slow cooker

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Dinners This Week

What makes meal planning even MORE fun? Meal planning when you have a brand new afterschool activity to adjust to, and a time change to adjust to, and semi-surprise houseguests!

Dinners for the Week of March 8-15

  • Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma: I often feel like I need to come up with something new! and different! for people who’ve eaten at my table before. Well, I don’t think I’ve served this to guests before. I plan to serve it with broccoli and couscous, which are my favorite accompaniments.
  • Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork with Coleslaw: And then again, sometimes I just make things we’ve all had so many times we’re well and sick of them. But I NEED a crockpot meal one night this week, and this one is easy, and we haven’t had it in awhile. Maybe I’ll grab some green beans to amp up the veggie quotient?
  • Balsamic Chicken and Mushrooms: Not quite sure what to serve with this one. Maybe some asparagus?

Yes, I realize this is only three meals. But we didn’t eat the chicken paprikas last week, so that’s up for grabs again this week. And we’re going out for dinner one night. And I am hoping we have at least SOME leftovers.

What are you eating this week?

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My Most Used Small Kitchen Appliances

My Instagram feed seems to be full, lately, of people using these fancy glass air fryers to make their meals. I fully realize that the air fryer doesn’t make the meal, the chef does. But, what can I say, I fall under the spell of beautifully filmed meals with soothing voiceovers.  The other reason I am susceptible to the siren song of a new air fryer is that I haaaaaaate using the oven when it’s hot out. Did I hate it this much in our old house? I’m not sure. But I get so sweaty and uncomfortable, and it seems like the heat lingers forever, and our ovens have internal fans that kick in automatically and shut off automatically and they take FOREVER to turn off, so it’s always loud in my kitchen when I cook something in the oven.

Of course, we already HAVE an air fryer. It’s perfectly good, although it’s a little on the small side for cooking entire meals. If we got a new one, we’d need to make sure it fits. This house has a lot of storage, which I love, so most of my small appliances are tucked nicely away. Which appliances would I get rid of to make room for a new air fryer? (Especially a nice extra big one, with dual drawers?)

This got me thinking about which small appliances I use and which ones are expendable. I feel like I have a pretty typical array of small appliances: blender, food processor, toaster, mixer, crockpot.  Some of them, like the food processor, I use only rarely. But it’s handy enough that I want to keep it. I think I would jettison the wok. The wok used to be my most-used small appliance, but I haven’t used it even once since we moved into this house. It doesn’t fit into the dishwasher (grumble grumble) and I am very opposed to hand-washing things, so I typically make stir fries and curries in a big pot on the stove. Which works just fine. I have mentioned many times before that I am scared of our Instant Pot. It has lived in our basement for several years now, and I should probably just get rid of it. The only reason I keep it around is that once in a while we make these very tasty burgers. Is that reason enough to keep a rather unwieldly appliance around? I don’t know.

On the flip side, some of my small appliances are used so frequently I could NEVER get rid of them.

  • My electric kettle. I use this every single day to heat up water for my tea. In the dark old days before I had an electric kettle, I had a kettle I heated on the stove. It took too long to boil and the water was always too hot and I didn’t really like having a kettle constantly on the stove, but it was not easy to stow elsewhere. And then I went through a spate of heating my tea water in the microwave, which was fine, although the mug always got too hot. An electric kettle seems like one of those frivolous single-use items but it is NOT, it is magical. I don’t quite know why it’s better than the other methods, but it IS. My only wish is that it could be programmed to make my tea at a specific time, like my husband’s coffee maker.
  • My slow cooker. This is one of those things that, if it were to break, I would order a replacement immediately. (I know this from experience; once I dropped the ceramic insert and it cracked in half and I placed an order for a new one so fast.)
  • My stick blender. As you know, I love a good smoothie and I eat one almost every day. I used to make them in my blender, which came with a smoothie cup attachment. But the stick blender is smaller and lighter and just as easy to throw in the dishwasher. Plus, I can use it for making dressings and sauces and soups and all sorts of other things. I love it so much, I have two.
  • My toaster. My kiddo has been on a dual Eggo waffle and sourdough toast spate, so the toaster is called into service most mornings. I like this one because of its extra long slots, which can fit a lot of sourdough. It does seem to need to “warm up” a bit though; the first batch of toast takes forever, the second batch burns if you don’t turn it way down.
  • My mixer. You know I am a huge fan of making ridiculous cakes and cupcakes. How could I do either without my stand mixer?! I’ve had this workhorse since 2008, when we got it as a wedding gift. It’s a little more wobbly than it used to be, but still works great.

