Tag: one pan meals

What’s for supper? Vol. 106: Ermerghersh, it’s turmeric!

Read on, if you dare.

SATURDAY
Cheeseburgers, chips

I have no memory of Saturday. This week was littered with migraines, and I spent a lot of time hiding in bed and then frantically rushing around to get caught up in between. The good news is, Corrie is starting to emerge from a long, long spell of constant tantrums. I feel like the goblins have brought my real child back. She still insists on being called “Dashi,” but I can live with that.

SUNDAY
Cumin chicken and chickpeas with yogurt sauce; pomegranates and pita 

Excellent new recipe from the NYT. I made the yogurt sauce and set the chicken (I used all thighs) to marinate the previous night. Then it was very quick the next evening to throw it in some pans with the chickpeas. While it was cooking, I made some yogurt sauce for dipping and some lemony onions for garnish, plus some chopped cilantro. If you love the shawarma I’m always pushing, you’ll almost certainly love this meal.

Something wonderful happened to the chicken skin, I suppose because of the yogurt marinade. It was crisp and flavorful, but also took on a kind of — I’m trying to figure out how to describe this without making it sound gross — a kind of robust chewiness.

I made two pans, but I foolishly only let one pan roast long enough so the onions and chickpeas were toasty-crunchy. I need a better light in the kitchen, because this really doesn’t capture the golden pan of wonder I pulled out of the oven. This pan is the somewhat-undertoasted one:

Pomegranates were 99 cents, so I bought four and quartered them. Perfect accompaniment for this meal. This is definitely going into the rotation. Damien was skeptical about the chickpeas, but he heartily endorses this dish now. It was quite cheap, too. I think the most expensive component was the pita bread.

I was planning to make my own pita, but spent most of the day sorting summer and winter clothes, which I very much enjoy because it is not tedious, exhausting, enraging, and emotionally draining in any way. (I got some satisfaction from throwing away anything with a peace sign on it.) Anyway, I didn’t make any pita. The recipe isn’t hard, but it’s pretty time-consuming. It’s worth the time, if you can spare it! Miles better than store-bought.

And now I must tell you. When I made this recipe for the first time, at the age of 42, I discovered that it is spelled “turmeric,” not “tumeric.” Ain’t that a pisser? But apparently nobody says the first “r,” so it’s pretty much now just tumeric, because who cares? I’m so torn. I’m generally in favor of not letting sloppiness win the day and shape our ends, but on the other hand, I’m too old to start knowing it’s turrrrrmeric. I really am. Also, I didn’t have any. So I went and just put a little extra cumin.

Guess friggin’ what? Cumin is sometimes known as “cucumin.” And for this reason, I give up. It warr good chicken.

Oh, while we’re on the topic, roasted chickpeas makes a great snack with plenty of protein. You drain the chick peas, toss them with a little olive oil, spread them in a single layer in a shallow pan, and sprinkle them with whatever seasonings you like. Roast them in a 450 oven for forty minutes or more. Be patient. You want them really crunchy, not just browned. (Chickpeas, like peanuts, are legumes, and may or may not be safe for kids with peanut allergies; so if you’re looking for a safe snack to send into school, this is something to check.)

***

MONDAY
Nachos

Tortilla chips, ground beef with taco seasonings from an envelope, shredded cheese, jalapeños, jarred salsa, and sour cream that I jealously guarded from working its way to the back of the fridge to be frozen. And that has made all the difference.

***

TUESDAY
Scrambled eggs, salad, oven roasted potatoes, leftovers

It was going to be sausage omelettes, but there was so much food in the house, we just heated up everything and made a bunch of scrambled eggs and potatoes.

***

WEDNESDAY
Chicken burgers and chips

I have no memory of Wednesday.

***

THURSDAY
Korean beef bowl and rice

Made in the morning and kept warm in the slow cooker all day. If you haven’t put this meal in your rotation yet, what are you even doing with your life?

You fry up the chop meat with some garlic, drain the fat, and throw in a bunch of ingredients, and that’s it! You can just eat it! The kids like it because it’s sweet. You can vary how much ginger and pepper flakes you put it, to make it even more kid-friendly or kid-hostile. (I used a few squeezes of squeeze ginger because I am a dirty, dirty, lazy cheater cook. Squeezy!)

