Meals for the Week of February 8, 2021

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Chinese / Lunar New Year started Friday, February 12th here in the Northeast USA and I used it as an excuse to make some Chinese food I have been craving. I’ll likely continue this on an off for the next two weeks in celebration. Frankly the Chinese restaurants in my town are very Americanized and not flavorful enough for me.

Note on leftovers- most will tell you leftovers in the fridge are good for 4 days. It is a great rule of thumb! In our household, we inspect and smell the food, if all looks good we still eat it – but it is always reheated. You do what you are comfortable with!

 

Week of meals for February 1, 2021

Our family: 2 adults, 1 toddler

Scope: Breakfast, lunch, and dinner (what is shown for breakfast and lunch is what I eat, I am not tracking my husband’s meals – but the goal every week is to use what we have so there is no waste)

This is going to be a quick run down of what we do. If you have questions or want to know specifics let me know in the comments. If I get enough demand I will start tracking things and sharing them.

 

Prepped on Sunday:

Breakfast Hash – Roasted quartered Brussels sprouts, 1 chopped zucchini, and 2 large sweet potatoes diced in the oven at 400⁰ on the convection setting for 20, 20, and 30 minutes, respectively, tossing frequently. Each was cooked on its own baking sheet, covered with duck fat, and sprinkled with sea salt and black pepper.

While the vegetables were roasting, sautéed Country Time’s breakfast sausage in a skillet on the stove. I remove the casings and chop it up in to small pieces as it cooks.

Once everything was cooked, tossed it all together.

 

Monday: 

Breakfast – Reheated the hash in a skillet on the stove along with 2 sunny side up duck eggs.

Lunch – Leftover Asian Style Wings reheated in the oven along with sourdough toast smothered in mashed avocado with sea salt. Check out last week’s post for details on the wings.

Dinner – Made Cook by Color’s Pot Roast and a Root Mash.

Root Mash recipe: Preheated the oven to 400⁰. Roughly chopped 3 small parsnips, a medium-large rutabaga, and a large sweet potato. Tossed the vegetables with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt and roasted for 45 minutes. Also, roasted a head of garlic – chopped off the tops, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, and wrapped in a piece of tin foil. Transferred to the veggies to the food processor. Added about half the roasted garlic cloves, about 1/4 cup of ghee, and 1/2 cup of coconut milk. Blended ingredients together until desired consistency.

Took out a whole chicken from the freezer to start defrosting.

Tuesday:

Breakfast – Reheated the hash in a skillet on the stove along with 2 sunny side up duck eggs.

Lunch – Leftover Pot Roast reheated on the stove along with sourdough toast smothered in mashed avocado with sea salt.

Dinner – Made Nom Nom Paleo’s Poached Cod in Tomato Sauce along with dry sautéed green beans and pasta.

 

Wednesday:

Breakfast – Reheated the hash in a skillet on the stove. Made egg drop soup using the leftover duck yolks from Sunday’s dinner. Instructions – bring broth to a boil, stir in scrambled egg yolks and grated ginger and garlic.

Lunch – Leftover Asian Style Wings reheated in the oven along with sourdough toast smothered in mashed avocado with sea salt. See above for details.

Dinner – Started making butternut squash shortly after lunch. Preheated oven to 400⁰ convection. Roughly chopped butternut squash, 3 parsnips, and 2 carrots. Drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt. Roasted for 45 minutes.

Preheated oven to 425⁰. Chopped the whole chicken into 8 pieces and put in a baking dish. Drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, and fresh thyme. Roasted in the oven for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, finished the butternut squash soup. Added roasted vegetables to a pot along with remaining roasted garlic cloves from Monday night. Just barely covered everything with homemade broth (less than 4 cups) and added a can of coconut milk. Using a hand blender, pureed ingredients. Then heated it all up on the stove and added spices (cayenne, ground cinnamon, smoke paprika, and thyme). Once bubbling, covered and turned down to a simmer. Stirred occasionally until it was served.

 

Thursday:

Breakfast – Reheated the hash in a skillet on the stove along with 2 sunny side up duck eggs.

Lunch – Leftover butternut squash soup and pulled apart a chicken breast and added to the soup as it was heating up.

Dinner – Made I Heart Umami’s Stir-Fried Beef in Oyster Sauce along with white rice. This makes a lot of oyster sauce, I put the sauce in an ice cube tray to freeze and move to a storage container for future use.

 

Friday:

Breakfast – Reheated the hash in a skillet on the stove along with 2 sunny side up duck eggs.

Lunch – Fridays get away from me between trying to keep Bubba occupied / awake / down for a nap along with having a standing Zoom meeting at noon it gets chaotic. So all we had for lunch was 2 avocados mashed up with sea salt and ate it with plantain chips and Siete tortilla chips.

Dinner – Made I Heart Umami’s Paleo Orange Chicken along with Lo Mein and blanched Chinese broccoli. Today is the first day of Chinese / Lunar New Year and part of the celebration is chicken, noodles, and oranges which are all signs of wealth and long life.

Modifications to the recipe – we didn’t add the bok choy.

 

Saturday:

Breakfast – Broccoli slaw omelet! Bubba loves this and it is an easy way to get broccoli in him and a vegetable in at breakfast.

Recipe- Heat a skillet on medium heat with a tablespoon of duck fat. Add a hefty handful of broccoli slaw (I buy a bag of organic broccoli slaw at Trader Joe’s for $1.99!). Let that cook / reduce for a few minutes. Meanwhile, scramble 2 duck eggs, grate a garlic clove and a small knob of ginger, and add a tablespoon of coconut aminos to the eggs. Clear a little hole in the slaw and add another tablespoon of duck fat. Let melt and mix slightly with slaw. Pour egg mixture into skillet and tilt as needed to spread it out as evenly as possible. After a few minutes, the middle won’t be as watery/jiggly, flip. Cook for an additional 2 minutes and move to a plate.

I also started bone broth and sourdough bread during / after breakfast.

Bone broth – took a bag of frozen bones out of the freezer and emptied them into the Instant Pot. Added a few garlic cloves, fresh ginger coins. shakes of fish oil, and some dried mushrooms. Covered with filtered water, about 12 cups. Set to high pressure for 160 minutes.

Lunch – Leftover orange chicken, lo mein, and Chinese broccoli

Around 5pm the sourdough bread was ready to be baked.

Dinner – This was a last minute decision. Honestly, I didn’t want to do anything for dinner but this was relatively easy – Dumplings with sautéed broccoli and white rice.

Dumplings – mixed a pound of ground pork with Chinese Five Spice, toasted sesame oil, tamari, grated garlic and ginger. Added a small spoonful to pre-made dumpling wrappers. Heated a skillet over medium high with duck fat. Added dumplings in batches and covered to pan fry dumplings. Flipped at about 4 minutes for another 3/4 minutes.

After dumplings were done (about 3 batches), quickly sautéed broccoli for a few minutes.

Served with white rice.

 

Sunday:

Breakfast – Broccoli slaw omelet

Lunch – Slice of fresh sourdough slightly toasted, mashed an avocado and topped with a slice of smoked salmon

Dinner – Made Radical Roots Beef and Pumpkin Chili.

Modifications to recipe – added a pound of ground pork for 1 pound of ground beef (this is what we had on hand). Didn’t add leeks, didn’t have any. Served with avocado and plantain chips.