February 2024 – Little House on the Fairy Hill

(For meal planning and life in general)

It is rare that our meal plans work out exactly the way we plan it. As the kids get older, their preferences for whether they spend the night with their Dad or Eli and I play out differently, and we are, and have always been pretty easygoing about the co-parent schedule. Life happens. No one feels like cooking what we planned or we run out of time.

I have learned over the years not to view meal plan changes as failures of my planning skills. They are simply a part of the mix – we end up needing to use something up, we have less or more people at the table than we though we would. Or something. The ability to be flexible is really, really important, as important as having the meal plan itself.

So when we got to Friday the 2nd week of February with chicken broth for chicken soup with rice in the crockpot, pizza dough cold-proofing, and the kids deciding that they wanted to hang with Dad for the weekend, in no small part due to a game they wanted to play there, I mixed it up. We postponed the soup and pizza to busier nights with kids and I pulled out my list of recipes.

Pizza dough and broth both freeze well.

We had skipped our meat share delivery in January for our planned pantry and freezer eat-down that never happened because life did, so when it showed up early in February, we were still bursting at the gills. And honestly when I take something out these days, I seem to put something in – this alone week I added butternut squash and sauteed mushrooms to the freezer, despite removing meats for meals – so it’s still pretty full!

I took out a pound of chicken and decided we should try a modified version of Crispy Chicken Ceasar Salad – modified because I neither had anchovy paste nor cabbage, but I did have a bag of slaw mix and lots of kale. I also added a whole avocado and some fresh basil to the dressing, because I could. And we didn’t have any bread so I toasted walnuts instead, with a little oil and Everything Bagel seasoning. I substituted fish sauce for anchovy paste at a ratio of 1:1.

It was honestly one of the best dinners I’ve made in a while. And listen, while it was not super frugal, it was decently frugal - because you slice the chicken breasts really thin, I got 8 cutlets of varying sizes out of it. The slaw mix was $3.49, the kale $1.40 (I used half a bunch and massaged it with a little olive oil and lemon juice to make it more tender, next time I would use the full bunch at $2.79) and the chicken was the splurge at $8/lb for our meat share. Call the dressing ingredients $3.50 and we’re talking about $16.39 for a meal we could not stop eating and left us with a teensy bit of salad, some more dressing, and 2 small chicken cutlets left over. I used all things I had.

But did I go get more slaw mix so we could eat it again? Yes, yes I did.

So what are we eating?

Use Up: avocados, sweet potatoes, squash, eggs

Lunches: Tuna Salad, Leftovers

Earlier this month:
Sunday: Baked Sage Chicken Meatballs with Parmesan Orzo. Except with ground turkey, and using mostly dried herbs rather than fresh because that’s what we had. Recommended by Ross Yoder over at Buzzfeed, who also recommends that amazing Chicken Ceasar I was raving about. I really like most of the things he recommends.

I really like meatball dishes, and I especially like it when I can make a double batch and freeze them for later. Which is precisely what I did. I’ll be honest. Good, but not to so good we’re rushing to have it again

Monday: Chicken soup with rice and popovers, the inevitable gift of the roaster chicken we had the prior week.

Tuesday: Just Eli and I, so salmon, roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic, olive oil and salt.

Wednesday – Valentine’s Day: I found fresh heart-shaped ravioli and heart-shaped macarons at Costco, and what can I say, I’m a sucker. I made a meat sauce and a salad to go with.

Note: I used to be somewhat cynical about Valentine’s Day, but then Covid happened and now I am all in for all the celebrating. Go ahead, make up a holiday, we’ll celebrate it here.

Thursday: Thursdays my daughter had her riding lesson, and then usually spends the night with her Dad. Since it’s just Eli, our son and I, we went for super duper simple, Trader Joe’s Orange Chicken, Dumplings, Edamame and Rice. Total prep time – 5 to 7 nanoseconds. Especially good because Thursday was the stop between 2 celebrations/major dinners that week.

Friday: My daughter’s birthday, we got Sushi for dinner and had cheesecake

Saturday: The kids were with us last weekend, so I went heavily to their preferences. On Saturday we had the crispy chicken Ceasar again, but I made butter noodles and some sliced veggies for my son.

Sunday: Beef Bulgogi that I had marinated and frozen earlier, rice, roasted broccoli

This week

Saturday: My son had a friend over, and we had Instant Pot Beef Bourguignon, a house favorite (it’s even better as leftovers the next day), and popovers with some sliced cukes, tomatoes and avocados. While I don’t make this recipe often, as it’s not a very frugal meal to make, it’s really good, and one of the more-requested winter meals.

Sunday:

Breakfast was our favorite pancakes, bacon and strawberries

Chicken Souvlaki Bowls with Garlic Fries only I’ll use both sweet potatoes and potatoes. And I’m going to make this salad for Monday night so I peeled, cubed and roasted some butternut squash in preparation.
I’ll roast some broccoli to go with tonight’s dinner, since we have lots. I made tzatziki as well.
To help with meal prep, I’ll make some barbeque sauce, pickled onions, and maybe some kind of sweet for my son’s lunches.

