tacos are my favorite food

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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?

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Dinners This Week

I need a Real Meal Plan this week because a) we are having houseguests! and b) Carla begins two new after school activities this week, so I need to do some advance planning or we will end up eating nothing. 

This is a question I’ve asked before, but I am asking it again because food preferences change over time: Do you have A Specific Meal you make for guests? Like, something that everyone likes and you feel confident cooking it? 

Someone – including but not limited to my mother-in-law – inevitably mentions ordering-in instead of fooling around with making a bunch of food. My houseguests are very flexible and would be fine with takeout, and I’m not opposed to takeout, but we also just got back from a vacation where we ate out for every single meal and I’m ready for some home cooked meals. 

Here’s what I’ve got on the menu for the week.

Dinners for March 31-April 6

  • Teriyaki Chicken Salad: I think my kid will (possibly reluctantly) eat this too. A deconstructed version, at least.
  • Something With Asparagus???: Nicole’s recent post about her favorite spring things gave me a real hankering for asparagus. I’m having trouble finding recipes that really allow asparagus to shine but are also fairly easy to make and also also diabetic friendly. (For instance, I would love a pasta with asparagus and mushrooms, or a delicious pasta primavera, but I don’t think our houseguests would be able to enjoy those dishes.) Soup is out because my husband doesn’t consider soup to be a full meal; stir fry is out because I have a weird bias against making stir fry for houseguests, don’t ask me why, I don’t even know.

What’s on your meal plan for the week?

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Dinners This Week

At 5:30 this morning, I was torn from a nightmare by a low discordant keening. I might describe it as “toddler impersonating whale calls,” but my husband said it was more “cat meets blender.” We watched Longlegs last night, so the noise quite easily could have been the moaning of Nic Cage at his most grotesque and terrifying. (Even though I enjoyed it, I am not recommending the movie; it was Weird AF.)

We confirmined that the noise was, somehow, our neighbor’s snowplow – which means that it persisted for quite some time, as their driveway is not short. I did not fall back to sleep.

On the positive side, we got a ton of snow over the weekend. Oh, how I adore snow. I love the trees lacquered in white, how everything – shadows, blue skies, bare trees – assumes an extra vibrancy against the snow. I love sunshine caught in billions of ice crystals and winked back at me as I walk. Grey skies seem more dramatic and moody; sunny days have an extra sheen of cheer. I love it I love it I love it.

Soup is on the menu tonight, and therefore takes one of three spots for dinners this week. But before we get into that, I want to report on dinners past because they were YUM.

Dinners Last Week

  • Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: This was easy (aside from the veggie chopping, which is easy but time consuming) (I listen to an audiobook while chopping) and SO good. Few things are better than a big pile of roasted veggies. The seasoning/marinade was delicious, although I ended up doubling it because I added some chicken tenders to the mix. They were a good addition, especially for my husband. Also, because I was on a Green Sauce High from the previous week’s Birchie-recommended meal, I made the cilantro yogurt sauce from this recipe and slapped it on top of my veggie shawarma. One of the best decisions I made all week.
  • Salmon Burgers: For some reason, I dillied and dallied and delayed in making these, but then finally I did make them, and they were easy and yummy as usual. The recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated, and I’ve got a photo of the recipe here in case you want to try them too. Oh! The remarkable thing about this meal is that I forced Carla to eat it, too. She loves salmon and eats it regularly. This is the closest thing to salmon possible. She DID eat it, even though she didn’t particularly like it (it has teeny tiny shallots minced in it).
  • Beef Birria Tacos: The first time I ate beef birria was in Phoenix at a taco place, and I fell instantly, irrevocably in love. (By the way, I learned from my recipe search that birria is traditionally made with goat, but I’m not big on goat so I used chuck roast.) The need to eat beef birria again has been growing stronger and stronger with each passing week. However, I could not for the life of me find a recipe that I wanted to follow. Too many ingredients or too few; equipment I didn’t want to use; too many steps. What I ended up doing was cobbling together a recipe out of a bunch of recipes online… and it was SO GOOD. The recipe made enough for at least three generous meals, and we immediately froze the remaining beef and consommé, and I cannot stop thinking about it. So rich and spicy and omg perfection. My husband took over the actual taco making, which involves dipping a corn tortilla in the consommé, frying it, adding cheese and beef, and then putting on my plate for immediate consumption. This one is a keeper from a taste standpoint, but from a work standpoint, I think it’s something I would make maybe once a year.

There’s really no way I can top last week’s meals, so I’m not even going to try. This week is not about flash and romance, but instead about solid, reliable faves. Also, chicken was on sale, so it’s all about the chicken. (Luckily, these are veggie-heavy meals so I can limit or completely ignore the chicken in my own servings.)

Dinners for the Week of February 17-25

  • Chicken and Zucchini Stir Fry: I am more in the mood for this Szechuan Stir Fry, but the bell pepper quality was very poor today, so I pivoted to chicken and zucchini stir fry instead. Of course, I have to go back to the grocery store to buy things I forgot to buy (namely: the two key ingredients of Ham Sandwich: the ham and the sandwich rolls), so perhaps I will peruse the peppers to see if the prospects are more perky.

  • Sheet Pan Chicken Fajitas: The bell peppers may not have been crisp enough for stir fry, but they were of acceptable quality for fajitas.

Here’s hoping that tonight I dream of swimming in a sea of birria consommé.