So I will tell you about some of the things I make for dinner at the Culver house. Specifically, the things I've made this week. I used to be a creative cook. We would eat something delicious in a restaurant and I would try to recreate it at home. Hours would be spent grocery shopping and prepping. But these days, I mostly hate cooking. Especially dinner. I get Edie home from daycare and it's 5:30. She is starving. I have no energy after a day at work with no time to plan a menu. I microwave something from Trader Joe's and viola! Dinner! I'm not proud. But on the days that I slave away on a new recipe, Edie inevitably hates it and Jeff gets stuck in a meeting and doesn't come home to eat with the family. Which means, I sit at our kitchen table looking at the giant mess I made, eating flank steak and thinking about how much worse it's going to taste for Jeff after he has to reheat it in the microwave and how I could have spent that hour and a half doing something like relaxing.
Part of the reason this seems like a decent post idea is because I'm hopeful that some of you will take pity on me and tell me what YOU make for dinner. And hopefully it will be something easy and good, something my kid will maybe eat. So, I'll show you mine if you show me yours!
Drum roll please....
Monday: Greek Chicken. This is in regular rotation at our house. Here's how it works:
Buy a bottle of Penzey's brand Greek Seasoning, don't cheap out with an alternative because Penzey's is the best thing ever. Liberally season chicken with the Greek Seasoning (skin on or off, bone in or out - doesn't matter) and squeeze some lemon juice on it. Brown one side in the skillet using olive oil. While doing this, roast some chopped bell peppers, onions and quartered new potatoes after tossing them in olive oil and a little Greek seasoning. Then add the browned chicken, raw side down, tucking the pieces into the veggies and cook for 10 more minutes. At the end, throw in some greek olives and crumbled feta.
Tuesday: Spaghetti Carbonara with roasted broccoli on the side. If you don't have/like broccoli, you can substitute a salad, zucchini or pretty much anything green for the broccoli and you've got dinner. This is a huge hit with the 3 year olds. I follow Tyler Florence's recipe (Link HERE) to a tee and it is super easy, fast and epic proportions are consumed by husband and child (and me). The other bonus is that I almost always have all of these ingredients on hand: spaghetti, egg, parmesan, garlic, olive oil and ham/bacon. Don't you just want to eat a big bowl of this carb fest:
Wednesday: Greek Chicken leftovers. I thinly slice the chicken and reheat it in the oven with the peppers and onions. Then I toast buttered pita/naan in the skillet, open a tub of tzatziki sauce and/or hummus and we have chicken gyros. In other words: Leftovers totally rebranded! And I haven't met a 3 year old that doesn't eat the crap out of buttered, toasted pita bread. Just don't buy those lame pita pockets that are dry and crumbly, buy the real bread kind that get soft and puffy in the skillet. If ambitous, you can also make a greek salad to go with this. My greek salads include chopped tomato, cucumber, green pepper, green onions and olives and feta. The only problem with this is that I love greek salad but Edie doesn't and Jeff only pretends to.
Thursday: Corn salad with Trader Joe's chicken and cheese tamales. Edie gave this dinner 2 sour creamy thumbs up. The tamales are from the freezer section and just get microwaved. Then I boiled 4 corn cobs, sliced off the kernels, added cherry tomato halves, chives, a whole avocado sliced up, half a can of black beans and some lime juice. Edie ate tons of the salad (minus the tomatoes which she haaaates) and ate half a tamale that she dipped in sour cream.
What are you making for dinner these days?
3 comments:
tonight i made a quinoa salad. reid wasn't interested but sam liked it. you basically just make a few cups of quinoa, add lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper and whatever veggies you have on hand diced--i did carrots, yellow pepper, celery, some cooked spinach. then add some olives and feta and chickpeas or other beans for some more protein. we had slivered almonds and i added those too. it's a light dinner but very easy. we also eat veggie burgers with broccoli (or fries if matt's around to make them) a lot, and the mandarin chicken from trader joes with peppers, broccoli and mushrooms added. thanks for sharing your ideas!
Have you ever bought Haggen's curry lentil quinoa salad from their del? So delicious. We will add other veggies and a minced up meat or shrimp to it.
This is not a boring post! I enjoyed the insight and new ideas. What do we eat. Hmmm. Why is it that I draw a complete blank when this questioned is posed? We definitely do burgers and homemade fries once a week. We love a dinner of sausage, cheese, baguette and fruit. We love sandwiches and they are so easy (my panini grill is a good friend of mine). Every so often I like to buy a big old ham and cook it up. We use that for many dinners such as ham sandwiches, scalloped potatoes and ham, egg and ham strata. We do breakfast for dinner once a week - usually waffles and breakfast sausage or something like that. That's all I can think of right now. The crystal ball has gone dark.
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