tacos are my favorite food

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Dinners This Week

Sometimes a person wishes she could just sit in front of her laptop and read blogs all day long. Alas, NaBloPoMo desires notwithstanding, a person still has to plan meals, cook them, and eat them. (And post about them online so that Future Her can find the ideas and recipes when she’s completely baffled about what to make each night.)

Dinners for the Week of November 10-16

  • Ravioli with Beef and Green Beans: Ah yes, we’ve had another episode of “Suzanne Doesn’t Know How Much Food to Cook for Guests.” I made a big crockpot full of cider braised pot roast when friends visited this weekend. And now we have enough cider braised pot roast to last us the rest of 2025. Tonight I’m going to use the leftovers to make a made-up meal: cider-braised pot roast with goat cheese and caramelized onion ravioli and a cider reduction sauce, with pan-sauteed haricots verts on the side. Will this taste as good in reality as it sounds like it will, in my imagination? Hard to say, but I’m leaning toward “no.”
  • Fried Rice: My mom occasionally makes fried rice and it’s always very good and seems quite easy. Trader Joe’s has a package of frozen vegetable fried rice and I plan to throw some eggs, soy sauce, and frozen shrimp in with it to round things out.
  • Black Bean Burritos: We haven’t had these in awhile and I am very much in the mood for beany cheesy goodness drowned in hot sauce. 
  • Crispy Slow Cooker Carnitas: What is a week without tacos? A sad week indeed, I always say. Mainly I have a pork tenderloin in my freezer that keeps blocking the freezer drawer when I try to open it, which I’m pretty sure is a cry for attention.

My husband and I also have a date night this week, but as usual, even though I have known for many weeks that we have an upcoming kid-free evening, I have not made any effort to make reservations. Sigh. Perhaps we will order takeout and watch a horror movie instead of going out?

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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?