Meal plan
Last week’s meal plan went well, except that the sloppy joe mixture was very yummy and everyone was extra hungry, so we ended up with an unplanned night’s gap. Normally I think we’d’ve just made something else but I’d had a crazy day at work and Carl had too and we just… ordered pizza. Oh well!
Noah wasn’t a fan of the squash soup: he likes his soups with pieces in them, like minestrone. He also decided to go on a cheese toast strike. He ended up eating everyone’s peas (must have been about two cups’ worth) and a veggie dog instead one night, and leftover pizza the other.
Here’s this week’s plan, retroactive ‘cause that way I have a record of it:
Sat – my parents were over and we had mashed carrots’n’turnips, beet salad, orzo with peas, and pork schnitzel (from the store, the last, but a sad substitute for the fresh salmon I wanted, but was sold out). It was yummy and not too many leftovers, but a few.
Sun – Cabbage mess. Err, that requires explanation:
As part of our family table, Carl brought from his branch of the tree this tradition of having a massive dish of ground beef and onions as the meat dish (usually flavoured with oxo cubes or the like), served with pan-fried potatoes and a salad or something like that. I liked the simple concept of serving just cooked ground (beef, at the time) without having to shape it, etc., but I couldn’t handle the lack of vegetables.
So over the last oh, I don’t know, since we gave up being vegetarians, I’ve gradually shifted the proportions so that it’s more like a mess of chopped vegetables, sometimes with potatoes and sometimes not, sometimes with beans and sometimes not, mixed with a small amount of ground chicken (usually) and seasoned with garlic, oregano, basil, and rosemary. Thyme if we had it instead of rosemary. Vegetables under normal circumstances would be onions (onions are key!), zucchini, eggplant, carrots, celery, and maybe some spinach. So something like a ratatouille, but with meat in it. And lentils. And potatoes. Sometimes. Hence the term “mess.” In stores I guess it would be called a skillet supper? Not sure. Mess is more descriptive.
It’s not an elegant dish as you might guess from the title, but it’s versatile and tasty and we usually serve it over rice. The ground chicken/turkey/pork/beef keeps the cost down enough that we can usually swing buying the organic or “traditionally raised” stuff. That’s the trade-off instead of doing more of a chicken type stir fry.
With the advent of the organic food box and its endless winter cabbage, I looked around for recipes and found a cabbage recipe that was suspiciously like “the mess” except it involved a can of diced tomatoes and ground beef and onions and that was it. After some experimentation I found that if the cabbage is chopped relatively finely, and tomatoes are indeed present to give some moisture and sauce-like feel, then it’s actually not a bad addition/substitution in the mess.
So last night’s was: ground turkey (1/2 lb), onions (2), garlic (2 cloves), carrots (4), orange pepper (1), cabbage (1 small head), collard greens (couple of leaves that were left) and tomato (1 can, diced), with lots of seasoning, over rice. Noah ate two bowls, so go him.
I can’t believe I wrote that much about what’s essentially a meal made out of whatever is left in the fridge before the box comes. ☺
Mon: you guessed it, leftovers. With working I just figure why have one meal when my massive skillet holds enough for two!
Tues: Lentil squash potato sausage stew in the crockpot, with ciabbata buns and snow peas
Wed: Leftovers again! But this night I am also going to make lentil-rice “meat”balls in advance.
Thurs: Spaghetti and balls
Fri: leftovers or French toast
As a two-week pattern I guess it’s fairly clear that I aim for a couple of vegetarian meals, which doesn’t quite seem like enough. But in my defense, the amount of meat in the other meals is proportionally fairly small – a ½ lb of ground turkey over two nights, and in the stew it will be 4-5 sausages (depending on which packet I pull out of the freezer; they’re from a local butcher) over two nights. That’s sort of the direction I’ve tried to go in, especially as we introduce Noah to a range of food.
Noah’s lunches at daycare are fabulous by the way. They come from a company called Real Food for Real Kids that I adore. They supply healthy meals that are mostly modular like burritos that the kids build themselves (whole wheat tortillas, lettuce, tomatoes, with a vegetarian option), pitas with greek fillings, tuna wraps, pasta primavera, vegetarian chili, etc. Fruit for dessert, sometimes with yoghurt, and once a month they do sundaes with frozen yogurt. When it’s a single dish meal they always have side dishes with it in case the kids don’t like it, and every meal has side options of raw veggies and healthy dips, to keep the kids interested. No hot dogs, nuggets, mac and cheese from a box, zoodles, or anything like that. Just from looking at the menu I’ve gotten ideas. It also takes some of the pressure off if we have pizza one night. For this we pay $65/mo.
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4 Responses to “Meal plan”
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OH I grew up eating the cooked ground beef and onions! still do eat it ocassionally but add rice and veggies now.
As a kid we each had a bread bowl of sorts which was slathered inside with mustard. That was it but surprisinly yummy.
Noah’s lunches sound wonderful!
I second that Noah’s lunches sound great. I miss the days when Kindergarten daycare served Snuggly Girl lunch, though she didn’t like a lot of the choices and she’d be really whiny at pickup if she ate no lunch . . .
We made up a similar ground beef dish recently, which we named “beef concoction.” Though “mess” is a great name too. I should work on putting more veggies in ours. I wonder if the finely chopped cabbage would be detected by he who doesn’t like cabbage.
We also do a version with chicken and vinaigrette, basil (fresh when I have it), lots of slow-cooked onions, served over pasta. We used to do something like this with marinated artichoke hearts and red peppers in our vegetarian days.
My mom makes her squash soup with lots of mushrooms. Some barley would probably be good too. Maybe Noah would like that?
I also make two meals whenever I can, but I usually freeze the second half, since SG gets leftovers for lunch most days. Eating the same thing 3 or 4 times in two days would not go over well.
Any chance you have your lentil-ball recipe in electronic form and could email it? Sounds like something up our alley. I’m only managing one veggie meal a week and I’d like to increase it, but cheese is Right Out at our house, and we are iffy about soy, so I don’t use tofu or fake meats made with processed soy. Beans, beans, we love chickpeas and beans.
And dear me the organic/hormone free meats are expensive.
I’ll email you the recipe but for the proper plug, it’s from the Vegan Lunchbox book at http://www.veganlunchbox.com :)
Our favorite veggie dish lately is an onion “casserole”. 8 med/lg sweet(vidalia)onions, thinly sliced. 3/4 cup butter to saute the onions till clear. I cup cracker crumbs (1 sleeve ritz) and 1 cup (or more)fresh parmesan. Cook the onions, allow them to cool, mix in crumbs and parmesan, bake 350 for 30 mins. so simple but oh so delicious!