With this being week 2 of quarantine over here, I found myself with some extra time the last several days. Accordingly, I decided to bring back a favorite genre of blog posts–the weekly meal plan (the last post of this type I published was in 2017!). I didn’t capture tonight’s takeout dinner, but I did manage to snap a shot of each of our other evening meals this week. I won’t claim that there’s anything special about the meals prepared this week; it’s just a glimpse into what kind of fare gets served up in our household on a routine basis. Meal planning was a bit more complicated this week due to limited inventory in local grocery stores, but I made it work.

monday: egg roll in a bowl with ground turkey

This dish is an old favorite from The Real Food RDs. It’s a simple list of ingredients, and it makes a boatload of food, so we always end up with some leftovers. This time, we had enough left over that Seth and I each made a lunch out of it later in the week, which was quite convenient when we’re both working from home. We topped ours this time with cashews, sesame seeds, and sriracha. I would’ve loved some cilantro too, but I forgot to get some at the store (and was not going back for a single item…).

tuesday: spaghetti squash + meatballs

As part of my ongoing research duties, I help teach a weight loss class on Tuesday evenings until about 8pm, so Seth is in charge of dinner on those nights. I typically choose the recipe and will occasionally prepare some or all of it ahead of time to streamline things. On this occasion, I made the meatballs in the afternoon so that he just had to roast the squash and add some jarred pasta sauce. For the meatballs, I just use roughly the same ingredients as my meatloaf (described here). This was amazingly tasty and satisfying, although it probably helps that I’m starving by the time 8pm rolls around. Hunger is the best sauce, as they say!

wednesday: pesto salmon with cauliflower rice

Admittedly, this meal did not photograph very well, but that’s real life. I’m not sure why the pesto looks brown in these photos, but it was definitely green. This was kind of a semi-homemade meal in that the salmon and cauliflower rice came from the freezer, and the pesto came from a jar. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who enjoyed this dinner–I ate seconds on the salmon, whereas the rest of the family filled up on the buttered peas I served as an additional side dish. Caleb continues to claim that he doesn’t like pesto, which I refuse to accept, so I keep serving it to him. He scraped the pesto off and ate about two bites of salmon. Overall, not exactly a home run of a meal.

thursday: veggie and canadian bacon frittata

I like closing out the week with a good frittata or omelet night because it’s an excellent way to use up the scraps in the fridge. This frittata, for example, included a half-container of sad-looking mushrooms, a semi-soft yellow bell pepper, an onion, the last couple slices of Canadian bacon. Nathan thoroughly enjoyed this meal and ate almost a quarter of the pan by himself, in addition to oranges and peanut butter toast. The kid can eat! Seth likes to top his serving with an assortment of hot sauces.

What did your family have for dinner this week?