I somewhat unintentionally skipped a week between volumes five and six of this series. It was a busy week, I was tired, and by the time Sunday rolled around and I was preparing to write down the new menu, I just didn't feel inspired to write about the previous week's meals, so I erased the board without taking a picture and got started on the new week of meals.
 |
| Perking up some floppy celery with a bit of cold water. |
But I do remember I made my dad's baked ziti recipe during that week and we really enjoyed it. I don't know why we don't make it more often. I'll link it below.
I felt pretty on top of things with this new week of meals. It was still really cold outside so the kids and I weren't able to get out and play which had been wearing on all of us quite a bit mentally and emotionally, but warmer weather was on it's way which gave me hope of the kids burning off energy outside again.
Breakfast
We started off the week with steel cut oatmeal and then I made two loaves of oatmeal bread from my trusty Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book to have the rest of the week with eggs and fruit.
I don't think we actually had waffles on Saturday. I try to plan something special for breakfast on Saturday but sometimes I'm worn out from cooking all week so I'll go for something simple instead.
Lunch
I threw together a simple egg salad for lunch at the beginning of the week that we ate alongside crackers, apples, and some veggies.
On Wednesday I tried a new macaroni and cheese recipe.
I really enjoy macaroni and cheese, but it isn't the most filling meal, so I did some Googling and tried to brainstorm ideas to make it more substantial. I figured I could roast some onions and cubed sweet potatoes to mix into the pasta, but I wondered if there was a way to incorporate beans. I came across the recipe above and I think it worked pretty well. The pureed white beans gave the cheese sauce a thicker consistency. You could kind of feel the texture of the pureed beans in the sauce, so I wonder if adding more milk to thin it a bit or more cheese would help mask it a little more, but overall I liked the new recipe. I definitely had to add more milk to the beans than the recipe suggested to get them to blend up smoothly, but everything else worked just fine. I stirred some shredded mozzarella into the dish to make it extra cheesy. This macaroni meal lasted a LONG time. We ate the leftovers for quite a while.
On Friday I made a couple of pizzas for lunch. I experimented with baking the pizzas on my big rectangular baking sheets instead of normal pizza pans. I baked them on parchment paper on the baking sheets to keep the bottoms of the pizzas from getting soggy. They ended up being thin crust pizzas loaded with toppings. The kids quite liked them.
For the sauce I strained a quart jar of homemade tomato sauce so that it wouldn't be too watery. The toppings consisted of homemade chorizo, black beans, green onions, and a mixture of cheddar, Parmesan, and Mozzarella cheese. I experimented adding some dry basil, garlic powder, and smoked paprika to my pizza dough, but I don't think the flavor really came through with so many different toppings to compete with.
Dinner
At the beginning of the week we had leftover pulled pork for dinner with homemade buns, homemade coleslaw, and other sides.
Next I roasted a couple ropes of smoked sausage and onions in the oven for sandwiches. I sliced the sausages and we ate them on homemade buns and had roasted sweet potatoes and veggies on the side.
At the end of the week we had Mexican for dinner thanks to the surplus taco meat and refried beans I had stashed in the freezer. I have gotten into the groove of planning simple meals towards the end of the week which has been really helpful with our "new normal" of Noah working slightly longer hours and my being on my own with the kids more than I was before he started he started his new job.
I did quite a bit of cooking on Thursday and Friday so that I wouldn't have to cook at all over the weekend. All of this cooking also included a big batch of homemade hummus. It's great to have around for snacks and the kids love it so much they'll just eat it out of a bowl with a spoon.
I cook my dried chickpeas according to the recipe below in my trusty crockpot.
For the hummus, I actually don't follow a specific recipe, and for quite a while I didn't even add tahini because we didn't have it around. So I'm sure my hummus isn't terribly authentic, but it is easy and tasty.
We have an 8-cup food processor and I'll fill it up with cooked chickpeas. To the chickpeas I'll add some tahini (about 1/4 cup at most), some garlic powder, a bit of salt, some lemon juice, and a couple tablespoons of oil. I'll starting processing the ingredients and add water as needed to reach my desired consistency. We'll eat hummus with veggies, flatbread, put it on wraps, and the kids like to eat it on its own.
No comments:
Post a Comment