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[themealplan]

1 - 7 August

Still summer. Still hot. I don't really have a cool narrative or overwhelming theme for this week to start off in this section. I like food. I'm going on a week-long road trip next week. Time to eat up the perishables.

Sunday Lunch: Scallion pancake (from frozen), egg tart (also from frozen), and the lasts of the taro cake (from, you guessed it, frozen). I woke up with a hankering for Dim Sum and attacked my freezer first, before forcing myself to get dressed. I'm glad I did as this hit the spot. Yes, I spent the entire day in my jammies.

Sunday Dinner: Stir fry made with onion and Chinese eggplant over crisped leftover-sushi-rice from last night's dinner.

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Monday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese.

Monday Dinner: Fried tofu covered with "a thick sauce" which was made with random pantry ingredients and thickened with cornstarch. Caramelized onions on the side.

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Tuesday Lunch: PB+J sandwiches with carrot sticks on the side.

Notes: The jelly in these sandwiches came from scrap apple cores and were home made.

Tuesday Dinner: Seasoned tofu (purchased from the store that way), served with white rice, fried mixed vegetables (from frozen), and caramelized onions.

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Wednesday Lunch: White pizza with zucchini. (from a pizzeria)

Wednesday Dinner: Pasta Salad

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Thursday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese with frozen apples, watermelon, celery and cherries.

Thursday Dinner: Pasta Salad left overs.

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Friday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese left overs with melon, apples, celery and carrots.

Friday Dinner: Final servings of the Pasta Salad left overs.

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Saturday Lunch: We went to a baby party at a friend's house and were fed all the snacks.

Saturday Dinner: Sushi Grade (AAA) Tuna on a bed of Instant Pot Sushi Rice

Notes: While the linked recipe says to put the rice up for 0 minutes at pressure, I found that putting it for 1 minute at pressure and letting it rest for 19 was more feasible. My Instant Pot likes to complain about 0 minute cook times. Also, for the fish, apply pressure ("cut") on the pull rather than the push or the chop. In other words don't use the usual knife techniques but take a very sharp and very long knife and hold it so that your heel of the knife is against the fish, then applying downward pressure, slowly pull the entire knife back to you as if you were sawing the fish with a pull saw. This preserves the flesh of the fish as best as possible. I learned it from a sushi chef and it works!

[themealplan]

25 - 31 July

I'm taking a YouTube knife skills "class" (I've decided to treat each video as a lesson and assign myself homework) so I'm chopping a lot of celery, practicing mincing, and cutting a lot of leaf-foods and the food plan this week will reflect that.

Sunday Lunch: Green salad of celery, lettuce, tinned salmon and a balsamic vinaigrette. Chocolate pudding with walnuts and bananas for dessert.

Sunday Dinner: Tuna Sandwiches

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Monday Lunch: Egg and cheese sandwich, celery, and a nice olive antipasto.

Monday Dinner: Fried tofu covered with "a thick sauce" which was made with random pantry ingredients and thickened with cornstarch. Egg white omelette on the side.

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Tuesday Lunch: Plain hummus on white rice with a side of chopped celery.

Tuesday Dinner: We are hosting a potluck for which we will provide a fancy cheese which is usually served on a cheese board (Gouda).

Thinking Ahead: Make the pasta salad (tomorrow's dinner) today so that it has time to really marinate in and soak up the dressing.

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Wednesday Lunch: Tortellini skillet meal from Wegman's with a side of chopped celery and chopped apple.

Wednesday Dinner: Pasta Salad

Notes: I did my first curbside order-ahead grocery order to make this pasta salad and they gave me double what I requested in parmesan cheese so I tossed the entirety of that into the pasta salad and it was forgiving and absorbed it all. Scrumptious.

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Thursday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese with frozen apples, watermelon, celery and cherries.

Thursday Dinner: Pasta Salad left overs.

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Friday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese left overs with melon, apples, celery and carrots.

Friday Dinner: Final servings of the Pasta Salad left overs.

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Saturday Lunch: We went to a baby party at a friend's house and were fed all the snacks.

Saturday Dinner: Chirashi Don: Sushi Grade (AAA) Tuna on a bed of Instant Pot Sushi Rice

Notes: While the linked recipe says to put the rice up for 0 minutes at pressure, I found that putting it for 1 minute at pressure and letting it rest for 19 was more feasible. My Instant Pot likes to complain about 0 minute cook times. Also, for the fish, apply pressure ("cut") on the pull rather than the push or the chop.

[themealplan]

18 - 24 July

It is summer and it is hot. I don't want to heat my kitchen nor eat hot food in the evening. So we are going cold this week.

Sunday Lunch: Ice Cream Sandwich and a few glasses of V8 juice. What? It contains protein and fat for long energy, sugar for quick energy, and with the juice I've got my veggies too!

Sunday Dinner: Spinach salad with olive oil dressing and shredded cheese topping followed by tofu, onion, garlic, and spinach stir fry over white rice, drizzled with sesame oil.

Notes: The shredded cheese on the spinach salad came from the tacos the Friday prior. Rice cooked in the Instant Pot via the rice feature. Rice washed 4x before cooking. 1:1 ratio of rice to water.

