Meal plan: week of May 14, 2018
Today my youngest, my squashy stubborn silly little fella, turned four. Four! What on earth. It was a very good day, not least because of this delightful cake, the layers for which I very sensibly made yesterday, and the frosting today.
Reminder to self: this was a much more reasonable schedule, and resulted in nary a drop of middle of the night cake baking, nor any last minute frantic frosting of a too-hot cake. It’s Smitten Kitchen’s fudgy chocolate cake, from Smitten Kitchen Every Day and its cake-builder section, which is delicious, not too sweet, and made with buttermilk, therefore having an extra tasty oomph. The frosting was mostly from The Secrets of Baking (and just butter, bittersweet chocolate, and powdered sugar), but I also added a bunch of malt powder because I’m all about malted everything these days. It was delicious and I was so pleased with how it turned out. More importantly, so was the now-four-year-old.
I won’t lie, I’m now pretty wiped out, and meal planning is pretty much the last thing I want to do, but – and this is basically the only good thing about it – my husband is out of town this week, so it means meal planning can be ultra lame-o! Just the kids and me? I reserve the right to have smoothies and cereal three days out of five. Here’s the tentative plan, but really, we’ll see.
Monday. Black bean burritos, because I already have all the fixings ready to go. Black beans, cheese, guac for the kids. I’ll add two handfuls of chopped cilantro and call it dinner.
Tuesday. Red lentil and rice soup, sort of from The Malaysian Kitchen by Christina Arokiasamy, which my dear friend kindly lent me last week. It calls for paprika, which my kids would not have eaten, so I tossed in some coriander and cumin instead. I made it in the Instant Pot before our guests came this afternoon, so that we would have a nutritious dinner awaiting us after cake and alcohol. AM I NOT A GENIUS/RESPONSIBLE FEEDER OF CHILDREN? My kids both loved it, so we shall gobble it again tonight. With fresh bread, of course.
Wednesday. Assuming the elder is well again (she was sick today), she’s cooking! They’re making veggie lasagna.
Thursday. Ye olde standby sardines on toast. I actually like to use tinned white anchovies but they have recently, weirdly, become very difficult to find. Sardines work too; I just split them in half, remove the spines (sorry vegetarians), and then kind of break them up into a paste while I sauté them in a bit of olive oil. I’ll presumably serve this will some kind of vegetable, but who knows.
Friday. Reality is we’ll probably have cereal, because Friday is always the hardest day, but I am pretending I’ll make cabbage and eggs, which to me at first sounded not delicious, but has become one of my favorite quick meals. I’ll post it; my friend (of the Malaysian cookbook lending) gave me her recipe and it’s so tasty. The key? White pepper!
What are you making this week?
