Meals for the Week of March 1, 2021

I am still in a place where I am not planning out our week but instead focusing on using what we have in the fridge or freezer (meats) and making sure we have snacks on hand for the little human who is a garbage pit these days (I hear it only gets worse).

So although you won’t see it reflected in the meals we ate, I did make some delicious, nutritious sourdough discard blueberry muffins which I’ll share below.

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 March 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.

Sunday Meal Prep: Sourdough discard blueberry muffins! I combined 2 recipes and modified as needed (noted below).

I started out making a crumb topping for the muffins because let’s be real this is the whole reason I wanted muffins. I used this recipe as a guide with the following modifications:

• Used ghee instead of butter
• Used raw cane sugar instead of the granulated sugar

Then used this recipe for the actual muffin with the following modifications:

• Used Einkorn flour instead of cornmeal, I have made it with cornmeal and it was good too! Personally for me, the cornmeal kinda aggravated my teeth a little but everyone else in the household was unphased.
• NEVER vegetable oil! Used ghee
• used molasses!
• Skipped the demerara / coarse sparkling sugar and added the crumb topping from the above recipe instead

Currently, I am in a phase in my life where I’m seeking more balance with food and exploring grains more. With a little human that eats SO MUCH FOOD sometimes sticking to real, whole foods 100% is difficult. I think it can be done but sometimes I like having an option that is quick. Truth is, the little human takes after me thankfully and chews his food thoroughly so real food takes a lot longer than if he has something that is very soft life a muffin.

I believe we can all make choices that are good, better, and best. For me, these muffins are a better option. I am still focusing on real, whole foods but they may be slightly processed (flours). I choose raw cane sugar over granulated sugar because granulated has been refined, it is stripped of any original nutrition it contained, it is missing the co-factors for our bodies to digest it properly and not leave our bodies in an energy deficit. Raw cane sugar is unrefined, it has not been stripped of nutrients and co-factors. While we try to limit sugar, a better option is to consume unrefined sugars.

Molasses! I use blackstrap molasses and unlike refined sugar this contains a chunk of vitamins and minerals that we desperately need, including: magnesium, B6, selenium, and potassium. So again for me it is upping the nutrition profile of the muffins with blackstrap molasses over more refined sugar.

I don’t think I have publicly spoken about vegetable oils so I’ll make a point to soon but know right now those oils you find for super cheap, in flimsy plastic bottles are absolute crap and the flimsiness of the bottle is a metaphor for what it is doing to your cells making the structure weak! So please use other fats instead like butter, ghee, coconut oil, olive oil, or avocado oil are easy subs in baking.

Monday: 

Breakfast – In a skillet on the stove made 2 duck eggs sunny side up with 3 Applegate pork sausages along with a toasted slice of sourdough with half an avocado. While I make sunny side up eggs, I do cover the skillet so that they are not truly sunny side up, uncooked white parts gross me out and I won’t eat them. Also, breakfasts are completely shared with the little human, he may eat a whole egg or none but he’ll definitely eat all the sausage if  I didn’t snag at least one.

Lunch – Warmed up leftover stew from Sunday on the stove. Check out last week’s post for details.

Dinner – Made shrimp risotto after being inspired by a friend’s meal last week. What I did:

• Took out a pound of frozen shrimp, put it in a bowl covered with cold water to defrost
• Chopped a yellow onion sautéed that in a large skillet over medium heat with a tablespoon of duck fat
• Added 2 garlics, minced
• Added a pack of sliced mushrooms
• Added a cup of arborio rice
• Added a good splash of cooking sherry, mixed together
• Added 4 cups of broth, 1 cup at a time stirring the rice until all the liquid was absorbed before adding another cup
• Chopped a zucchini and added it to the skillet right before the last of the liquid was absorbed
• Added shrimp in and mixed to ensure they got cooked quickly and evenly
• Right before serving added about 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast

 

Tuesday:

Breakfast – In a skillet on the stove made 2 duck eggs sunny side up with 2 Applegate pork sausages along with a toasted slice of sourdough with half an avocado.

Lunch – Warmed up leftover stew from Sunday on the stove.

Dinner – I didn’t defrost any meat so had my husband pick up Italian sausage on his way home. He brought home hot instead of sweet/mild so I added tomatoes to try to counter the hotness with the acid and it worked! The little one didn’t think it was too hot, neither did I! What I did:

• Over medium heat on the stove, removed the sausage from the casing and broke it up to sauté
• Made some brown rice fusilli pasta
• After sausage was cooked through, added in leftover marinara sauce I found in the fridge, probably about 1/2 – 1 cup and a can of diced tomatoes
• Tossed the drained pasta with a little extra virgin olive oil
• Topped off pasta with sausage and tomatoes

 

Wednesday:

Breakfast – In a skillet on the stove made 2 duck eggs sunny side up with 2 Country Time breakfast sausages along with a toasted slice of sourdough with half an avocado.

Lunch – Warmed up leftover risotto with leftover chicken from last week on the stove.