I started prepping food and the meal plan and realized that the grocery delivery folks had brought me split chicken breasts instead of the boneless skinless variety. I had an emergency stash of boneless skinless chicken tenders that I had been saving for a larger meal – Costco packages being enormous – and took those out to thaw, and changed up my menu. As I also peeled and seeded the butternut squash for Monday’s salad I realized I was only going to need a little less than half, so I sliced the rest and put it in the freezer.

Why do I do so much cooking on the weekend? Because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have lunches, snacks or sweets.

Monday: Mondays are busy – the kids go back to school after vacation, my daughter has her skating lesson, and there’s not a lot of time to cook. I had been planning sliders, but instead we’ll have have Chicken and Rice Circa 1975 with the split chicken breasts, the Ina Garten salad referenced above and sliced avocado and cukes.

Tuesday: it’s just Eli and I we’ll make Lentil Sausage soup with leftover homemade bread. Leftovers keep me fed during the work day for a few days, after the beef stew and leftover chicken run out.

Wednesday: Another busy day here, but we have some pizza dough in the freezer, so BBQ chicken pizza and cheese pizza in the oven. I reserved a couple of chicken tenders from Sunday’s meal to go on the pizza.

Thursday: Salmon bowls over the last of the Fregola pasta (this stuff is not super frugal but it’s so good) with spinach and whatever other veggies we have.

Friday: the kids will likely go to their Dad’s, so Eli and I will try Crispy Black Bean Tacos with some guacamole

Saturday: If no kids again, we’ll make a Massaman Curry Stir Fry over cauliflower rice. Usually we use chicken, but we might switch to shrimp, since i have some in the freezer and we’ll have had a lot of chicken this week.

Sunday: the kids will come home again, and we’ll make homemade bolognese and have a pasta dinner. And we’ll prep something for Monday.

Do I think we’ll hit every meal I plan? Nope. But that’s ok. We’ll adapt.

January blew through our house like a tornado – flu playing round-robin, emergency surgery and a long hospital stay for my husband, and nothing quite went as planned. So I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when February 1st rolled around, and brought with it something resembling normalcy.

Still we are lucky ducks, with all ending well, and despite the periodic cough that seems to be hanging on for myself and my son, the rest of the year is looking much better. At least we got all that out of the way early.

And once Eli was feeling better we were able to attend a cooking class as a family that had been a holiday gift to us all, with the kids taking charge of the Zuppa Inglese for 12 without so much as a bit of help from anyone other than the Chef leading the course. I look forward to having our own dessert chefs do more at home. We are targeting experiences over stuff this year, with the exception of more hospital experiences – I’ll think we’ll skip those.

February on the farmlet starts to get busy – it starts quietly, and then by the later part of the month there’s seed-starting and garden cleanup on the good weather days. We still need to mow down the raspberry canes and the trench beds. Nearby the local farms are starting to tap their maple trees – syrup making is a long New England tradition, and it is one of those things that I love seeing.

We are trying to balance experiences and downtime this year. Especially in the summer we get so busy we forget to be home just mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, and making fresh summer foods. I’m starting to plan the garden for the year, and bought some lovely blue pumpkin seeds I can’t wait to try.

For now though, we’re eating as much of the winter foods as we can, and it’s time to eat down our bulk veggies in earnest. Saturday night I used 14 onions to make French Onion Soup, because they won’t keep forever. We’re almost halfway through them, and by April they will need to be used up.

So what are we eating this week?
Use up: Cantaloupe, kale, oranges
Bake: Bread, if I get motivated, homemade donuts

Sunday: Family dinner, we aren’t cooking
Monday: Sheet Pan Sticky Chicken and Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Kale Salad with Pecorino and Walnuts & No Knead Bread I can prep the bread and some of the kale salad tonight and do a lot of prep work in the morning to make sure we eat at a normal hour
Tuesday: It will be just Eli and I, we’ll make a cauliflower curry soup
Wednesday: Roaster chicken with veggies, rice pilaf
Thursday: Eli will find a protein and cook
Friday: The kids schedule has been a bit fungible since their Dad started a new job – they mostly want to hang out with him on the weekends, since they see him less during the week. If it’s just us, I’ll make a butternut squash soup or a curry.
Saturday: Eli and I are going to make a pantry challenge meal together – using up what we have and getting creative
Sunday: Remember those Chinese chives I froze? Time for Chinese Chive Dumplings, Hunan Dumplings, some spring rolls from the freezer, rice and Edamame.

If you haven’t heard about Hunan Dumplings before I’m not shocked but oh are they good.

Prep for Monday: Chicken soup with rice. Any time we have a roast chicken, once we’re done with it I take the carcass and put it in the crockpot in water with herbs, bay leaves, and a dollop of vinegar. I then let it cook overnight, and at the end is the best broth. I strain it out, strip the meat and add that to the broth, and then chop carrots and onions, add some seasoning to taste, and cook. If I have a Parmesan rind, it’s perfect for this.

I don’t add any rice until it’s getting close to dinner time, about an hour out, and then i add it on a low simmer, about a cup and a half-ish, but i eyeball it.

Add to that either our leftover bread or some popovers, and that’s dinner. And usually a couple of lunches for Eli and I as well.

I’ve started to plan meals for the rest of the month as well, including trying out Char Siu Pork and Lemon Butter Dijon Chicken and Orzo.

But that’s later.