Meal Ideas for the Week – Our Weekly Cadence – 2023 September 11th-17th

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Hey there, lovely readers! Welcome to the first post of ‘Our Weekly Cadence,’ where we invite you to join us in the heart of our home. In this corner of our blog, we’ll share our weekly adventures in the kitchen and beyond. Think of it as your virtual kitchen table, where we chat about meal ideas, homemade treats, and everything that fills our days with an enjoyable cadence of resourceful living.

This week we focused on versatile meals that would allow us leftovers for lunch or new meals altogether. We also did some baking that gave us a bunch of treats for the week and we roasted a new batch of coffee that we will enjoy for another week or two. Finally we created some natural dog paw cleaner (and the word finally is used in for many meanings, because FINALLY we got rain after way too long). Our new puppy definitely needed some help keeping our house from his huge muddy prints (as cute as they are).

Weekly Meal Plan – Our Ideas for the Week

We try to have a plan for 5-6 dinners as well as an idea for lunches and breakfasts during the week. Our lives are far from perfect, so it’s not atypical for our meals to change as the week evolves. But a plan helps us keep our cadence and rhythms going and is a good anchor for us.

This week we are rebounding slowly from the previous week of most of the household being sick. We were very grateful to have chicken broth in the freezer last week to say the least. As we are slowly recovering, we wanted to keep meals easy, flexible and batch as much as possible to make our week easier.

Meal Idea Tips

• Blackened white fish (with quick homemade mac and cheese and quick steamed broccoli)
  • FISH – we keep a blackening season on hand and the fish takes 5 minutes to pan fry after being coated in the seasoning
  • MAC AND CHEESE (10 minutes):
    • cooked whole wheat pasta shells
    • Sauce: we had less than a cup of leftover bechamel from making a lasagna for when we had friends over last week
      • warmed bechamel with a splash of milk (b/c it was too thick)
      • added a slice of american cheese (a hack to keep sauce from getting lumpy with other cheese)
      • added a few handfuls of grated cheddar cheese
    • Combined pasta with sauce
  • BROCCOLI – used a colander over warm salted water to steam frozen broccoli for 5-10 minutes while making mac and cheese
• Crunchy Tacos
  • blue corn crispy tortilla shells
  • TACO MEAT (15 minutes):
    • sauteed mire poix (diced onion, celery, carrot) in unrefined olive oil
    • added ground pasture chicken
    • added homemade taco seasoning
    • added 1/4 cup water
  • HOMEMADE RE-FRIED BEANS (5 minutes):
    • blended beans, some of their liquid, a little neutral unrefined olive oil and a big dash of ground cumin
    • sauteed pureed bean mix in neutral unrefined olive oil until heated through
  • assembly: refried beans, taco meat, shredded cheese and lettuce
• Chef Salad – in a large bowl arrange spring mix and top with hard boiled eggs and whatever other protein and vegetables you have on hand. Have one or two homemade dressings for everyone to choose from. Serve yourself and choose your own adventure type meal.

Homemade Treats for The Week

We love having healthy baked goods on hand for breakfasts, snacks and desserts. This week we made banana bread out of some past prime bananas that utilized sourdough discard from the pizza dough mentioned above. We are still playing with our banana bread recipe and will add it when we have it more refined. We will link to a recipe we’ve used in the past. Per usual we usually modify recipes to add more whole wheat and less sugar which is our family’s preference. We also all pitched in in the kitchen to create an amazing dutch apple pie. With fall on its way in, there were bags of apples on sale at the market this week and we couldn’t resist the urge to make a pie and pray it will start getting cooler soon!

Treat Recipes and Tips

• Sourdough Discard Banana Bread (we use 50% wheat and reduce sugar amount)
• Dutch Apple Pie
  • used our wheat crust recipe
  • modified crumb:
    • 3/4 the amount of brown sugar
    • only 1/4 cup of cane sugar
    • and used a scant cup of flour
    • removed 2 tablespoons butter from crumb b/c our stick of butter was missing one and used the other in the filling
  • modified filling:
    • honey-crisp and gala apples (which is what we had on hand)
    • added few pinches of cardamom
    • no sugar in the filling b/c we don’t like things sweet and the apples tasted sweet enough
    • cornstarch instead of flour
    • 1 tablespoons of butter from crumble in the filling

Batch Cooking Ideas in Our Weekly Meal Plan

First and foremost, with our weekly meal ideas in mind, we made a large batch of our homemade yogurt. We typically scald the milk in the morning and let it cool about 40 minutes. Then we add a small amount the previous batch as it’s fermentation starter. The yogurt is finished incubating at the end of the day. It is pretty hands off, and we use it quite a bit throughout our week.