I set out scallions and sesame seeds on the table. Then, like a damn rookie, I sat down in the next room to enjoy my meal, and Corrie proceeded to silently decorate the entire bottom floor with the rest of the sesame seeds. Looks like we finally got our first snowfall of the season.

***

FRIDAY
Pasta

The kids have the day off, so I’m headed up north to visit my mother in the nursing home. I was supposed to wake up early to go running. That . . . did not happen.

Oh, I also did a practice run of apricot walnut rugelach this week. Do you want to know how to make rugelach? They are little rolled Jewish pastries. The dough is made mostly of cream cheese, and you roll it out on a sugared surface, rather than a floured surface. You want to know, right?

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 105: I may have overdone things

Lordy, what a busy week! Between running around, huge cleaning projects, cars being unreliable, prepping for parties and outings, going on field trips, making Halloween costumes, parent-teacher conferences, painting the cat green (okay, Corrie helped with that), and various alarms in the night, it was, lordy, a busy week. Here’s what we had:

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

The kids had pizza at home while Damien and I went to our college reunion!

Great food, great company. Check out the centerpiece on our table:

Kyra, there was a chapter all about you.

For those who were with us at TMC, here is a somewhat blurry pic of the guests of honor:

Ms. Enos was there, too, but she will murder me if I post the truly amazing photo I got of her talking about being the token WASP.

***

SUNDAY
Chicken thighs with fall vegetables, ice cream sundaes

A very, very fine fall dish from Damn Delicious, and a true one-pan dish (not “cook eleven things separately using every pot and pan you own and then put it all together in one pan, ta-dah!”).

I guiltily brought out the jar of “Italian Seasoning” I bought for a dollar. It has all the stuff I was planning to put on the chicken anyway. It’s like one of those packets with the matching birthday candles, streamers, balloons, plates, cups, and forks all in one. It makes you a bad person! I don’t know why.

Anyway, you cut up all the veg, drag ’em around in a simple sauce, lay them chicken thighs on top, sprinkle a little Bad Person Spice on the skins, and cook it up all together. It’s delicious and beautiful, and it’s easy for people to pick out the veg they don’t like.

I made too much, and we had tons of leftovers.

***

MONDAY
Pulled pork on onion rolls, chips

I tried using apple cider for the pulled pork in the Crock Pot, plus a quartered onion, some minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Not impressed. It tasted fine, just bland. Damien put pickled peppers on his, which was a good idea.

On Monday, we went to an apple orchard with the Girl Scouts, where we learned that, during Prohibition, FBI agents burned countless orchards to prevent the making of hard cider, and the country lost more than a thousand varieties of apples! Just gone! I know they were not apples for eating, but still! The bastards. Anyway, I was very impressed by how many heirloom varieties they had at this place. Some of them tasted more like pear or banana, some were kind of bready, some were like nectar. Apples are amazing.

I made too much pork, and we had tons of leftovers.

***

TUESDAY
Spaghetti with turkey pesto meatballs

Ground turkey was on sale, so I got 6.5 pounds of it, to which I added:
7 eggs
3.5 cups breadcrumbs
1/3 c minced garlic
3 Tbs Italian seasoning
1 Tbs salt
1 c parmesan
and a little jar of pesto sauce I found, probably 6-7 ounces. I cooked them in a 400 oven for half an hour or so

then put them in a pot with jarred tomato sauce. Is there anything finer than spaghetti with meatballs?

Actually, yes. The meatballs could have been beef and pork. Turkey just isn’t my favorite. It never feels like it’s completely cooked, and it needs so much help to taste like anything. They are lighter, though, so you don’t feel so bogged down afterward. Next time I try this, I’ll buy more pesto.

I made too much, and we had tons of leftovers.

***

WEDNESDAY
Oven roasted pork ribs, lazy pierogies on noodles

Tried out a new side dish suggested by my friend Anne. I cut cabbage into ribbons and fried it up with a ton of butter, plus chopped onions and sliced crimini mushrooms. (This is how it looked after just a bit of cooking.)

