summer food

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HVAC Distress, Dinners This Week

So…. this morning I noticed that a tube (?????) coming out of the back of our HVAC unit (?????) is dripping gently on the floor of the basement. That is alarming. I am waiting for my father, in a different time zone, to wake up and read my panicky email to see if it merits a call to the HVAC company. We don’t even HAVE a current HVAC company, because I fired ours last year after an incident I am still salty about. 

Am I about to join Sarah in the New Air Conditioner Club?!?! Tune in later to find out.

Moving on to other irritating but less panic-inducing topics, meals need planning for the week ahead. I am still boycotting my oven as much as possible. Trying to soak up the sweet, sweet air conditioning while we have it. 

Right, right, we’re not panicking. We’re thinking about dinner. 

Dinners for the Week of July 1-6

  • Salsa Verde Chicken Tacos: We haven’t had these in a long while; I sort of forgot about them, to be honest. I think my husband will appreciate a deviation from my one true love, chipotle chicken tacos. Will my child eat these? Unlikely. 
  • Lemony Cucumber Couscous Salad with Some Sort of Protein: I have some feta leftover from last week and this sounds fresh and summery. I’ll make the couscous in the relative cool of the morning and figure out the protein later, which I will cook in the air fryer.
  • Pasta Primavera: I’m not sure I can handle boiling water in the evening, or standing over a hot stove, stirring in various vegetables, but I’m willing to try because I have a hankering for some pasta primavera.
  • Something Festive for the Fourth: My husband and I haven’t figured out what to eat for the Fourth of July, which is my least favorite holiday. (The fireworks have already started and I Am Not A Fan. So far, Lenny seems more intrigued than scared, for which I’m grateful.) I like ribs; my husband and Carla do not. My husband loves bratwurst and other fancy European sausages; I do not, and Carla will only eat kielbasa and then only rarely. I love burgers, but my husband hates making them at home (they never taste as good as restaurant burgers, says he). Carla will eat a hotdog; I prefer to eat a hot dog once a year and I’m not sure I’m up to it. Plus, she is having a sleepover this week and I think hot dogs are on the menu. What do you like to make and/or eat for summer holidays? 

Carla is on a baking kick and wants to make bread, so our oven may get some action despite my best efforts. I am also in the mood to try these oatmeal protein bars, which have no protein powder in them. (I never did get around to trying protein powder. Too intimidating and too expensive.) Also also, Betty Crocker cookie mixes were on sale the last time I was at the grocery store and a package of chocolate chocolate chip cookie mix found its way into my cart. I will bake some for the sleepover. Microsoft Word objects mightily to my double usage of double words two sentences ago. Suck it, Word. I do what I want.

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Nearly No-Cook Dinners This Week

We are in the midst of a heat wave and I am still expected to provide meals for my family. I may have scoured every blog post and online article about “best no-cook meals.” No, I will never make gazpacho, every blog post and online article about “best no-cook meals.” My husband and I discussed the options I bookmarked and landed on a good meal plan for the week. There are a lot of chickpeas, quinoa, and pesto on the list. The dinners are kind of cilantro heavy, though, so if you hate cilantro, consider yourself warned. 

Dinners for the Week of June 23-June 29

  • Street Corn Pasta Salad with Cilantro Pesto: The original recipe calls for goat cheese, but I am going to swap that out for cotija. I am also going to get us some grilled shrimp from the prepared foods section to add as our protein.
  • Ground Beef Tacos in the Crockpot: The taco meat requires cooking, but I’ll make it in the crockpot to keep our kitchen cool. I usually heat up corn taco shells in the oven, so I will have to figure out if I can stand doing that or if I can make them in our air fryer.
  • Pesto Farmer’s Market Salad with Grilled Chicken: My husband and I are weary of the (delicious) salads in our regular rotation, so we’re going to give this one a try. Instead of my go-to balsamic, this salad calls for a pesto vinaigrette which is intriguing. I will “grill” the chicken in our air fryer.

