on the menu: January 16
This is a new series I’m titling On the Menu, a Monday-weekly post about what we’ve meal prepped for the week. Andrew and I are big, big fans of meal prepping. It saves money, it saves time, and it saves so much energy during the week to have the meals selected and shopped for.
The process typically takes a couple hours every Sunday. We collaborate on the week’s menu, taking into account what we’re craving, what’s in season (or better yet, what’s available in the garden), and intensity of the recipes. We almost always cook all of our meals together, but if we know we’re going to be really busy with work or life commitments on certain days, we try to schedule quicker, less intensive recipes, and also plan for at least one recipe (often two) to last for two nights. Oftentimes, we trade off who prepares the mains and who prepares any side dishes. In our kitchen, even (especially!) the salads get special treatment! :) Cooking is a way we spend time together and do something creative together. A few years ago, we made a decision to stop eating in front of the tv (no shade! I used to do it all the time) and eat our meals together at the dinner table. It’s just a nice way to chat about our days without distractions and to reduce screen time.
Before I met Andrew, I went so far as to prepare all my meals in advance on Sundays as well, so that all I had to do was heat up my meals throughout the week. While labor intensive, this is a great option if, like me, you’re trying to reduce temptation to order in. I absolutely love eating out, but it’s expensive and usually not particularly healthy. If my meals are planned and/or prepped, I’m much less likely to succumb to the takeout temptation. Plus, I like knowing what is in my food, and I like the fun of experimenting!
Preparing all the meals on Sunday in addition to the shopping is quite laborious though, so I really like the groove we’re in now: I prepare my breakfasts and lunches for the week on Mondays, and then we cook our dinners as planned with the groceries we’ve already shopped for once we get to that day. I know a lot of you loved my old “meal planning stories” on Instagram, so hopefully this weekly post will also serve to give you some inspiration throughout the week.
Rather than sharing what’s planned for the week ahead, I think it would be more useful if I shared what we had the previous week. This way I can add my thoughts about the recipe or what I would change.
FYI: I’ll link recipes where possible, but a lot of them come from cookbooks or are a family recipe that we’ve adapted.
Monday, Chicken Paillard Salads
I wish I could tell you exactly what was in this, but we made it up! Inspired by a NYC French restaurant Pastis, we wanted to recreate their Paillard salad. This was Andrew’s creation, but I remember the base being arugula, and then we mixed in olives, toasted sliced almonds, sliced cherry tomatoes, sliced shallot, grilled chicken, and fresh ground pepper. It was tasty, but the restaurant’s version was much better, so I think we need to go back to eat it again and take notes this time!
Tuesday & Wednesday, Chicken Enchiladas and Mexican Street Corn Salad (Esquites)
I honestly hate the name of the food blog, but I cook from Skinnytaste a lot because I love her approach to recipes: Eating healthy does not have to mean salads. I never want to feel like I’m limiting myself or going without in some way. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good salad (see above haha)—You just have to make them exciting!—but ever since I started cooking with mostly Skinnytaste recipes about 6ish years ago, I noticed a huge difference in how I felt after eating. American food and cooking is damn delicious but it has a reputation. We have so much preservatives, sugar, and just straight up excess where it’s not necessary. Cooking from Skinnytaste really helped me see that I can make all my favorites but moderate the amounts of ingredients (such as sugar) and I don’t miss it or even notice a difference. I will say, she is wayyy too light on her spice game; we pretty much double any spice ingredient, and are always adding or subbing ingredients in her recipes, but we do that with pretty much everything.
For the Chicken Enchiladas recipe, we subbed black beans for white beans (preference) and we reduced the amount of cheese to 1/2 cup (Andrew is a weirdo and not a big cheese person) and the recipe was so so good! This recipe easily feeds 2 for 2 nights, but could be extended to 3 nights with a substantial side dish. We paired it with an esquites recipe from Serious Eats. No mods to it— the esquites were delish as-is, both hot on Day 1 and cold on Day 2!
Thursday, kofta kebabs, tzatziki, and cucumber and tomato salad
I am half Lebanese, and therefore love Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. Kofta is essentially a spiced meatball and pairs perfectly with tzatziki—a cucumber yogurt dipping sauce. We make this one about once every three months. There is always cucumber left over because you don’t need the entire thing for the tzatziki, so we chop it up with some cherry tomatoes, and add salt and pepper. It’s a perfect refreshing side dish with the kofta. We’ve actually never made this on the grill before. We cook them on the stovetop using a cast iron pan.
Friday & Saturday, Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup
This recipe came into my life as a forceful recommendation from two of my best friends, Callie and Brittany. They made the soup and both had absolute rave reviews. So I tried it, and it is just as good as they hyped it to be. My life is better with this soup recipe in it. It’s a perfect winter soup: hardy (and hearty), spiced, warms you from the inside out. And it’s so fragrant! The scent from the kitchen as it’s simmering is out of this world. Seriously. Drive-by aliens might descend. This soup serves 4, but it’s worth doubling for a batch cook. It freezes and reheats beautifully and only gets better the longer it sits. Day 2 of this soup was *chefs kiss!*
I am painfully aware that my blog is really lacking in photography right now, but baby steps! I don’t want perfection to stand in the way of progress.