I let it cook for a long time, maybe longer than 40 minutes, until it was tender, then added salt and pepper and some paprika.

We ate this over buttered egg noodles.

I liked it better than anyone else did. I don’t think it quite deserves the name “pierogies,” even qualified with “lazy” but it was flavorful, and vegetablish. I had a premonition and only used half a head of cabbage, and sure enough, there were still leftovers. Which I ate cold for breakfast. I cant help it; I have a cabbage deficiency.

I made too much pork, and we had tons of leftovers.

***

THURSDAY
Pizza, taquitos, roast chicken with fall vegetables, pork ribs, meatballs, and noodles

It was supposed to be sausage and mushroom omelettes, but things got away from me, and suddenly it was almost seven o’clock. Luckily, we had tons of leftovers, so I heated everything up and then added some silly food from the freezer.

The roasted fall vegetables really benefitted from sitting in the fridge all week and thinking about accepting balsamic vinegar as their lord and savior.

***

FRIDAY
Mac and cheese for the kiddos, I think, and I also bought 160 pieces of candy and a cubic yard of potato chips for a Stranger Things party.

D and I, however, are going out for our anniversary (20th! We did a podcast on the actual day, which was Wednesday. You can hear it here for free). I checked out the menu ahead of time, and one of the appetizers includes wild boar sausages. I mean, I’m not made out of stone.

***
Terra Cotta army photo: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=672042

What’s for supper? Vol. 101: Every meal is one-pan if you believe in yourself

Here’s what we had this week:

SATURDAY
Aldi pizza

Saturday was apple picking! It was unseasonably hot, but the orchard lanes were fragrant, the apples were huge and plentiful

no one fell off the hayride

(although a few were verrrrrry suspicious), and no one stepped on a rabbit or a goat

(yes, I know this is a calf, not a goat). We also decided at the last minute to go to the parish picnic, which boasted two bounce houses this year, and we managed to escape without getting to know anyone any better. We love our parish, and don’t want to spoil it.

***

SUNDAY
Hamburgers, chips, raw peppers

We have two fewer kids in the house, but two teenage sons — the kind who go to bed looking like someone owns them, and wake up with high water pants on — so we still go through a full five pounds of ground beef.

Oh wait, I bought pre-formed Aldi patties, I forgot. To offset the weird, bready taste, Damien put them on the grill, where they looked very dramatic.

And that’s the end of that chapter.

***

MONDAY
Apple pecan chicken salad

Still not tired of this fancy salad.

I put some chicken breasts under the broiler with oil, salt, and pepper, and cut it into chunks when it was cool. Served on greens with toasted pecans, chunks of apple, crumbled bleu cheese, diced red onion, dried cranberries, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Yuhm.

Oh, the Aldi raspberry vinaigrette is not very good, though. It tastes mainly of oil.

***

TUESDAY
Chickens burgers, waffle fries, frozen grapes

A dinner entirely from the freezer, for the last day of a heat wave.

***

WEDNESDAY
Kielbasa, cabbage, and red potato

You know when you make something four times, and each time, everyone loves it and thanks you and gobbles it up? And then you make it the fifth time, and they ask what’s for supper, and you tell them, and they look at you with weary, disappointed eyes, and go slumping off toward the box of corn flakes?

Luckily, I was prepared to eat enough for a large family all by myself. Also, you can’t beat a one-pan meal that really is one pan.

(or, in our case, two pans). Here’s the recipe from Budget Bytes, including the tasty mustard sauce (you could do with way less oil, though, I think).

You’ll notice I sprinkled parsley on it. It’s my new favorite thing to have a bowl of chopped parsley in the fridge at all times. It makes everything prettier, and . . . okay, I feel like it cleans my teeth. I also brush and floss. But I feel like the parsley is doing its part.

***

THURSDAY
“Greek nachos”

Terrible name, yummy meal.  The recipe is from Damn Delicious, and she classifies it as a sheet pan meal, which — I mean, you can definitely put it all on one pan. You still have to chop up a ton of things, cook and chop the chicken, make the tzatziki sauce, and toast the pita, but then you can go ahead and put it in one pan if you really want to. I set everything out in separate bowls and platters and let people take what they wanted.

