahhhhhh.

Suddenly I heard V on the monitor and jumped out of bed to go nurse her.  But oh dude.  She was hot and wouldn’t stop crying and had no interest in milk.  WTF.  Then I looked at the clock.  It was 11:30!?!?!  So discombobulated.  What are the chances that my kid who sleeps through the night every every every every night would blow up the system the day I’m deathly sick and Kyle’s out of town.  This is parenting.  Sooooo, we had a rough night.  Again.  The next day she had a temp of 100 (as opposed to my 101.5), so I wasn’t convinced she had what I had as opposed to just teething.  Now, a week later, I know.  Hindsight yo.  But yeah, poor thing was not herself at. all.

Luckily my morning was full of yummy waffles and then I distracted both kids by hitting up the library.

Which got us to lunch – kale salad and leftover goat classic sandwich from market.

And then the bad news.  Kyle’s flight got cancelled.  Le sigh.  Rather than cook a meal for the two of us, I figured my energy could be conserved and better used elsewhere.  I made a kale salad for myself and served P the taco leftovers.  He was in heaven and I was too.  Win win.

Dessert in bed again.  With trashy bravo shows on the comp.  Dangerous habit.

Not to be overly dramatic, but the rest of the week was kinda the worst.  My health got moderately better but both little ones were SUFFERING so much.  It was awful.  I lost all social contact with the outside world and had my patience tested to the extreme (moody moody teary teary ahhhhhhh).

At least I still had some of the hamburger buns from Against All Grain on hand (I frozen half) because it was a real pick-me-up in the middle of an otherwise testy morning.

I toasted the halved roll and then added sun butter and banana slices (the rest of the banana was split between the three of us).

Since we are going to Hawaii in a month (!!!!) I feel like I should trial P with macadamia nuts.  I have been on a really big kick, adding them to my salads and snacking on them a bunch lately.  Must be deficient in selenium or something because my body craves them big time.  Or I’m just getting in the Hawaiian spirit.  🙂

The macadamia nuts from Thrive are pretty inexpensive, but you definitely have to snatch them up when they are available because they are frequently out of stock.

P requested this meal so even though it wasn’t in the plan I had everything on hand and just went with it.  Can’t deny a sick kiddo food if he’s in the mood to eat, ya know?

Especially when his request is salmon, broccoli and brown rice.

I got this Alter Eco dark almond bar from Thrive, too, but it’s not as good as the other Alter Eco favorite of mine (coconut chocolate toffee).  Don’t worry I ordered a few of those too.  Naturally.  I’ve tried several Alter Eco bars now, and the coconut toffee is just in it’s own league in my opinion.

The third chocolate bar on the plate is theo’s orange 70% dark which was good but didn’t hold up to the other orange infused chocolate bars I’ve loved lately (Lindt, for example).

This breakfast was eaten in, like, 3 different seatings, separated by hours.  We had a pre-school tour at a ridiculous hour and in order to get there on time with both kids clothed, fed, and napped (V), something had to give.  I had the batter made the night before so at least I got them on and off the griddle before we had to go, but I didn’t get to eat one until after the tour.  Since we had 15 minutes to burn between the tour and gymnastics, I came home to finish my breakfast.  I actually brought the plate to the car so I didn’t have to get them in and out again.  Ha.

That’s NuNaturals’ chocolate stevia syrup and sun butter on top, FYI. I’m almost all our of the NuNautral’s simple syrup.  Have you guys tried that stuff?  It’s so good and so easy to add to things that you’d put another sweetener in otherwise.  No weird after taste and it dissolves with the swirl of a spoon.  I wish they sold that on Thrive’s website.  Can someone get on that please??

Crunch-iferous lunch.  Baguette and carrots en el lado.

I made farro for dinner because it’s been sitting in the pantry for far too long and I figured Kyle and V could share it while P and I stuck to the leftover rice.  Kyle also finished off the broccoli from the night before, while P, V and I had zucchini.  Dijon chicken for the crowd with teeth.

