The weekly menu

To the person (hi Nancy!) who commented that I should do a chocolate review of every bar on the market…I love you and you are officially in trouble for whatever may come from the suggestion (aka spiral out of hand).  Especially with Easter and all it’s seasonal selections coming up…oooooohhhh buddy…I could be in trouble.  And by “trouble” I, of course, mean heaven.

I’ve already tried this Theo flavor so I probably already blogged my opinion, but I’ll say it again – needs more ginger zing for my palate.  It’s notes are very subtle and I’m definitely into the spicy flavors that ginger brings to the table so I wanted more.  Especially when paired with chocolate, it needs to have oomph.  I wouldn’t kick it out of bed though.

Anyway. On to the weekly eats.  From a million weeks ago.

I enjoyed banana waffles (no protein powder in this batch because I forgot) with sun butter for both weekend meals.

Followed by a smoothie on Monday because I felt like I needed a nutrient packed start to the week.  Smoothies set a good tone even if my other breakfast options are basically the same components just in a different form.

For the rest of the week’s breakfasts I pulled a quick bread out of the freezer.   This was a chocolate banana loaf made with almond flour and coconut flour.  I have no idea what the recipe was that I used because I don’t even remember when I made it!  It was delicious though.

And if I’m being honest, it was so rich I didn’t even need the sun butter on top.

Most of the other days I had it I ate it plain.

That’s a (half eaten) cookie in the bottom right photo, which I will get to at some point.  Cookies for breakfast – totally normal.

Backing up to…Sunday?  Or…Monday?  I can’t recall because this was two weekends ago but here’s a massive salad bowl that I polished off.  I usually eat 20+ baby carrots while assembling lunch, so the one lonely carrot in the tupperware may seem bizarre but it was in my hand and I just chucked it in there so I could have my hands free to take the pic.

Ok I just checked the photo info and it says it’s from Feb 29th, which makes this Monday’s meal.  Not meatless, whoops.  Also, that was LAST MONTH.  How can I be expected to remember anything that far back?  My son, though, he’d remember.  He’d be like, oh mama, on that day we did this and that and you said this and yadda yadda yadda [insane memory and attention to detail that scares me on the reg].

I have had these Mediterranean salads bookmarked for so long and came across them again when I was scrolling through my pinterest page while meal planning.  Originally I figured I could do it for dinner one night and then have a bunch of the leftovers for (my) quickie lunches throughout the week.

I didn’t plan on us eating so much of it that night though….soooo leftovers?  Not so much.  I made some tweaks for allergies and preferences…I made a chickpea salad with cilantro and mint and lemon (instead of buying the TJs balala salad).  I also couldn’t find babaganoush at TJs and didn’t feel like going to another store, so I grabbed muhammara (a favorite spread that I haven’t had in forever).

Sumac is still newish to me.  I went light so I don’t think I could comment on it’s influence on the dish.  More next time.

As you can probably imagine, P’s version had no hummus or feta.  He really liked the hot smoked salmon though, even though he was against it at first.  I love that (for now) he’s open to changing his mind about whether or not he likes an ingredient (it’s not a very typical toddler trait, I think).  There’s raw fennel in there too because we had leftovers to get through.

Somehow the salad I built got out of hand and ended up MASSIVE.  I was ridiculously full at the end and actually SKIPPED dessert.

I already showed the quick bread breakfast above, so breezing right on to lunch.

Kale and fennel massaged in heaps of Red Shell Japanese miso dressing (from Costco) and topped with avo.  Carrots and Mary’s Gone crackers on the side.

Before leaving for library I got the crock pot started, so dinner was pretty taken care of.

We bought a bunch of pork tenderloin cutlets at Costco over the weekend so I froze 2/3 and cooked the rest following this recipe just using loin instead of shoulder/butt. It’s absolutely the best rub/marinade I’ve tried with pork, or in the crock pot, or with any meat at all really.

I shredded it while naps overlapped and then let it simmer in it’s own juices for the rest of the afternoon.

Meanwhile…

We had super awesome warm weather, and the kids woke up from naps early, and dinner was done, and so I just threw the kids in the bike carrier and hit the road.

That juice was a big hit by the way.  I swooped into WF on the way to central park and shared some with P while they both romped around the park.  P was caught off guard by the spicy ginger/cayenne kick at the end (which was awesome in my opinion, but definitely there) and wanted water after every few sips, but still continued to ask for more.

Favorite bottled juice so far.  [Not cheap, sigh]

The pulled pork was served over mashed sweet potatoes.  I “baked” them in the micro and then added soy milk to mash.  Easy peasy.  Standard dessert plate on the right.

