let’s eat: on the menu

Last night I doodled on this menu while we had a family movie night watching Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 – I was actually writing the word ‘quinoa’ when the main character was offered latte after latte at work, including a quinoa latte. Poor quinoa, it’s the brunt of all food jokes these days.

Leah mentioned in the comments that she uses Evernote for their menu planning, but I’ve never tried it. We have those pre-printed menu pads by Knock Knock on the refrigerator, and we also have a grocery list from them. I pick them up at ArtMart once every 13-14 months – they last awhile since they have 60 sheets. But I like the idea of organizing online recipes, so I plan to give it a look.

This week was a bit easier than last week, so we had a little more flexibility with time. Sunday evening I put together the last of our Blue Apron meals from the previous week. It was a vegetarian take on Stuffed Cabbage – substituting bulgur wheat (yes, I know there’s a spelling error in my doodle and I can’t find any white-out) for the ground beef. There were also chopped prunes and chopped walnuts for some added protein, but we skipped the walnuts because of allergy issues. The sweet and sour tomato sauce was very good – in fact the entire dish was delicious, and everyone ate it – even the kids, although the cabbage itself was a little too chewy for their taste. I thought the leftovers were delicious for lunch.

Monday night I made Broccoli Gribiche from Super Natural Every Day – this is one of my very favorite recipes, and everyone else just sort of goes along with it. It reminds me of my obsession with the spinach and egg salad at Manhattan Cafe (the takeout joint near the restaurant) that I ate at least once weekly while in graduate school. It had sliced hard boiled eggs and red onions (just a few) plus this hot mustard and bacon dressing that was divine. This recipe doesn’t have spinach, but it has roasted potatoes and roasted broccoli, and the mustard dressing and eggs are so warm and tangy and delicious over the roasted vegetables. M’s not a huge fan of dijon mustard, but the rest of the dish is so good that he tolerates it. If I remember to break it down a bit and serve the girls the undressed parts they eat it up, otherwise they pick around the dressing as much as possible and eat the rest.

Tuesday we made the very easy, very tasty Supper Tart from How to Eat Supper. I love this as a weeknight meal – it’s very simple, two bowls max (except for me, you know – the one who puts individual ingredients into individual bowls) and it comes together and bakes in under 30 minutes – as long as you’ve remembered to put the pastry dough in the fridge to thaw that morning. The girls usually eat this fairly well – picking off red onions, of course – but for some reason this week they were pickier about it. Hmmm, more for us!

Last weekend I made homemade pesto, similar to Heidi’s recipe, and then frozen prior to adding the cheese. I put it out to thaw that morning, and then stirred in fresh grated pecorino (plus a little parmesean) and then we ate it tossed with linguine. Everyone devoured it. For some reason we always seem to eat corn with pesto – I’m not sure how this came about, but we had some corn from the freezer and some pear slices as well – our table was hovering in a very small segment of the color wheel that evening.

Wednesday night I also put together the quinoa falafel mix for Thursday night’s dinner, since I knew time would be tight then. Even with plastic wrap right on the surface of the mixture, I felt like the falafels were a tiny bit dry on Thursday. No one complained though – we put plain yogurt (and the girls put some ranch dressing) on top of them and ate them up. F downed two plus some. I made a small mixed green and radish salad for the side, and then headed out for a marathon meeting that evening. This recipe was from the first week we tried Blue Apron, and we’ve repeated it several times since.

Friday night M picked the girls up early and took them out for some indoor bouncing, and I headed home in the gross drizzle / sleet mixture that had coated the brick sidewalk out front enough that I lost my grip. I was ready to get home, and the quiet house was nice for a few moments. I got the peppers and tomatillos roasting in the oven (setting off the smoke detector like always when my oven goes to 500 degrees) and wishing I had a nice Mexican beer while I was cooking. I put together the Black Bean and Red Quinoa Enchiladas, covered them in the salsa verde and topped them with cheese and waited (impatiently) for them to come out of the oven. If you only try one recipe from this week, this would be the one I’d recommend. Good heat and flavor for a Friday night unwind. Just don’t forget that beer I mentioned – you’ll have plenty of lime slices left over.

It’s Saturday and there’s painting and cleaning and pj-wearing (still, at almost noon!). We’re planning on maybe dinner out, and grocery pickups later today, but we’ll see where the day takes us. I hope you all had a good week – if you ate something particularly delicious, please share.