I took this picture of my plate before I helped myself to a completely normal amount of tzatziki sauce with a fire hose. This is a great make-ahead dinner to serve cold (although the warm pita chips, part crisp and part chewy, with a little sprinkle of coarse pink salt, were magnificent). Definitely going into the rotation.

***

FRIDAY
Ziti with jarred sauce, salad

I woke up this morning and said out loud, “Maybe I’ll make bread today.” Then I was too lazy to even say, “And maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.” But I thought it. Maybe I’ll just put on some slippers, eat my parsley, and go to bed.

What’s for supper? Vol. 100: Same as it ever was

Once, an single young man tried to persuade me that NFP was bad because you might not be able to have sex on Valentine’s Day. He had me there.

Along not-really-similar lines, here we are at this momentous occasion of my one hundredth “What’s for Supper?” post, and I’m just marking it by telling you what we had for supper. Hey, at least I know what day it is. I even put on this special potholder just for you.

SATURDAY
Grilled ham, apple, and cheddar sandwiches on sourdough bread; pickles; chips

It was so good last week, we had it again.

The pickles, sadly, were not Siberian this time.

***

SUNDAY
BBQ Korean pork ribs with rice and nori, roast broccoli, strawberries

I made a marinade with about 3/4 cup of gochujang, 1/3 cup of honey, 2 Tbs sugar, 2 Tbs soy sauce, and a bunch of minced garlic (which I’ve started buying in jars), mixed in some sliced onions, and let the meat sit and dream beautiful dreams about the future all day. Then my husband cooked the meat over the coals, and there was rejoicing.

I cut the broccoli into small pieces, mixed them up with olive oil, pepper, a little soy sauce, and sesame seeds, and put them in a shallow pan in a hot oven for twelve minutes or so, until it was a little blackened at the tips. Sesame oil is better, but I was out.

The rice was from the Instant Pot, using the 1:1 method. I prefer the Instant Pot if you want the rice a little sticky but are too cheap to spring for good rice. I ate as much pork as I could manage, then made a roll out of seaweed, rice, and the spicy onions. Hot damn.

***

MONDAY
Honey mustard chicken thighs with red potatoes and broccoli 

I actually didn’t have any honey left after the Korean pork (a worthy sacrifice), so I made sauce with a little maple syrup and brown sugar, plus dijon mustard, lemon juice, olive oil, and whatever, salt and pepper and garlic powder or something.

Probably I should have mixed the sauce with the potato wedges, then added the meat and seasoned it separately, and then added the broccoli near the end of the cooking, but I just tossed it all up together and put it in a greased pan and cooked it at 425 for about forty minutes. It turned out fine. The broccoli soaked up a lot of the sauce, which made it damp but tasty. Not bad at all.

I have a strong memory of taking pictures of this dish — the crisp chicken skin was especially pretty in the last dying light of afternoon — but I have no idea where they went.

***

TUESDAY
Egg-in-toast, grapes

So nice. Such a reassuring food. Use plenty of butter.

***

WEDNESDAY
Nachos

I says to my kids, I says, Someday you’re going to grow up and begin your own life and form new relationships, and then someone’s going to give you a tray of actual nachos, and you’re going to be very angry at me.

Just chips, ground beef, and pepper jack cheese. I bought sour cream, but it got pushed to the back of the fridge and froze. We had salsa, but it got pushed to the back of the fridge, and then it worked its way back up to the front, where it presented itself as fresh. IT WAS NOT. It was fermented. I spent the next three hours going “Phbbbbblehhh.”

***

THURSDAY
Spaghetti with sausage, salad

Just jarred sauce with hot sausage, peppers, and onions added in.

Everyone was hungry, so it went over well.

***

FRIDAY
Chicken shawarma and pita

It’s Friday, but it’s also CLARA’S BIRTHDAY! And when the birthday girl wants shawarma on Friday, she gets shawarma on Friday. She will also eventually get presents. Amazon Prime ain’t what it used to be.

Clara, however, will always be this:

in my head, anyway.