We were supposed to be in Japan by now and I haven’t been able to talk about it without pangs of sorrow, but here I am, finally mentioning it.
BLAH. I don’t feel like writing more about it because it’ll just come across as whiny and insensitive when the fact of the matter is, this pandemic is a major freakin’ crisis.
Soooo…I finally made it to the store!
Kyle was at work, so here’s how I did it.
We walked to Nugget (it’s only a few blocks), and then as soon as we arrived at the store, I zipped the kids up into the double stroller so they were completely enclosed. I had one gloved hand for any potentially unclean stuff that needed to be touched, but had a free hand to push the stroller. By loading the food directly into the stroller I didn’t have to touch a cart at all. And then once I checked out, I removed my glove, purell-ed the ISH out of my hands, let the kids out, and we all walked home…
[And then I wiped everything down 800 more times]
The end.
The kids were champs and now our veggie supply is all re-stocked!
Sadly they were limiting the number of bagged salad mixes, so I couldn’t get enough to hold us over for as long as I wanted, but at least I got more dairy for P.
For dinner I combined the southwestern chopped salad kit, ground beef, and quinoa.
Honestly, this is the kind of product that makes life SO EASY that I rarely turned to prior to this month. If nothing else, this whole self isolation shindig has highlighted what an asset they are for busy people who want to throw a salad together asap and not buy all the individual ingredients. Of course, I am trying not to freak out about how it’s not organic and $$$$$.
Who cares. You have to live. And right now, the bar is kinda lower than normal. All my focus is going into entertaining the kids and keeping them feeling safe and secure and content.
We are basically doing Caesar salads once a week at this point. We all adore them and they are easy as can be.
Used up the last of the tessemae’s dressing on this one. Don’t worry, I have another jar on stand by. 😉
I pulled chicken and biscuits out of the freezer to make it a full meal. And made croutons in the oven using GF bread.
Last week’s Caesar was slightly more random with chicken and chickpeas and cheese. Things are getting weird.
Yes, the store fixed some things, but you know what, I’m still trying to be thrifty and resourceful. For example, I made a curry sauce to pair with noodles and meatballs.
I didn’t have enough noodles for all of us, but then I remembered I had half of a spaghetti squash in the freezer. And then to bulk it up even more, I used the zucchini from the imperfect produce order I got.
It was AMAZING and guess what I made the sauce with…
This group of nothingness!
Part of a knob of ginger, a few tbsp of tomato paste, curry powder, and a can of coconut milk (plus unpictured roasted garlic).
I let it simmer and reduce for a while before adding the meatballs.
Once the noodles were cooked I divided them all up, added the meatballs and zucchini and voila!
It was a hit.
I’m good at stretching things to last sliiiiiightly longer than they should, which is a very valuable asset right now.
For instance, this dinner had leftover pot roast with roasted Brussels sprouts. I got Brussels at the store and was SO EXCITED to roast them. Ordinarily I’d probably make them a feature in the dish, but in this case I wanted to have leftovers for another meal, so I served them with the remainder of the pot roast.
I had given Kyle some in his lunch last week so there wasn’t a ton left, but the broth is crazy rich and so I kinda turned it into a stew, so even a small amount was plenty filling.
And anyway, with all the dessert happening after dinner, nobody’s going hungry.
That curry sauce sounds great – I’ll have to try that at some point. It’s amazing what random combinations end up as great meals isn’t it?
Totally!