The weekly menu

I could whine about why I’m so behind but what’s the point.  Super sick children, mastitis, and an out of town husband – there – now you have the bullet points.  Moving on to the food portion from the last couple of weeks…

Yup, made the curry chicken lettuce cups from Against All Grain again.

This time we had no leftovers.  Sad face/happy face.  Sad because I like it and would want to hoard it for my lunch the next day, but happy because it means it was a recipe success for the whole family.

Kyle got this for me for V Day, but since we got Cream on the 14th, I didn’t bust it open until the 15th.  The other chocolate on the plate is my standard Thrive order (Alter Eco dark coconut toffee – aka F&^%ING magic in a wrapper).

Morning time with a big mug of joe and a heel slice of home-made bread and sun butter.

The portion shown wasn’t adequate, so I took another photo just to be clear on the matter.  I don’t want anyone thinking I settle for incorrect ratios. 😉

Lunch was kale salad with leftovers from brunch the day before.

I brought dinner to a friend who has a new baby, so I just doubled ours.

It was a quinoa, broccoli, cauliflower cheese casserole dish, but I used vegan cheese for ours and a shredded mix for hers.

Boom, easy peasy.

Same-ish dessert.  Plus some holiday treats from the freezer.

Uber ripe banners meant a batch of waffles was in the works.  I added a scoop of my favorite (Vega) protein powder for some oomph and therefore nixed any added sweetener.  They were so good!  And I even had extra for breakfast the next day!

This morning’s serving was topped with sun butter, per usual.

Lunch.  I’m sure there was a carb of some kind on the side.  Likely one of the hamburger buns from Against All Grain.

Which brings up another point.  Since I don’t do these “day of eats” posts any more, whenever I do share breakfast lunch and dinners all in the same posts like this – you have to realize I don’t take photos of my snacks or drinks.  I go in streaks with them, but there’s often kombucha or tea (weather/temperature dependent) and then Mary’s Gone crackers or home-made crackers or bread in the afternoon too.  Macadamia nuts are another recent phase that I’m all into.  So now that I’ve shared that little disclaimer, back to dinner.

Whoa, zoomed in much?  Let’s back up.

Dressing on the left getting ready for some greens.  This is Cookie + Kate’s autumn kale salad with fennel & honey crisp.

It was delicious, but ugh.  The mother freakin’ prep.  It’s been almost three weeks and I still haven’t recovered from the mandolin drama that unfolded below.

Fennel, fennel, fennel, finger.

EEEEEEEK. V had zero compassion and tried to attack (aka eat) my bandage every second she could whenever I was holding her.  And since the top half of my thumb was the portion injured slash missing, it was very difficult to bandage in the first place.  Oh, and do you even KNOW how much you do with the thumb of your dominant hand?  Like everything.  Getting my kids dressed and toileted and fed and everything took 100 times as long and required even more hand washing and wahhhhhhh, can I just whine a little more?  Because for reals this injury was the most ill timed thing ever (not that there’s a good time for slicing your thumb off, but there’s definitely a perfect storm that makes it worse when your husband then goes out of town and then your whole family gets crazy sick and then you get mastitis because your nina’s appetite is bonkers andddd….you get it…end scene).

The salad was good though.  I’m new to fennel so I wasn’t sure I’d like it (not a licorice fan), but now I have another bulb and a half to use, so feel free to send recipes my way.  P and V both liked it too.  His version was cheese-less and hers’s was just for gnawing pleasure really.  That’s red rice on the side.

They were out of those firecracker bars for a while at TJs and I got so nervous they were a holiday only thing.  Thank goodness they are back because they are so good.  PS Does that gauze bandage make you think of the Office episode where Michael burns his foot on the George Foreman grill and acts super dramatic about it?  All I needed was bubble wrap and I’d be on my way to being the world’s best boss.  🙂

The leftover waffles weren’t quite enough to fill me up on their own so I added a TON of sun butter and then some home-made granola on top.

Lunch salad with carrots randomly thrown on top.

I got this miso dressing from Costco a while ago and when I tire of my usual poppyseed combo I switch to this one.

It’s especially great with macadamia nuts or cashews.  I smother kale and cabbage to the nth degree with it, then add nuts and avo and dig in.  Heavenly.  The ingredients aren’t as terrible as you’d think they’d be from a bulk Costco dressing either.  I mean, it’s salad dressing, so it’s not health food but I think the rest of the salad ingredients are nutritious enough that we can just call it a wash right?

That stack of tupperware means…yep, you guessed it…leftovers.  I gave most of the meat stuff to the boys and instead made myself a (blurry photo) kale salad.  The heart wants what the heart wants.

This is what I really look forward to anyway.

So my breakfast isn’t that thrilling (the last bits and pieces of a few things plus sun butter) but how amazing is pattycakes’ raisin artwork on his pancake?  Just me being a proud mom?  Whatever, he’s a week over 3, I think it’s pretty great.  My lunch was the same as the day before with a zoomed in shot of the excessive (yet awesome) amount of avo and dressing.

I wish I had a real recipe to share for this one because it turned out great even though it was created from the last bits and pieces of our fridge.  I combined a bunch of different recipes that I googled for the broth and then pulled out the few fresh things we had for produce (including the broccoli from OUR GARDEN!) and then added shrimp from the freezer.

What I do recall from the broth was I used 1 can full fat coconut milk, a few cups of (home-made) chicken stock, a few tablespoons of tamari, powdered ginger (no fresh stuff on hand), garlic infused olive oil, and fish sauce (plus a squeeze of lime at the end).

The noodles were from a recent Thrive order and were okay but maybe not my favorite and pretty hard for P to eat.  I cooked them separately and then served the brothy soup over them once portioned out.

Excuse me while I do a little dance in my kitchen here because how exciting is it that I used home-grown broccoli!!!  It was looking a hot mess at the onset of winter and I thought for sure it was a lost cause.  The snails were creeping and I wanted to maintain the organic status of the garden so I basically surrendered and then a month or so later I noticed things were starting to happen again and patiently waited until now.  Yay!  Of course we have recently had a few 70 degree days in a row so everything is suddenly bolting and I am having the reverse problem.  Sigh.  Gardening is a full time job and I’m half ass-ing it with moderate to fair results.

Mint and cilantro and lime on top make everything pop and pow in your boca.

Sweet heart bark is gone 🙁