I am hoping that many of these dinners produce leftovers because I don’t want to use my oven for lunch, either.

When you think of Good Bread, what do you think of? My husband requested sourdough; I am happy to oblige. What’s your favorite summery salad? What else do you like to eat when you refuse to use the oven?

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Kitten Update, Dinners This Week

It continues to be extremely difficult to get anything done with a kitten around. Saturday, my husband went upstairs with the kitten to wake up our child. When no one appeared after a reasonable amount of time, I went up to investigate. And then the three of us both ended up lying on our stomachs, crosswise across Carla’s bed, staring at the kitten for some undetermined amount of time. I don’t even know what the kitten was doing; being cute, obviously. That’s just how things seem to go these days.

Or, as with this morning, I woke up nice and early to spend some time writing before I needed to wake my child for camp. But Lenny was so full of purrs and gratitude when I released him from his room (he is still sleeping in an enclosed room for… now) that I was forced against my will to cuddle him, and then he refused to allow me to type on my computer, so I ended up sitting with him on my lap, purring, while I petted him and told him how handsome he is. 

I did also download a free trial of a decibel meter app to see just how loud his purr is. At one point, it briefly tipped into the 70 decibel range (similar to the sound of light traffic, according to the app), but mainly his purr stayed around 50 to 60 decibels. 

We are enduring, I assume, all the typical challenges of Kitten Parenthood. Carla and I purposely bathed Lenny last weekend because we want to get him used to being bathed. He did not love it, although no one required stitches or even a Band-Aid. But then he got into Carla’s shower while it was running but before she was in it, drenching himself in the process… two nights in a row. This means I had to blow-dry him three times last week. (I use the lowest setting of heat and air strength.) I think he likes being blow-dried; he tolerates it well and started purring the third time we did it. Then, this past weekend, there were two incidents that required partial bathing. Only one required blow-drying, though. 

“Oh look, Mom, the drain thingy just popped out totally without my intervention.”

I think I also mentioned that we bought entirely new living room furniture at about the same time we brought Lenny home. He seems to love nothing more than scrambling up on top of the brand new chenille armchairs and scratching and biting them. I am not mad at him; he’s just being a cat. I am also not crazy about the idea of sacrificing our first ever set of grown up furniture to his hunting instincts. We already have three scratching posts, plus the scratching elements of the cat tower; I calmly remove him from the chairs and place him on a scratching post, and give him a treat anytime he scratches the scratching post. We’ve tried spraying the chairs with Feliway. We’ve tried covering the chair he prefers to abuse in a large blanket; he simply climbs under the blanket and scratches it anyway. So we are looking into double sided sticky tape and vinyl furniture covers. It’s about to get very Marie Barone up in here.

The kitten: exceedingly challenging; nonetheless adorable.

This is the basket where I keep all his toys. He was clearly unsatisfied with the selection I’d made and decided to rectify the situation himself.

Kitten aside, we continue to require sustenance! Whatever shall we eat this week?

Dinners for the Week of June 15-22

  • Chili-Honey Chicken and Sweet Potatoes: I have everything I need to make this already, so this is on the menu for tonight. That way I can postpone going to the grocery store one more day. I’ll serve it with some steamed broccoli. The only thing I’m dreading is turning on the oven. If only I’d ordered the magical air fryer Jen recommended after my post last week. Some day, magical air fryer, you will be mine.
  • Pasta with Goat Cheese and Chicken: I’m not entirely sure if a glorified mac and cheese coordinates well with the heat we’re expecting, but I’m going to roll with it. 
  • Fish Tacos: It’s been ages since we’ve had fish tacos, and fish tacos always seem so summery and fresh to me.
  • Green Goddess Salad with Shrimp: Nearly two decades ago, my first Real Job required me to travel to the home office every quarter. One of the restaurants nearby made an absolutely perfect salad with grilled shrimp and a gorgeous green goddess dressing. I’m going to try to recreate that this week. 

What’s distracting you these days? Anything on your meal plan you’re especially looking forward to?