Dinner – I was in the mood for some bone warming chicken soup, so here’s my version:

• Took a whole chicken and put in the Instant Pot and covered with filtered water with a bay leaf. Cooked on high pressure for 40 minutes
• Meanwhile, chopped a handful of carrots and half a celery bunch into small bite size pieces and roasted in the oven at 425⁰ convect for about 25 minutes, tossing frequently
• Made Lotus Foods Ramen noodles on the stove
• Husband shredded the chicken when it was done
• I drained the broth.
• To build, add Ramen, a handful of chicken, and roasted carrots and celery to desire. Then cover with broth

Using the chicken bones from dinner, put them back in the Instant Pot – No, I did not clean it! I added a package of chicken feet too. Covered with filtered water, about 12 cups. Added a bay leaf, dried mushrooms, fish sauce, ginger, and garlic and set to high pressure for 180 minutes over night. Drained in the morning.

 

Thursday:

Breakfast – In a skillet on the stove made 2 duck eggs sunny side up with 2 Country Time breakfast sausages along with a toasted slice of sourdough with half an avocado.

Lunch – Warmed up leftover risotto with leftover chicken from last week on the stove.

Dinner – Mmmm I love me some duck! Found duck breasts in the freezer at Kimberton Whole Foods a few weeks prior and finally made them tonight. So what I did:

• Started with making a cup of rice
• I scored the skin of the duck breasts and cooked them over medium high heat on the stove in a iron skillet. I didn’t add fat as the fat rendered off the duck quite a bit. I started with skin side down, cooked for about 5 minutes and flipped to cook another 5 minutes or so. Removed from the skillet and set a side covered for 10 minutes.
• While duck was cooking, I made this hoisin sauce. So good and easy and no crap! I again didn’t use the oils suggested, I used olive oil.
• Chopped a zucchini up, for some reason I had a lot of zucchini in the fridge.
• I removed most of the duck fat from the skillet into a glass container.
• Added the zucchini to the skillet and cooked over medium heat to desired texture.
• Washed and chopped a few scallions
• Served with a pack of Seasnax too

 

Friday:

Breakfast – In a skillet on the stove made 2 duck eggs sunny side up with 2 Country Time breakfast sausages along with a toasted slice of sourdough with half an avocado, broccoli sprouts, and pickled onions.

Lunch – Made a smoothie for the little human and I using frozen strawberries, a banana, 2 handfuls of fresh spinach, green powder (vegetables and micronutrients), protein powder, camu powder (vitamin c), peanut butter, and coconut water.

Dinner – Sautéed a London broil in the skillet on the stove over medium high heat for about 5 minutes each side, removed and covered for 10 minutes. Also made this Roasted Butternut Squash Quinoa from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook It’s All Good.

 

Saturday:

Breakfast – Trying to add more vegetables in at breakfast so here’s what I did:

• Diced about 1/8 cup of yellow onion, sautéed that in a skillet over medium heat with duck fat.
• Scrambled 2 duck eggs, added that to the skillet. Flipped after a few minutes. Took a handful of spinach and put it on half the egg and right before taking it off the heat, folded it in half. Served with Trader Joe’s Furikake on top.
• Toasted a slice of sourdough bread with half an avocado, broccoli sprouts, and pickled onions.

Lunch – Bought 2 quarts of Deep Roots Valley Farm’s Chorizo Sweet Corn Chili at the Farmers’ Market and heated it up in the Instant Pot with high pressure for 10 minutes and quick released it. My parents were here and this was quick and easy.

Dinner – My dad’s the only one who requested something for dinner – poke! So he got a version of it and I was looking for more protein so I made dumplings. What I did:

Dumplings:

• 4 cups of King Arthur’s Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 2 1/4 cups of boiling filtered water
• Mixed together with a fork and then moved to mixing with my hands and kneading it into a nice dough ball
• Broke off pieces, rolled into a small ball, then slowly with my fingers created a circle to add the pork mixture into it and folded it over and closed the dumpling
• Mixture: 1 pound of pork, about a heavy cup of sliced green cabbage, tamari, rice vinegar, and toasted sesame oil. Mixed together well with hands
• Cooked in a skillet over medium high heat with duck fat, cooked until browned on one side and then flipped til browned. Covered skillet while it cooked.
• Got about 28-30 dumplings and the little human also got a good chunk of the dough to play with

Tartare/Poke:

• Made white rice
• Wegmans had no tuna so I had to take the Tuna block from the sushi bar, that wasn’t going to be enough so I got a smallish fillet of wild salmon, and a pound of shrimp.
• My mom boiled the shrimp
• Tuna and salmon went into the freezer for about 30 minutes. They are easier to cut up this way. Removed the skin on the salmon, gave the dog some, and diced the salmon and tuna.
• Chopped up the shrimp
• All the fish in a bowl and tossed with juice from a lime, tamari, toasted sesame oil, and Trader Joe’s Furikake
• Meanwhile, my mom sliced 2 mini cucumbers and covered them with rice vinegar in a jar

 

Sunday:

Breakfast – Made sourdough discard waffles that were yummy! Served with fresh strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. We also each had an egg.

Lunch – Leftover tartare/poke and dumplings

Dinner – This was a flop but it was good just not as good as it has been in the past. Found 2 pounds of ground beef in the fridge that needed to be used ASAP so sautéed all of it in a skillet over medium heat. When almost done added oregano, thyme, onion powder, sage, cumin, sea salt, and pepper. Meanwhile, made hummus in the food processor:

• 1 can of chickpeas
• tahini
• 1.5 lemons
• 3 garlic cloves
• extra virgin olive oil

After the beef was done, moved it to a bowl and covered. In the same skillet sautéed a bunch of chopped Swiss chard and grape tomatoes.

Served with tortilla chips.