I think our whole fam is a little chicken-ed out at the moment.  This dish was fine, but if I’m being honest, I really only wanted the zucchini.  Onward and upward.

I ordered more BARnana bites in my last Thrive shipment, but the bag was so small.  I finished them in no time (2 ish nights?) so obviously Costco’s bulk bags are more my scene.  They are so good.

Waffle topping change up!  I retried coconut butter and it didn’t make me nauseated this time.  I think it’s just super rich and so a little goes a long way.  I’m used to gobbling sun butter on my food and coconut butter is somehow too intense on my palate for that.  I dunno.

Ignore the vessel, I was too lazy to use a new bowl when I knew I was going to finish the rest of the salad.  That’s a party sized serving bowl FYI.  Standard Elise portion.

Lasagna soup for dinner using ground turkey instead of the sausage called for in the skinnytaste recipe.  Oh and obviously I nixed the cow cheese and used daiya instead.  Or the TJs knock off version, which isn’t nearly as good but melts and is allergy safe, so whatever.  I used home-made chicken stock, organic spinach, and tinkyada brown rice noodles.

Smelling good.

Smelling realllllly good.

Hello lover.  Come to my belly.

I had seconds of lasagna so my dessert was smallish (for my standards).  I guess two chunks of chocolate isn’t nothing. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

AAAAAND WEEKEND.

Last little bitty bits of waffles bulked up with sun buttahhhh.  Then off to swimming…Kyle went in this time so I got to stay dry.  We got coffee on the way to farmer’s market and then meandered through the stalls wishing I was Gwyneth Paltrow and could just buy local tulips, honey glazed walnuts, and babaganoush at random without giving it a second thought.

For lunch I was out of both avocado AND kale!?!?  WTF kind of rookie move is that.   I made do though before getting to the grocery store.  Organic Valley lactose free cream cheese is so good.  I could eat it by itself with a spoon no prob.

Paired with smoked salmon is yums and yums and yums.

We blew up V’s afternoon nap and instead hit up Costco and TJs to restock the house’s food sitch.

I had already made bacon that morning for the boys, so I combined that with extra chicken and avocado to mimic this Caesar.  We made a special stop at Nugget market too for a creamy Caesar dressing and after reading this post I had to give Ken’s a try to see if the hype was worth it.

Priority number one for getting to Costco??

Boo-ya.  Who wants to guess how long both of these one pound bags will last me??

Sunday morning was relaxing because we had no agenda, but then we discovered a nail in our tire so we ended up spending the morning taking care of that.  Laaaaaame.

While the car was in the fix it shop, mama went on a mini shopping spree.  I need someone to force my hand when it comes to spending money on myself and with the various events coming up around my sister’s wedding I know I need pretty stuff to wear that I don’t currently own.  Success without any meltdowns!

Lunch lounging outside with my main squeeze while naps overlapped.  The nice weather makes me SO HAPPY.

As soon as everyone was up we hit the road…just strolling downtown and making our way through campus with no plan.  Ah weekends.

This juice was BEYOND.  I shared some…

With this little vampire.  He wanted way more than I was willing to share.  Ha.  The cashew Quest bar was all mine.

For dinner we made deconstructed sushi bowls.  P knows I love sushi but has never had it and tells me every so often how he is going to eat sushi when he’s an adult.

So we made sushi bowls for all of us.  Crab was way too expensive and I wasn’t even sure P would like it, so we went with tofu.  P prefers raw tofu to baked tofu but ate it anyway.

On the other hand, this dish made me remember how much I love baked tofu.

Dulse takes this above and beyond.  P didn’t want it at first but then requested some half way through his meal.

Firecracker chocolate bar again. Weeeee…

Back to Monday.  Sigh.  March already!?!!?  My baby girl is turning ONE this month.