More quick bread for breakfast, which was eaten on the way out the door because music class.  Being a parent is being up at 5:30 am and STILL barely making it to an activity at 9:30.  Sigh.  At least I can say I fit a workout in there.  With the warm weather I’ve been back on the bike ride and it’s been FAAAAABULOUS.

Same as the day before.

Kid photo for fun.  Can you believe they are (kinda?) playing together!!!

Leftover lasagna.

Bulked up with peas.

Finished the night on a sweet note.

Since the quick bread was gone, I prepped waffle batter the night before.  I added Vega One vanilla protein powder because I’m addicted to the flavor in my waffles now.  And it’s fun to eat green food.

I was starving so I enjoyed the first one hot off the iron with copious amounts of sun butter, and packed up the rest for the next couple of mornings to come.

Open gym always wears P out, but V is still immune to anything that would prolong naps.  And she’s totally over my here-gnaw-on-a-carrot-while-contained-in-your-highchair-so-I-can-eat-lunch technique that I used all last week.

I ate lunch so fast, but didn’t feel sated because I didn’t have any carbs on the side.  So as soon as V went down for another nap later, I took down a batch of home-made crackers.  Like.  Took.  Them.  Down.

Oof.

In an attempt to not feel sick, I opted for a lighter (?) dinner.

Kyle’s mom bought this bizarre squash for me to experiment with when they were in town last month.  It’s a chilacayote, FYI.  Google it.  There’s not many recipes or ideas on ways to use it.  Sigh.  Fortunately we chatted it up with the woman at farmer’s market from whom we bought it.  She said it’s like spaghetti squash with it’s stringy texture, but mentioned liking it in sweet recipes.  Hmmmmm…

First impression?  It smelled sweet inside.  Like watermelon.  But hard.  It’s odd.

Black seeds!

I baked it like I would spaghetti squash and then once it cooled tried to sort out what the heck to do with it.  Honestly, it had no flavor.  It was watery and I couldn’t imagine eating it as a noodle replacement because it wasn’t noodle-y enough.

How about a frittata???  Yes.  I used the leftover sun dried tomato almond sauce from the previous week to flavor.  Plus several eggs.

While burning my fingers off getting the cooked flesh out of the skin, these monkeys were being as cute as ever.

Started on the stove, finished in the oven (on broil).  And I didn’t burn the house down even though I left it on the stove while doing V’s bedtime routine upstairs!

The brown bits scraped off the bottom of the pan were the best part.  Mmmm.

We all had seconds because squash doesn’t really pack a kcal punch.

P had a hard time eating it, but didn’t seem to have any objections to the flavor, so in the end he managed alright.

While starting the final season of Mad Men. Weeeee.

Zoomed in shot of breakfast.

VS

Zoomed out shot of the real scene.

Early morning crafting since it was rainy and Pacman loooooves him some art.  He didn’t want to to go anywhere that morning (just wanted to do “lots and lots of art projects”) but I was going stir crazy so I manipulated P into agreeing to break free of the house.  Our compromised location?  The library.  AGAIN.  If you know my boy, this won’t surprise you in the least, but we had just been there a few days before.  Fridays are the spanish program that he loves, though, which ends in a craft, so I’m pretty sure he was anticipating that when choosing our outing.

The train table kept life interesting until the library opened at 10.  10 used to be an early wake up for me.  Nowadays, I’m half way into the day by 10.  It’s funny how some mornings I’m watching the clock drag on minute by minute until we head off to our first activity and some mornings I’m racing against the clock without even a spare second to glance at the time.  Oh life.

In a rare twist of events, I wasn’t in the mood for kale for lunch!  Whaaaaaa???  So I added smoked salmon to some Organic Valley lactose free cream cheese and rice cakes and made my mouth happy.  V also discovered rice cakes while I was eating this and she too is into them.

The evolution of a dinner salad:

Once Upon A Time…

I had no idea what to make for dinner because it was Friday night and I didn’t feel like the one thing left on the meal planning menu.

I also felt weird not having kale earlier in the day.  I kinda missed it.

So I decided dinner would be kale.

Now, what do I put with it?

I looked in the fridge and pantry and took everything left into the bowl.

The End.

Fennel, kale, cabbage slaw mix, slivered almonds, Red Shell Japanese miso dressing, and avocado (with cucumbers for mine and Pattycakes’ portions).

SO GOOD.

The dudes had rice too, but I just wanted a pile ‘o veg.  Happy face.

Bring on the weekend.