Since sharing my meal planning tips, I thought it'd be nice to share a real life's week of recipes! I have to apologize in advance because I am the worst at following a recipe, so most of the time I'm making it up as I go along. So the meals here don't really have an exact recipe to go with them, but I'm going to do my best to share a general outline of how I made them! Hopefully this gives you a little inspiration as you plan your meals this week!
We are currently eating mostly vegetarian, but with occasional seafood as well.
Blackened Fish Tacos
We do tacos at least once a week. In reality I could 100% eat them every night and be completely contented! Typically, we do black bean tacos, but shrimp tacos and fish tacos are also in the rotation.
The fish is super easy to whip up. I take 2 tilapia fillets and pan fry them in olive oil. I season both sides with Zataran's Blackened Seasoning and lime juice. Once they are cooked through, dice the fish up. Our typical taco toppings include avocado, tomato, shredded lettuce, cheese, cilantro, sour cream, lime and these tortillas that I swear by.
Lazy Falafel (alternatively Greek Nachos)
I absolutely love falafel, but it can be sort of tedious to get the patties right. A few months ago we had friends over and my falafels fell completely apart in the pan. I apologized for the weird meal, but to my surprise it was actually great and she asked for the recipe! It was sort of deconstructed falafel. So ever since then, I just roast chickpeas and call it lazy falafel.
First, begin by marinating red onions, cucumber and diced tomatoes in italian dressing. Toast a pita, and create a pocket. Fill with roasted chickpeas, cucumber salad and tzatziki sauce. I make my tzatziki sauce with plain greek yogurt (Fage is the best by far.), diced cucumber, fresh dill, salt, and lemon juice.
Totally laughing at myself, because I made falafel even laizer when I went back for seconds and made greek nachos! It was so delicious and worth sharing! I think it would make a great appetizer.
Plain ole Pasta
I happily shared my homemade pasta sauce recipe here before! It's too easy and so much tastier than store bought sauces. We do pasta probably once a week, because it's so simple. Paired with garlic knots and a side salad-you can't go wrong.
Breakfast For Dinner
Breakfast foods are so comforting! We only seem to eat them when we have company! Every once in awhile I will insist on chocolate chip pancakes or waffles. This week we also really enjoyed farm fresh eggs! Our friend has some very happy chickens who have been laying eggs like crazy. I don't know what it is, but these eggs are so much better than normal. They are much yellower too!
Blake eats mainly vegetarian with me happily. He does tend to order meat dishes at restaurants, but occasionally he will request something for dinner. So we added bacon to this meal for him!
So, what do you guys eat on your pancakes? My mom always had us top ours with peanut butter, and I can't eat them any other way! (We always got car sick, so she'd try to fill our bellies to the max to avoid it. In fact I had a peanut butter sandwich every day of elementary and middle school. Probably couldn't do that now with kid's allergies. And that's the story of my life long peanut butter addiction.)
Watermelon Feta Salad
This was a bit of an experiment, but it paid off in a big way! Recently, I was at one of my favorite restaurants for lunch, and the woman at the counter talked me into trying their new salad. I went for it because I was feeling guilty about always ordering the same thing. Anyway, it was so delicious I knew I wanted to recreate it at home! Plus, it felt amazing to be using lettuce and basil from my garden. (Perfect timing with that lettuce recall too!)
To make this salad, just add chopped lettuce, torn basil, red onion, watermelon chunks, blueberries and feta cheese. I made my own dressing with olive oil, white balsamic, dried italian seasoning and chopped garlic.
This is the perfect salad for summer because it's so refreshing! The salad at the restaurant also added candied pecans. I found that this was the perfect dinner on a night when I wasn't very hungry and just needed something light. It will make a great side to another dinner when we are feeling more hungry.
As I mentioned in the meal planning post, we usually plan on 5 meals a week. That gives us plenty of flexibility and helps cut down on food waste. We are trying a new experiment this month though, that I may have to update you about! April was of the busiest months for us in a long time, and after floundering a little bit at the beginning, we came up with a strategy to help us with dinner time-just to take some of the pressure off in whatever ways we could. We made an entire month's meal plan! That's right, 4 weeks. We are currently starting week three of that. Let me know if you'd like to hear more about that style of planning and if we are going to keep it up!
Leave a comment below if this gave you a little dinner time inspiration! How's it going with your meal planning? Would you like to see more posts like these?