We made a quick chicken rice dish that has provided lunch several days as leftovers. And with the rain, this chicken dish has been the perfect comfort meal with warm spices and a delectable creamy sauce for pouring on top.

Additionally we made a batch of pinto beans as well as ground taco meat. Both are getting repurposed into a few different meals later in the week. We love beans for their magical ability to be made into so many different meals!

Lastly, we plan to make sourdough tortillas as well using The Perfect Loaf’s recipe slightly modified. These will serve as receptacles for breakfast tacos and bean tacos over the weekend. And probably peanut butter banana roll-ups as well at some point!

Bulk Item Recipes and Tips:

• Homemade Yogurt
• Sourdough Pizza Dough (substituted 100g wheat flour for part of 00)
• Pinto Beans
  • soak beans in double the amount water to beans with a healthy pinch of both baking soda and salt for a few hours
  • drain beans and add to a saucepan with a few inches water covering and a healthy few pinches of salt, a half carrot stick, a half celery stick, whatever leftover piece of onion you can muster, a smashed clove of garlic and a by leaf
  • bring to a boil then reduce to simmer and cover
  • start checking beans around the 30 minute mark for doneness (depending on how fresh your beans are, this time could double)
  • remove from heat when beans are soft and add any additional seasonings if wanted and a splash of apple cider vinegar
• Shawarma Chicken Rice with White Sauce (using our homemade yogurt in the sauce, which is sooooo good)
• Sourdough Tortillas
  • we substitute 100 g wheat flour for the white
  • we use refined olive oil for baking/sauteing (not extra virgin) and probably closer to 70g than 88g

Freshly Roasted Coffee for The Week

We go through 2/3 pound of roasted beans about every 9 days. That means, come day 7 after we roast, we need to roast more due to the time degassing takes. The whole process from preheating the oven to removing chaff takes us 30 minutes at most. This week we used Brazil Pulp Natural Fazenda Sertao green beans and we roasted them to a City+ roast level. 300 grams (or 2/3 lb) of Brazil beans took 16 minutes to complete a city roast. According to Sweet Maria’s, the source of our beans, roast notes from this bean should contain layered cocoa bitter sweetness, almond milk and sugar-glazed nuts. Our week’s roast has taste notes of chocolate covered almonds, especially at room temperature or as an iced coffee. This bean is one of our go-to, approachable easy drinking beans and we have purchased it a number of times.

For more information on home roasting, degassing and roast levels, see our posts on how to roast coffee at home.

Meet Moose

Now that we talked about our meal ideas for the week and our coffee, let’s get to the fun stuff! Moose, is a very large puppy that recently joined our family. He is fitting in swell and it’s hard to believe we have only had him a few months. Being that Moose is a gigantic puppy, he has gigantic feet that love daily walks and playing in our back yard. These gigantic feet leave enormous foot prints. And the rain is no friend to giant dirty paws. So we threw together a quick paw cleaner solution and Moose loves to get his feet cleaned every time he comes inside now. We also cut up some old t-shirts into small squares to help wipe the cleaner off his paws. This solution is human friendly as well!

DIY Dog Paw Cleaner

• 1 part white vinegar
• 6 parts distilled water
• 1-2 drops German Chamomile (see the essential oils we use and why)

Until Next Time!

As we wrap up this glimpse into ‘Our Weekly Cadence,’ we hope you’ve enjoyed sharing in the simple pleasures of our routine. It’s these everyday moments that make life truly special, and we’re thrilled you’ve been a part of it.

Remember, our blog is your treasure trove of inspiration, filled with more weekly delights, delicious recipes, and creative ideas. We encourage you to explore further and make yourself at home here.

And hey, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to leave a comment below, sharing your thoughts/tips on weekly rituals, meal ideas, or any delightful moments you’d like to celebrate. After all, life is sweeter when shared with friends.

Thank you for being a part of our journey, and here’s to savoring the beauty in each week that unfolds. Until next time!