I probably don’t need a new air fryer. Clearly, I am already swimming in small appliances. But I would be interested in your most- and least- used small appliances. And in your favorite air fryer, if you have one.

Here is a gratuitous kitten photo, for those readers who enjoy such things.

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Dinners This Week

Thank you so much for your well wishes, both in terms of my progress toward my to-do list, and in terms of my health. The former is going better than I anticipated (the electrician AND the furnace person have been here since I posted! yay!) and I got a call back from 2/3 of the pool people I left a message for. (The first one left a message and I need to call them back. The second person called, I spoke to him and got some details, he asked me to text him to see if I was in his service area and if I wasn’t he would recommend someone who was; I texted him and he never followed up.) 

I am feeling so much better, but also I am pretty sure I have a sinus infection. (By the way, Word is insisting that “sinus” is misspelled. I really don’t think it is, but that little red underline is making me question everything I thought I knew.) A sinus infection is typical for me, when I have a cold. Alas, even though I feel like I recognize the symptoms, it’s one of those things where you have to wait for at least ten days before you can call the doctor, or they will say, “Well, colds can linger. Give it at least ten days and then give me a call back.” No way am I making ONE MORE CALL than I need to. Especially because today I also need to call the orthodontist about a loose bracket and try to convince them that they should see Carla after school and not in the middle of the school day, even though they seem completely baffled every time I suggest the latter. 

Carla did end up calling the hair salon to make an appointment for my husband. She did a great job. The only mildly amusing thing was that the scheduler didn’t question her AT ALL. Just said, “Oh, you’re making an appointment for your daddy? What’s his name?” and then went through with scheduling the appointment like it was totally normal for a ten-year-old to be in charge of her father’s calendar. Maybe it is! I am not complaining! I just thought she might get some gentle pushback, like, “Oh, is your daddy there helping you make this call?” or something. I don’t even know. Perhaps since there have been multiple times when people have asked me, a grown woman, whether my husband is there to give his permission for me to talk to them about things for which we share joint ownership, I thought it might be a little more difficult for a CHILD to make an appointment not that I am bitter or jaded or anything. 

Oh right, we’re supposed to be talking about DINNERS. What are you in the mood to eat, Internet? I’ve got nothing. And yet I cannot have nothing, because it’s part of my job to plan the meals! 

Time to scroll my endless lists of meal ideas… 

Dinners for the Week of March 4-10

  • One Pan Chicken, Sweet Potatoes, and Broccoli: It’s a sheet pan meal kind of week, I think. Plus, I already have broccoli in my fridge and chicken in my freezer. Maybe a sweet potato will materialize on my car hood tomorrow morning. The thing about sweet potatoes is that I always WANT to like them and then don’t like them in practice. But this dish sounds really good. So probably this is the one time when I WILL like them. Right? Right.
  • Lentil and Chickpea Salad with Feta: I’m in a lentil state of mind lately. I plan to eat this alongside some roasted salmon, but will make a chicken breast for my husband because I don’t want him to hate his life.
  • Crockpot Balsamic Pork Tenderloin: We haven’t had this in a hot minute! Yum. I could eat a big pile of this tangy shredded pork right now. (We serve it over rice with caramelized onions, feta, kalamata olives, and sundried tomatoes. Look at me, dual-purposing the feta rather than putting half a block in the fridge until it liquifies.)
  • Fish Tacos: You know tacos are one of my love languages. Let’s be honest. I will probably use fish sticks instead of buying and cooking wild cod. Wild cod is EXCELLENT, but fish sticks are EASY. 

Because I spend too much time ogling recipes on Instagram, I have also been influenced to make this three-ingredient yogurt cake. There is no way it will actually resemble Basque cheesecake right? That is just a pipe dream? But if I can persuade Carla to try it, it will feel like a win. A high-protein win. We’ll see.