I’ve been MIA! Things have been chaos ever since the fire in Paradise began. Kyle was actually en route to Chico on the day it started and turned around because his friends (who he was visiting) were all being forced to evacuate. Eek. Guys, it’s so bad. These fires are taking over our state and it’s heart breaking. The smoke made it’s way to us in Davis lickety split thanks to the insane winds last week (and pretty much the rest of the entire Bay Area) so we haven’t left the house much and the kids’ schools have kept them indoors for all their play time. We are so fortunate that things aren’t worse though…so many friends have lost everything.
Since I’d been planning dinner without Kyle I made myself a Greek chicken chopped salad. It’s my go-to when Kyle’s gone since he doesn’t like cucumbers (plus it’s so easy).
The recipe is here if you want to refer back to it, but it’s basically just cucumbers, chicken, tomatoes, artichokes, and feta tossed in Italian dressing.
This time I added some butter lettuce because I had some on hand leftover from these lettuce cups. Why not? Extra greens never hurt.
I used a new kind of marinated artichokes that I got at the co-op, and since it’s no longer tomato season I used tomatoes that I canned from the garden instead of fresh ones.
I had poached them in olive oil back in August and stored them in a jar in the fridge, and thanks to the solid layer of oil on the top, it was as if they were properly canned because there was no oxygen able to access the fruit due to the thick layer of fat. Best of all, I’m happy to report they worked awesome in place of the fresh tomatoes in the salad! I wish I had a dozen more jars to get me all through Winter…oh wait…I think I might!
Anyway, as I mentioned before, Kyle’s plans fell through on account of his friends having to evacuate so instead of beer tasting at Sierra Nevada he returned to Davis for dinner…sooooo…I had to come up with something on the fly!
Luckily I had these leftovers. I had already warmed them up to give to the kids, so I quickly boiled water to make more noodles to bulk it up and make it enough food for three people instead of two.
I hadn’t yet blogged about this meal, but it was the easiest weeknight meal of…EVER.
It started with half an onion, chopped celery, and carrots.
Don’t mess with the mirepoix, ya know?
Once those were softened, I added in two pounds of ground turkey. Smelled like Thanksgiving in the house. I browned it a bit, but then added chicken stock and closed the instant pot lid and let it cook under pressure so I could leave for our afternoon activity.
Before serving I added tortellini, and used the steam function to cook it for a few minutes.
Since it’s fresh pasta it takes no time at all.
My own portion was tortellini free (because they have both dairy and gluten and that combo is prob too much for my gut) but I did give them to P (!!!) and he ate them and loved them and had zero issues.
Can you believe this was his first time having tortellini? Maybe that’s not that abnormal, but it’s something to celebrate nonetheless. I feel like I celebrate every new dairy containing thing he eats in my head because it still blows my mind that he is EATING DAIRY by choice without batting an eye.
I’ll be back with more later…hoping the heroic firefighters can keep up their tireless work and get these fires under control soon. I can’t believe that Fall weather FINALLY arrived and yet the flames blaze on. It’s been dipping to 30 degrees (BELOW FREEZING!) overnight here. Needless to say, when I AM able to return to exercising outdoors I will be wearing LOTS of layers.
