Last week was a good food week. We got our first real winter weather – a mix of snow and ice, and temperatures really plummeted. To counteract that a bit, we ate lots of warm roasted food, and kicked up the spice a bit.
Monday night is gym night, so we have to plan ahead and keep it easy because we arrive home between 7:30 – 8:00 and everyone’s tired and hungry (and sore). We had Spaghetti that we ordered from a Midwest Pasta fundraiser, tossed it with some marinara sauces and ate it with leftover vegetables from the weekend.
Tuesday night we made one of my favorite meals Smitten Kitchen’s Roasted Tomatoes and Cippolini Onions – it’s super easy to put together, although the tomatoes and onions take almost an hour to roast. It’s a great dinner for a cold night, and we managed to get a few family rounds of cards in while the vegetables were being reduced to sweet, juicy mush in the oven. They are served with white beans over toasted bread (we often use ciabatta), and three of us love it and one tolerates it and loads up on sides.
(Speaking of sides – we always have some type of fruit on the table, and usually a vegetable or two. Sometimes raw vegetables that get dipped in hummus or slathered in peanut butter and dotted with raisins. We try not to make two dinners, but we also know that our idea of delicious food isn’t as well received by the under 12, so they have options not to starve.)
Wednesday we got our box from Blue Apron – we’ve had a lucky spell lately with veg meals with no tree nuts – and I was especially excited to have a light grocery run this week because of the weather. Wednesday night was Red Bean & Collard Green Dirty Rice with Buttermilk Biscuits & Honey Butter. Delicious, particularly the biscuits with honey butter. Unless integral to a meal, we don’t usually eat a lot of breads / biscuits on the side, but now I’m wondering why we don’t.
Thursday night I made the second Blue Apron meal, Winter Mushroom Ramen with Mustard Greens & Soft-boiled Eggs. While I was making this dinner, M was taking E to the urgent treatment clinic to get a throat swab, dropping off the kids (one with strep throat), picking up the first prescription of the night, realizing that his eye was now leaking, confirming at the second clinic of the night that he had pink eye, and picking up the second prescription of the night. So, it wasn’t much of a family dinner hour. The older kid ate nothing and climbed into bed, the younger kid ignored the ramen and made toast, so I ate a steaming bowl on my own, and M heated up a bowl later. We both loved it, and didn’t really mind not sharing.
Friday was a sick day, and Friday night another round of ice and snow hit. I made Farro Jambalaya with Crispy Maitake Mushrooms, and hot dog! It was so good. The sick kid ate three bites of applesauce all day, and the rest of us ate dinner and collapsed from the exhaustion of the week.
Saturday brought a warm up in temperatures and a precautionary trip to the clinic to swab the rest of our throats for possible infection. With the all-clear sign, we headed next door to Katie’s Pizza where I ordered the fig, pancetta, and butternut squash pizza covered in arugula, and when it arrived at my table I realized that I had ordered the pizza version of the sandwiches I’d planned for dinner at our school’s trivia night. I didn’t take pictures of either one, but both were very good. French baguettes smeared with fig jam, half of them with prosciutto, brie, and arugula, and the other half of the sandwiches with thin sliced and roasted butternut squash, granny smith apples, and gruyere. I planned to wrap them in brown parchment paper and tie them with bakers twine, but time got away from me, and they ended up just getting tied with twine by me, M, and the babysitter before we scrambled out the door at the last minute.
I also made Green Olive and Artichoke Spread with Pita Wedges, and one of my favorite cookies – Chocolate-Apricot-Ginger cookies from Super Natural Every Day**. We added it to the rest of the table spread and fueled ourselves to a third place finish. Feeding the brain well really works!
By Sunday we were all recuperating and while I caught up at work, M and the girls cleaned the house and caught a movie. We wrapped up the weekend with a good refrigerator cleanout, ready for the week ahead. Hoping for a warmer one, and a healthier one as well.
**Heidi Swanson has a new cookbook coming out later this year!
