Another Monday, another expectation to provide meals for my family.
Let’s not pretend that I do much of anything to provide breakfast for these people. I make sure we have enough cereal / bagels / toast / fruit / peanut butter / milk / yogurt / Nutella / eggs for everyone to come up with something nourishing-adjacent. The noontime meals are likewise pretty simple: my husband packs his lunch; my kid presumably gets lunch at school; I drink a smoothie or eat leftovers. And it’s not even like I’m cooking every single night. We often throw in the towel at some point and end up scrounging for food in the freezer and pantry, or ordering takeout, or some combination.
Nonetheless, even coming up with, let’s say, a mere four or five meals a week feels so Sisyphean that I am ready to prostrate myself on the ground and allow the metaphorical boulder of meal planning to flatten me like a Looney Tunes villain.
Dinners for the Week of October 6-12
- Sheet Pan Chicken, Sweet Potatoes, and Broccoli: This sounds easy and nutritious.
- Slow Cooker Chili: I don’t know that I’ve ever willingly diverted from my family’s traditional chili recipe. But this recipe makes me want to try. It also seems like it will produce a lot of leftovers, which can only reduce the number of meals I’m responsible for planning.
- Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: It’s been a minute since we’ve had this and I am in the mood for some cauliflower and chickpeas.
- Apple Pecan Salad with Creamy Lemon Dressing: I can pair this autumnal-sounding salad with a roasted chicken breast for my husband and a salmon filet for myself and my kid.
- Sheet Pan Cuban Chicken Fajitas: Another sheet pan favorite that we haven’t eaten in awhile. Let’s do it.
I did not make the pumpkin cream cheese muffins last week as planned, by the way. But the oven is pre-heating and the eggs and cream cheese are coming up to room temperature as I type. What better reward for doing the work of meal planning than a delicious fall flavored baked good?! I am very excited to eat these muffins so I hope they turn out well. Honestly, I kind of wish I had a jumbo muffin tin so I could make them jumbo size. But I suppose a regular size muffin is better than no muffin at all.
What’s your most Sisyphean household task? Besides meal planning, I’d have to say laundry. It never stops.
Another week, another need to get dinner on the table!
I’m leaning into pantry and freezer staples heavily this week.
My bugaboo with cleaning is vacuuming and dusting. I will always vacuum because I can’t stand the mess, but it’s all too easy to let dusting go by the wayside.
That salad looks really good – thanks for the link! Like Birchy above – I hate and don’t dust. I’m allergic to it which means I should make sure our house is free from it but then how am I supposed to dust? A conundrum!
oooooh that salad!! Also yay fall because it is SHEET PAN SZN. Also also! Whole Foods has some delightful frozen chickpeas that could not be easier or more delicious…
(And do you do Costco and/or Whole Foods delivery? I do, and it is a TREAT)
I am SO over cooking. As usual. But even more so than usual lately. I’m not sure why. I like fall flavours? It just feels like…it is never ending and it’s like it’s suddenly dawning on me that is IS NEVER ENDING. For the rest of my life I will be cooking for myself or other people and I am over it. OVER IT. Anyhoo.
I think I will make a risotto tonight. Tomorrow will worry about itself…right???
I really dislike cleaning bathrooms. Blergh. Oh and changing sheets and duvet covers. Such a faff.
Cleaning up after the cat. Dusting. They are never ending and thankless. I love pumpkin muffins as long as they’re not too heavily spiced.
I’ve chosen to tackle the fall meal planning with an assist from “hello fresh” meal boxes. The service seems to have vastly expanded over the past several years; I can choose from around 75 different meals each week, it’s delivered to my door, and we’re eating a bigger chapter of flavors than I would have thought to cook or had the patience to source the ingredients for.
here’s a discount code is you want to try it:
https://www.hellofresh.com/freebox/MzMzODYxNDYzLTAtNC0xNi1VUw
I actually don’t mind laundry. Meal planning does my head in, though, even when now it is theoretically simple and low pressure.
I am unreasonably annoyed that the ‘spicy seasoning mix’ in the first sheet pan meal is a link to a commercial Cajun mix that I can’t even BUY BECAUSE I’M CANADIAN. Tonight I am frying a fuckton of ground meat to make stuff for when the kids are home next weekend. I also bought pork chops to make the pork chops again. Some of them did look nearly an inch thick, hee hee.
When the kids lived here, definitely the most difficult task was figuring out what to make for dinner, followed closely by the task of making dinner.
Laundry was also a huge thing. As soon as I could, I required each kid to do their own laundry.
I should say that keeping my office tidy is the most Sisyphean task now, as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t done it in months.
I’m hoping this comment goes through – I’ve tried to comment here a few times lately and word press is bullying me. Weird because other word press blogs allow me to comment.
the task I hate most is cleaning house. Plain and simple – especially bathrooms. I don’t mind meal prep . . . much, but I don’t do a lot of labor intensive meals either. I toss stuff in a crockpot and call it a day. I’m not ashamed to be a casserole queen either. I made an insane amount of food last week for the tailgate we hosted, so I’m sort of uninvolved in meal planning this week. Tonight was chicken tacos – plopped meat in the crockpot this morning – late morning at that. And bam. dinner done. (we had leftover lettuce from the tailgate and Coach had to chop tomatoes because I was at a meeting).
The sheet pan cuban fajitas look delicious! Ironing and mopping the kitchen floor are my housework bugaboos… I actually feel like I have a decent handle on meal planning and preparing (probably because, no joke, my “meal plan” includes at least one frozen meal and takeout/leftovers night each week). My biggest gripe right now is that I have some picky eaters who won’t eat anything spicy, so certain favourite meals I used to make all the time when it was just my husband and me have been relegated to the back of the recipe binder. Annoying!
I find meal planning grueling, much harder than the actual cooking. And I think you must feel similarly because your reward for planning was cooking. (Or maybe baking is just more fun.) One thing I am looking forward to when Beth retires in a few months is that she’s going to take on more of the meal planning/dinner cooking. I don’t want to give it up entirely, but I’d be happy doing it just a couple times a week.
I don’t mind laundry. As chores go, it’s probably the one I like the most. No hard decisions, and on days when I use the laundry line it’s nice being outside to put it up and take it down.
The sheet pan meals both sound delicious! (and simple?)
Yes, laundry never stops. But I’d gladly do laundry every day if someone else came in to cook a meal or two daily.