My in-laws are visiting for a week, so I am desperate for A Plan. Otherwise I am sure I would still be staring dully into the fridge and wondering, “What is meals?”
We will definitely also be getting takeout while they are here – MORE than once. And I think we may even try to go out to dinner at a restaurant together. We’ll see. But that leaves plenty of open dinner spots to fill.
My meal plan this week is based around three principles:
- Sounds good to eat.
- Sounds (or is, from experience) simple to make.
- Can be prepped partly/mostly in advance, because I cannot stand having people helping me in the kitchen. (With the sole exception of my husband.) I know. When it comes to the added stress of feeding more people than normal, I only have myself to blame. But having houseguests – even the nice, easy ones like my in-laws! – fills me with anxiety, and maintaining control over my kitchen, and how the food is prepared, and how everything is cleaned, is very important to my mental health.
Also, of course, there is the pesky “I am still on Keto” thing. So I am also trying to choose meals that are low-carb, or whose carbs are easy to separate. The exception to THAT is the chicken tortilla soup, to which I add black beans and corn. And tortilla strips. But I will see if I can survive without scooping those three delicacies into my own personal bowl. Or maybe I simply enjoy the soup and return to Keto the next day. (I cannot tell you how EXTREME my soup cravings have been since I’ve been on Keto. All I want is soup.)
Let’s do this.
Dinners for the Week of April 4-10
- Sheet Pan Maple Mustard Pork Chops and Carrots: This sounds good and easy and I don’t particularly like carrots, so it won’t feel like A Big Sacrifice to foist them all on my relatives.
- Slow Cooker Chipotle Chicken Tortilla Soup: Usually I serve this by itself, but I wonder if I should make cornbread or something to have on the side?
- Baked Parmesan Salmon with Lemon Cream Sauce: I will probably serve roasted broccoli or zucchini with this. Maybe asparagus. We’ll see what’s good and available.
- Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas: Obviously I will also make homemade guacamole. The rest of the family can make these into tacos while I eat a big pile o’ pork. And guacamole.
- Sheet Pan Greek Garlic Butter Chicken with Potatoes: This sounds absolutely amazing. Maybe I could serve it with a quick side salad.
What are you eating this week?
Good luck with your houseguests! We are having dinner guests – I hope – on Saturday, and that is the excitement for this week. Our oldest kids share a birthday, and this year they turned 18, and we were supposed to have them over before spring break. Then we got Covid, had to reschedule, then they got Covid, and if they don’t come over this weekend I have that “maybe we will never see them” feeling. Anyway. I’m going to make a chocolate cake for that!
Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup + cornbread for supper (with a family of 6 joining us). After that, I’m clueless for the week…
I hope you have a nice visit with the in-laws. Is it for medical treatment again?
We are having a lot of cauliflower this week, kind of coincidentally. I planned a salad with beans and cauliflower rice sprinkled on top and a curried cauliflower/vegetarian chicken salad and North planned cauliflower pizza, not the kind where the crust is made of ground up cauliflower but pizza toppings on slabs of roasted cauliflower.
It is a medical appointment – scans and things. Thank you so much for asking! And wow! That IS a cauliflower heavy week! Good thing cauliflower is delicious!
We are having steak ramen, chicken, salad, and corn chowder. And an orthodontist appointment so maybe soup or something every night too.
I have a keto soup recipe somewhere that I used to love. I think it’s a jalapeno cheese soup. If you want, I can look for it.
Oh that’s kind, thank you!! I find that I am craving, like, ANTI-keto soups. Like white bean enchilada soup, which has so many beans. Delicious delicious beans.
I remember missing beans too. When I eat beans this week, I’ll think of you. That sounded better in my head.
Lol! I appreciate the intended sentiment!
Those dinners sound gourmet! Hope the visit and meals go very well.
It all sounds delicious! I’d vote for cornbread or a nice crusty baguette with the soup.
Taco Tuesday. I think we are doing chickpea tacos this week, with pico and guac.
Home-made pizza and/or calzone on Wednesday.
Tonight was Random Collection Of Stuff From The Depths of the Freezer.
I am hoping Thursday is sausages with peppers and onions. Depends on what sausages the local fancy butcher shop has this week and if we can get to the shop before their 5pm closing time.
I have recently discovered that Smitten Kitchen posts stories of her menu plan for the week, complete with links. So I have been stealing ideas off of that, when I remember to check Instagram. (Which is not super often, to be honest.) But someone else suggesting ideas? Yes, please.
I made a HUGE batch of Cajun Dirty Rice. We ate it on its own the first two nights. Tonight Coach grilled chicken breasts and we heated the rice up to go along with it. So yummy. It never gets old. It is fairly labor intensive, but you can make it in advance and heat it up as you need it. Beyond that, I might do Italian Beef in a crock pot. (again with dirty rice, are you noticing a theme here?)
I’d be very happy to be a guest in your house this week. Last week we visited my SIL in Chicago and she did a mix of home cooked meals (steak and chicken parm) and take out.
I’m at a loss for dinner ideas this week. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.
I say enjoy that soup even if it’s doesn’t comply w/ the keto diet plan since you will be eating keto otherwise! This is bringing back memories of me eating keto while managing gestational diabetes. I did not love it. I did make a stuffed pepper soup that was keto-friendly, though, but now I never want to eat it again because I was so burned out on that soup after my pregnancy.
I’m similar about not wanting help in the kitchen unless it is my mom! Otherwise just stay out of my way. 😉 I also prefer to do the clean up unless my husband does it. There is a way I like things done – like I rinse everything we put in the dishwasher. I know you are not ‘supposed’ to do that allegedly, but we do not run our dishwasher daily and I do not trust it to get unrinsed dishes clean if they sit there for 2-3 days!
Lisa, you and I are dishwasher twins. I have a specific way I do it (and I can usually get EVERYTHING to fit, which I prefer to leaving dirty dishes on the counter overnight) and I rinse everything before I put it in. I rinse it very well, also, so I feel like when my MIL helps, I end up re-rinsing the things she missed. Which has to feel annoying and passive aggressive to her.
I was feeling motivated to try THREE new recipes this week, which is a perilous endeavor with two semi-picky eaters. One refused to eat Deep Dish Sloppy Joes (basically sloppy joes poured into a pizza dough crust in a 13×9 pan! yum!), they both actually did eat a new crockpot pot roast recipe, and we’ll see how they like pot roast chili tonight (probably a bust for both as they don’t like chili in general, but I keep trying). Then steak salads, one night for leftover/drive thru after gymnastics, and penna alla vodka with shrimp on Friday.
Re: help in the kitchen — the only way I find it not stressful is to give someone an entire recipe to tackle, have somebody handwash pots/pans, or have them take care of gathering drinks for the table. Each of those things typically takes a while and saves you from them asking what they can do next every few minutes. Somehow articulating it out loud just takes too many brain cells.
This is really good, feeds a lot of people, is easy, and I think it might be keto-friendly.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12197-momofukus-bo-ssam?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share