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Monday Lunch: Pizza (delivery from a pizzaria)

Monday Dinner: Bagged Salad (from the grocery store) with a tin of tuna added for protein.

Notes: This is one of my favorite "it is to hot to cook right now" dishes. It has protein (tuna) for long energy, fats (salad dressing) for long energy, vegetables (because salad, duh), and the dressing is usually sweet for quick energy.

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Tuesday Lunch: Rice Balls and Dairy Queen Blizard

Note: Rice cooked in the Instant Pot via the rice feature. Rice washed 4x before cooking. 1:1 ratio of rice to water. It took two minutes of microwaving plus being in a hot car for 2 hours for the previously frozen rice balls to be an edible thawed consistency, but this time I planned ahead!

Tuesday Dinner: Haluski, Cabbage Soup, and breaded and fried chick'n cutlet.

Notes: Used up the shredded cabbage from last Friday's tofu tacos. Added a bit of sugar to the haluski to help the cabbage not just fry but caramelize, too! Cabbage soup recipe is a guide not a prescription so use it to understand the basics and then play around.

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Wednesday Lunch: Snunch -- cheese slices, carrots, cucumber, rice crackers, broccoli, and clementine segments

Notes: This is my word to mean snack-lunch, a lunch made out of snack foods. If it were all arranged on a plank of wood we'd call it a charcuterie platter or a cheese board. But it wasn't because who has time for presentation like that.

Wednesday Dinner: Going to a potluck. We are supplying fancy cheese, the kind that goes on a cheeseboard (Edam).

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Thursday Lunch: Boxed macaroni and cheese.

Thursday Dinner: Beyond Sausages, rice, broccoli, and formerly-frozen mixed veggies.

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Friday Lunch: Pasta Salad

Friday Dinner: Arby's curly fries, chips, and salsa.

Notes: Yes, this is a very unhealthy dinner but life was presently too stressful for me to eat a real meal nor cook what was planned and so calories were obtained through any means necessary.

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Saturday Lunch: Carmelized onions, peas, and white rice with a Beyond Sausage patty.

Saturday Dinner: Carmelized onions, peas, and white rice with a tin of seasoned mackrel from the Asian Market.

Note: The original dinner plan was to have pizza at a friend's house while we babysat and she went on a date, but surprise out-of-town guests (gentler reader, please consider giving a heads up to your intended host) caused her to have to cancel her date to accommodate them. And so, we took advantage of the sudden evening to ourselves and packed lunch left-overs for a picnic lunch on a park-date!

[themealplan]

15 - 17 July

Welcome to the new blog: The Meal Plan. Starting late in the week, this is a partial week.

Thursday Lunch: Rice with shiso rice seasoning, two hard boiled eggs, sliced apple, and raw broccoli all in a bento.

Note: Rice cooked in the Instant Pot via the rice feature. Rice washed 4x before cooking. 1:1 ratio of rice to water. You don't have to make the shiso rice seasoning from scratch; asian markets have a rice seasoning section and the shiso is the pretty purple one. If you use an Instant Pot to make the rice, you can put the eggs in at the same time to "hard boil" (really steam until fully cooked, but whatever).

Thinking Ahead: Make enough rice to make rice balls for Friday at the same time and put them in the freezer.

Thursday Dinner: Chickpeas and Avocado

Notes: Used lemon juice and dried basil, both to taste. Started with dried chickpeas where 1/2 cup dried = 15 oz can cooked. Pressure cooked the dried, unsoaked chickpeas in enough water to cover them twice for 12 minutes + natural release; recommend a longer cooking time as they were still quite firm and didn't mash well with a fork. Had to add some oil to get things creamy. The avocado and chickpea flavors overwhelmed the basil and lemon juice.

Thinking Ahead: Put the tofu in the freezer tonight.

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Friday Lunch: Rice Balls

Note: Rice cooked in the Instant Pot via the rice feature. Rice washed 4x before cooking. 1:1 ratio of rice to water. Frozen rice balls removed from the freezer at 8:30 am were not thawed enough to eat for lunch by 12 noon even though the day was 91F and the rice balls were kept outside the whole time. 45 minutes of additional microwaving made them warm enough.

Friday Dinner: Tofu Tacos (vegan recipe)

Notes: Did all the work over heat in the Instant Pot sauté feature on medium but you can use a skillet. Didn't include any of the tomato products. Substituted a taco seasoning mixed spice packet for all the listed spices except garlic. Garnished with shredded cabbage and shredded taco/nacho cheese* (a store-brand blend from the grocery store). Discovered that as nice as tortillas are, cabbage leaf wraps made of the outer leaves of the cabbage we shredded made a much better container. || * is vegan if this garnish is eliminated or made with a vegan substitute

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Saturday Lunch: Elote, cabbage and avocado salad, and lox.

Note: Cabbage left over from previous night's dinner. Keeps well at room temperature. Avocado left over from Thursday's dinner.

Saturday Dinner: Home-made Pizza at a Friend's House

Notes from the Friend: Make the pizza dough earlier in the day, say noon. Spread pizza dough on parchment paper but no need for a pizza stone. For tomato sauce take whole roasted tomatoes and blend them with a little salt. Add shredded mozzarella and some fresh basil and bake that sucker.

Notes from the Me: This will make your kitchen HOT. Sit outside to eat.