Just as I mentioned last week that I love learning about what people do for their day jobs, I also enjoy learning about what people eat for dinner during a regular week. (Maybe I’m just nosy? Tell me I’m not alone here.)
I also love learning about how people meal plan, so if you have some great strategies for that, I’d love to hear. Currently I just pick from a variety of recipes from food blogs, ones I’ve saved to Pinterest, or favorites we’ve already tried. Here is our meal plan from last week.
{sunday} Thai Pork Meatballs with Rice and Slaw. These are lettuce wraps in the recipe, but to make them work for my family I made them with rice and slaw on the side. This was a new recipe we tried and they were really good, although because the pork was so lean the meatballs got a tiny bit dry. Real life verdict: the kids ate the rice. Violet decided that day she didn’t like meatballs, and Jona doesn’t eat much meat right now.
{monday} Ham, Cheese, and Walnut Pasta. This is one of our favorites from when Aaron and I first got married, so I’ve been making it for more than a decade! It sounds kind of weird, but it is SO good. Real life note: the kids like this pasta, although they don’t eat the walnuts, and only Violet eats the Canadian bacon.
{tuesday} Caprese Pasta Salad. This is another recipe I’ve been making for a long time. Aaron has class on Tuesday evenings, so I made this just for me and made easy dinners for the kids. Jona had pretzels and hummus and Violet had a PB&J, and we all had grapes.
{wednesday} Fish Taco Bowls. I am a huge fan of a meal in a bowl. Just about once a week we do some kind of bowl meal, usually with rice, but sometimes with quinoa. I made rice for these, and I loved the spice mix on the fish and the chipotle lime crema. However, I did not like the actual fish–I guess I don’t really like cod (unless it’s battered and fried). Real life note: this was a hard pass for the kids, although they did like the “spicy dip” and Violet likes the bowl toppings–avocado, corn, tomatoes, etc.
{thursday} Sheet Pan Sausage and Smashed Potatoes with corn on the cob. I love a sheet pan meal, but I don’t love it when a sheet pan meal is deceptively labor intensive. This meal required par-boiling the potatoes before smashing them on the sheet pan. The sheet pan smashing turned into a huge mess, and I don’t think the flavor of the potatoes was worth all that effort. Real life note: I probably won’t make this again. The kids liked the sausage though, and Violet can take down some corn on the cob.
{friday} road trip meal! We were traveling to visit family so we stopped to get Mexican food on the road.
{saturday} BBQ. We ate at my sister-in-law’s house and they had a delicious barbecue dinner. Aaron and I had pulled pork sandwiches, Violet had bread, pork, and baked beans, and Jona had… bread. (His pickiness is astonishing sometimes.) We also had birthday cake because we were celebrating two of my niece’s and Jona’s birthdays.
{breakfast/snack} Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bites. I love making these no-bake granola ball things, and have made several different versions. Aaron, Jona, and I all loved these, although they’re not Violet’s cup of tea.
{dessert} brownies. Jona wanted brownies for his birthday dessert the previous weekend, and so we had some leftover to start the week. They were just the Ghiradelli kind from the box, nothing fancy.
Tell me something you had for dinner this past week!
