We have the end of a month AND a Leap Day this week. Are you doing anything special for Leap Day? I kind of feel like it could be special, but doesn’t have to be special, you know? So I guess I’m still in the dithering phase. My mind is blanking completely when I try to scan it for fun Leap Day meal ideas. The only remotely leap-y things I am coming up with are rabbit and deer and frogs, but, while many people do eat those creatures, I do not care to. Plus, part of me is groaning at the necessity of making ONE MORE MEAL than the already overwhelming number of meals we have to plan, prepare, and eat.
Well. Needs must. In addition to leftover tacos and cupcakes, I have come up with a few appealing meals for the week ahead.
Dinners for the Week of February 26-March 3
- Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowls: I went to the grocery store several times last week, and each time I came across something that whispered the same seductive phrase to me: burrito bowl. I’ll be using the chicken marinade recipe from the @ShredHappens recipe for chipotle chicken rice bowls. Except I plan to air fry the chicken instead of pan frying it. I picked up some cilantro lime cauliflower rice and cilantro lime regular rice from the freezer section of my grocery store, plus some frozen cubed sweet potato, and frozen Mexican street corn. I am going to make some black beans, cut up an avocado, roast the sweet potatoes, air fry the corn, and put everything together with some generous squeezes of lime juice and glops of sour cream. And hot sauce, of course.
- Orzo with Feta, Asparagus, and Peas: I plan to roast a chicken breast for my husband and a filet of salmon for myself. Carla is going to get chicken nuggets, a bowl of plain orzo, and a bowl of plain peas.
- Caramelized Vietnamese Pork Bowls: Allison mentioned this on her blog and then sent me the recipe and it sounds SO GOOD. I will probably try to do shredded pork rather than ground pork because I have a weird ground-pork aversion. And I plan to spruce it up with some veggies – bell peppers? Broccoli? Sugar snap peas?
Are you celebrating Leap Day this year? Proposing marriage to anyone, perhaps?
The burrito bowls sound delicious and fairly easy to throw together! Plus you can always make the leftovers into a salad or something later! I am in full ham sandwich mode and will probably be having chicken with rice for a few days this week. My kitchen sink has a leak, so really whatever I can cook without having to wash too many dishes is what I will be making today. So I may have an actual ham sandwich! It is getting fixed (hopefully) this afternoon so I will be a little more free to do more later in the week.
For leap day I have Habitat for Humanity coming to pick up a bunch of stuff I am donating. I guess I could make this a regular leap day thing, which would mean that I would at least get rid of stuff every four years!
GLOP is the only measurement for sour cream. Dorothy and I went to my fave salad place yesterday, and they use an ICE CREAM SCOOP for goat cheese. Yesssssss.
For me, leap day is all gift and no burden– excited to celebrate 🙂 We have MYO naan pizzas on the menu, but lately, our Friday night plans get derailed in a good way.
I’ve never thought to make a themed meal for Leap Day but love your ideas! Since it’s an extra day in the year, maybe it would be a good opportunity to use up all the extra bits and bobs of food in the pantry…
That Vietnamese pork bowl sounds amazing!
My friend Laura considers a Leap Day as a bonus day, and so just does fun things on that day, which I have never done before but I think I will!
I do…nothing for Leap Years and feel like that’s okay. I celebrate lots of little and big things so leap year can just be another day.
I had to laugh at your “leaping” food suggestions. Hard pass for me on all of those too!
No special Leap Day food or observations, but I have been doing Leap Year-themed blog posts about whatever leaps one kid or the other had made that year since 2012. (It still bugs me that I didn’t think of it in 2008 and missed the baby-to-toddler leap for North. That would have been a great one.)
All your meals sound so amazing this week! We are in the week after school vacation, so it is all boring-but-easy meals to get us back into the school/work/activity routine (which I am secretly ok with because sometimes boring means = comfortable)… I desperately want to celebrate Leap Day in some way, but I am so dragging by Thursdays lately that all I can think of is challenging my family to leap/jump 4x throughout the day without others noticing (the type of weird challenge we love) and/or to LEAP over our usual Thurs meal plan and have a fun “Friday” dinner on Thurs…
When you’re starting the week with leftover tacos you know it’s going to be a good week.
Nah, we’ve got nothing special planned for Leap Day. I like the idea of doing something special with the day, but as you say we’ve all got a lot going on already.
HA! I also think it should be celebrated/acknowledged. I just don’t know how… Maybe something at the high school, with my students?…
I am 100% resistant to celebrating Leap Day. Are you kidding me?? I struggle with the real holidays plenty enough, I’m not deliberately adding one haha!
I NEVER EVEN CONSIDERED LEAP DAY AS A DAY TO SEND MORE SNAIL MAIL UNTIL RIGHT NOW. I have really let myself down. Note to self: Next Leap Day send celebratory mail.
I’m going to a movie on Leap Year but it’s accidental. I love the bowls that you do and am intrigued by the orzo recipe. I would have to heavily modify the one with cilantro because my boyfriend is one of those people for whom it tastes like soap.
i very much enjoy your blog – I stumbled on it when looking for dinner ideas. While not a blogger, I am a lurker, I suppose. Anyway, I had to weigh in on your wood rot! I had the exact same thing – I called a roofer/gutter guy. They replace and repair siding as well. It ended up costing me about $1500 to fix it. I suggest jumping on that sooner than later.
My to-do list is like yours, never ending and off putting – thus my reading blogs instead! Power hour to make calls definitely works for me!
Really? You don’t want to eat frogs on leap day?
I kind of wanted to do something special, but leap day falls on a Thursday which is normally my least favorite day. And tomorrow, “leap day eve” I’ll be home waiting for the dishwasher repairman, SIGH. Well… maybe I’ll get it together and turn Thursday into something special. We’ll see.
We are not doing anything for leap day… my left brained self just can’t muster up any creativity. I imagine Paul will learn about it in class, though. He had his 100th day of school on Monday and his bday is on Friday so it’s quite the epic week for him w/ lots of excitement. Given my kids extremely limited palletes I don’t even know what I could feed them that would tie in with the theme!!
For meals I made Greek turkey burgers that Phil grilled on Monday when it was 60F. This morning the windchill was -11F. WTF. Go home, Minnesota winters – you’re drunk. We’ll have stuffed pepper tomorrow night (which we get at costco). Saturday is Paul’s family party and we are ordering pizza since that is his favorite food that is pallatable to adults (second favorite food is probably banana protein pancakes!).
Oh goodness, it never occurred to me to cook something special for leap day. My daughter cooks on Thursdays, so I’m off the hook.
Our meals this week (that I’m in charge of, at least) are:
The yummy salad (with chicken on the side) that I posted about on Monday.
Turkey Chili on Tuesday.
Ham Sandwich (sort of) tonight.
I made turkey chili specifically so I could freeze the leftovers for ham sandwich sometime soonish. Tonight’s ham sandwich is homemade tomato soup from the freezer, and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Wow, I never even considered making Leap Day a special day! I know a podcaster who took the day off and is using it to do whatever she wants; it’s a bonus day, so why not? Next time, I need to do that, too.
My cousin’s daughter was born on Leap Day so tomorrow is officially her first birthday. 😉
I don’t know another human that would think of making a special leap day meal. I say this with love, you, you are very special.
Suzanne, I could eat a burrito bowl every day for the rest of my life!
We had no special plans for leap day. I did make an orzo dish this week though and that was DELICIOUS. The one you suggested looks amazing too.
Oh that Orzo with asparagus looks Devine. I think I’ll do that one. It’s asparagus season in Germany pretty soon and apparently we Germans are crazy about asparagus. This would be a new take on it.