The trouble with resuming my weekly meal planning posts is that I am locked in to writing a weekly meal planning post. Which feels sometimes tedious to do; I can only imagine that it feels tedious to read.
The advantage to resuming my weekly meal planning posts is that I have to force myself to come up with meals before I am standing in the grocery store, looking bleakly at the overly-expensive foodstuffs with no memory of a single meal I have ever cooked or eaten.
Dinners Last Week:
I am thinking that this feature of the weekly meal planning post may disappear and pop in based on whether I’ve tried something new and/or exciting in the previous week. Last week, for instance, I made soup, stir fry, and sheet pan meals that I have made a million times before. I tried taking a photo of my fajitas (I should have taken a photo of my husband’s; he eats more typical fajitas; mine are more closely related to tacos) and I thought to myself, why.
(May I advise you that sometimes it is not a great idea to ask yourself why? In my case, the one little question, even without a question mark, seems to devolve rather speedily into why anything which is a skip-the-line pass straight to existential crisis. As if any of us needs another reason to descend into despair. THIS IS JUST DINNER, SUZANNE. Let’s all calm down.)
Moving on.
Our schedule is packed with a bunch of extracurricular activities and evening meetings this week and weekend, so I am leaning toward things I can make in my crockpot. We are also trying a new restaurant this coming weekend, so that takes care of one of the meal slots.
Dinners This Week:
- Slow Cooker Chipotle-Honey Chicken Tacos: Just typing this out reminds me that I need to buy more chipotles in adobo sauce to puree and freeze. Did I just have something remarkably similar to this meal? Yes, indeedy. May I remind you that I love tacos wholeheartedly and could probably eat them nine days a week.
- Slow Cooker BBQ Pork: This is not my husband’s favorite, but I am pretty sure we already have a pork tenderloin in the freezer waiting to be used, and he already has rolls because of Ham Sandwich nights, so all I need to buy is some cabbage for coleslaw and a potato for me. (Except in a very few cases, I am not a sandwich fan, so I pair my pulled pork with a baked potato.)
- Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: I am aware we only just ate this, but I want it again already.
What’s for dinner at your house? Any existential crises lately?
Yesterday, my Whole Foods delivery shopper accidentally gave me burritos instead of street taco tortillas, and I found some brown rice in the freezer (TJ’s frozen brown rice is a lifesaver) and we had burritos instead of tacos, and a tired dinner was suddenly new and exciting! We have only boring things on the docket this week: chicken, baked potatoes and WF kale Caesar salads; sandwiches, etc; breakfast for dinner because the price of eggs is a small one to pay if I can make something that makes everyone happy; random things from the freezer eaten in intervals; and takeout pizza or bar food Friday.
TJs frozen rice is awesome. And I love when one small tweak can make an over used food into something new!
Hee hee I hit the same existential crisis a few years ago. I used to document Every.Single.Meal. Blogging solution: just talk about the highlights. Then I got burned out because I was trying to be Julia Child when my family’s stage of life was that they had 5 minutes to eat dinner. Blogging solution: say how I was feeling. Currently I only cook 1-2 times a week, which means 3-4 dinners and the other able bodied people in my house pick up the slack. Blogging solution: if I don’t want to talk about food, then I talk about other things.
So I say write about food when you want to write about it, and if you’re not feeling it then write about everything else!!! You *have* to write to spec for your day job, but your blog is about what ever you want it to be about!
Yes! You are so right Birchie! I need to ascribe to this philosophy more readily.
It’s been Girl Scout cookie season (we are almost done, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel) so we have been eating…nothing. Takeout, our ham sandwiches, lots of nonsense. I feel like I haven’t made a proper dinner in weeks.
I am looking at your crock pot meals to see if I can have any of them for dinner this week. As soon as I am done looking at my blogs, I am going to order groceries for the week. Tonight we are going to have Olive Garden chicken (which is chicken in the crock pot with Olive Garden salad dressing as seasoning, it was delicious but the random recipe I used last time used the whole bottle of dressing and NO, that is too much) and then I don’t know what else. I will need to think of something.
Oh geez Jen – GS cookie season is hardcore! Glad it is almost over and hope you have been having a blast with your girl scout.
Does the feeling of dread I have felt on waking every morning since early November count? I don’t feel it every moment while I’m awake, but it’s what hits me first every…single…day.
On the other hand, Beth made a really nice dinner last night. It was layers of puff pastry, ratatouille, ricotta and tapenade.
Meanwhile over the next several days, I’m making black bean soup, vegetarian chicken with a sauce and cauliflower rice, a stir-fry with soba noodles, and almond flour pancakes with applesauce.
I have that feeling. Yes, every single day.
My dinner-planning brain is on the fritz. All it can ever come up with lately is tacos or homemade pizzas. My poor family. (It’s harder still because I’m personally trying to not eat meat, but I know they want to eat meat. Argh x infinity.)
Just wanted to mention that while you are absolutely entitled to think that writing meal planning posts are tedious to do, and to write them or not as you wish, I absolutely never find them tedious to read!
Doesn’t someone have a birthday soon?? What’s the meal choice and dessert this year?
“Parenting” my 35 year old daughter has become a crisis. Blech.
What’s for dinner at my house? The same as every week!Monday: Soup (this week it’s broccoli stilton)Tuesday: Pasta (this week it’s orecchiette because I bought it on sale and it’s sat here forever but I’m probably just going to have it with tunaWednesday: Jacket Potatoes (this week with tuna, so I probably shouldn’t actually put tuna on the tuesday pastaThursday: Chicken burger and veggie burgers in buns and sweet potato friesI thought I would get bored of eating the same basic meals Monday-Thursday, and while the meals are boring, the not thinking about meals is great.On the other hand, I really love your meal posts because I love tacos and you post great recipes and I know someday I won’t cater to the apetite of small children all the time.
What’s for dinner at my house? The same as every week!
Monday: Soup (this week it’s broccoli stilton)
Tuesday: Pasta (this week it’s orecchiette because I bought it on sale and it’s sat here forever but I’m probably just going to have it with tuna
Wednesday: Jacket Potatoes (this week with tuna, so I probably shouldn’t actually put tuna on the tuesday pasta
Thursday: Chicken burger and veggie burgers in buns and sweet potato fries
I thought I would get bored of eating the same basic meals Monday-Thursday, and while the meals are boring, the not thinking about meals is great.
On the other hand, I really love your meal posts because I love tacos and you post great recipes and I know someday I won’t cater to the apetite of small children all the time.
The Husband is currently making ribs – most of which will most likely be lunch (our main meal) tomorrow. So that’s something to look forward to.
As for an existential crisis – I feel like I’ve been having one every single day since August; and it has only ramped up to insane levels in the past couple of months.
I made the Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma for dinner tonight! (well, my version of it). Thank you for the recipe.
Love your humor—meal planning feels like a struggle, but at least it’s a funny one! 😄
also visit my blog https://bitesizeddiaries.wordpress.com/
Thank you 😁
Well, I for one always appreciate these posts! I’ve gotten a LOT of good ideas from you, and I can attest that those sheet pan veggies are delicious (I’ve made them twice now.) But if you don’t want to post about your dinners every week, I’ll muddle through somehow : )
I was talking about making a pot of soup to my friend L when we were driving home from the protest and offered to bring some over for dinner…
But as it turned out, an hour later my fickle brain decided to make parathas and chicken curry instead. I ran that over to L’s (they live across the street from us) around 3 pm. L and her husband opened the box and decided to have a second lunch on the spot. It was very satisfying… for me.
My family is very easygoing about dinner, so it’s usually not a source of stress, and I like feeding people so it usually makes me happy. I stress about nearly every other thing, so food tends to be a creative outlet, I guess?
Your blog, your rules. If not writing posts like this makes you happy, then move on or let it be on a whim rather than a feature.
[I say this after doing something similar years ago when I had a monthly feature that became a burden, yet I felt I had to keep doing it. Eventually I wised up and let it go. Nothing bad happened.]
I can’t wait until I’m able to cut vegetables up again so I can make that Shawarma recipe!! Phil and I are both feeling off so we keep pushing off our planned meals. Yesterday would’ve been the perfect day to make the Greek turkey burgers that we had on the meal plan, but my stomach was feeling off for my sinus infection and he still recovering from his stomach bug so he ended up making a Spanish tortilla, which is eggs, potatoes, and ham. I’m hoping we both feel up for Greek turkey burgers tonight because the pickings are very slim in our fridge right now! So it’s basically been about five days of ‘ham sandwiches.’
We had the crock pot chicken tacos that you posted about a while ago, the one with salsa verde. My daughter cooks once a week, and that is often her choice, and she always says to say thank you to you, because it’s SO EASY.
Last night we had salmon that I cooked in the oven with a little Penzey’s spice blend, and some kale Caesar salad. Tonight was chicken made with a butternut squash/curry simmer sauce. LAZY COOKING FOLKS! Thursdays are often leftovers, but I think we’ve depleted the freezer supply, so I’m going to have to figure something out.
I made the InstantPot version of those Honey Chipotle chicken tacos a few weeks ago. Except I forgot the honey. oops. They were still tasty. I especially liked having the black beans in them so it was just chicken. We’ve been having Taco Tuesdays for the past month or so and even though I’m personally getting a little bored of tacos every Tuesday, the kids LOVE it, and it’s actually quite low effort for how much the kids love it.
I’ve been having existential crisis about working in the arts these days – like, does it matter what I do when people are being stranded in foreign countries and getting all their funding pulled? I
I personally love reading about what people eat – I find it fascinating because I spend so much time thinking about food myself. But you know, I would read your posts no matter what you write about…
Existential crises?… Hmmm
How can I maintain my excitement for teaching? I’ve been teaching for 20+ years, and always want to perfect the craft. I am at a prof conference at the moment and that is giving me the necessary push. Also, when the weather turns I will probably feel better.