Orzo Pesto Salad
Plus 5 Dinners in Real Life
Hi!
How is your summer going so far? We’re in full summer mode here, with pleasantly warm weather, daily swimming lessons, leisurely evening walks and two slightly harried parents trying to juggle work with two kids at home all day.
This summer I’ve had to accept two hards truths: One: Time alone in the evening after the kids go to bed no longer exists. We’ve reached the point in our lives when we’re going to bed before our kids. Two: Growing teens and tweens who are home all day eat an insane amount of food. One weekly trip to the grocery store isn’t going to cut it during the summer.
I’m working on building my 9-year-old’s lunch-making skills so she can start making her own lunches with minimal help. To this end, I’m mostly letting her decide what she wants to eat. She’s requested more boxed mac ‘n cheese, ingredients for black bean burritos and “good bread” for salami sandwiches. I’ve also been keeping the kitchen stocked with lots of favorite summer fruits like watermelon, berries and ripe, juicy nectarines.
How is feeding your family going this summer? Any favorite summer meals or lunch suggestions for kids?
This Week’s Recipe: Orzo Salad with Pesto
This recipe for orzo pesto salad reminds me how much I love cold pasta salad. You can use orzo or any small pasta shape and you can add or subtract ingredients based on what you like (cherry tomatoes instead of sun-dried, mozzarella instead of feta, chickpeas instead of olives, etc).
The one thing that isn’t negotiable is the pesto. Personally, I could eat pesto out of bowl with a spoon and be happy! If you also love pesto, then this salad is for you. You can find the recipe here.
5 Dinners in Real Life
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? I hope that my week of real life dinners will provide helpful recipes & cooking ideas for your family. Here’s what my crew ate last week:
Monday: Broiled tofu, frozen egg rolls, sautéed broccoli and bell pepper, angel hair pasta. We’ve been on a real angel hair pasta kick lately!
Tuesday: I whisked lime juice into mayonnaise and brushed a thin layer onto cod fillets. Mayo keeps fish moist and adds subtle flavor; it works on salmon, too. I baked the fish at 425F for about 12 minutes then broiled it for another few minutes.
I also boiled corn on the cob then shaved it off the cob and sautéed the corn in olive oil and garlic with cherry tomatoes, red onion and basil. It was a perfect summer side dish!
Wednesday: We celebrated Josie’s last day of 3rd grade with her requested dinner, homemade pizza. The internet is filled with people telling you that homemade pizza dough is a fun family meal that’s really easy to make. . . I’m here to tell you that this might be true only if you regularly make pizza and master the art of proofing, stretching and baking the dough. AND if you have pizza stones for baking AND an oven that bakes evenly at a really high temp. Otherwise you might end up with either very thick doughy pizza or thin burnt pizza (and your pizza sauce might be bland).
Note to self: Next time, just order pizza.
Thursday: It was my birthday! We ordered roasted chicken with chili oil and garlic sauce, fennel tzatziki, hummus and crispy schmaltzy roasted potatoes from Kismet Rotisserie. This local LA restaurant just came out with a new cookbook that I have on hold at the library and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Josie and I also baked my birthday cake, chocolate fun cake with fluffy frosting.
Friday: We had plenty of leftovers for dinner, hooray! It was nice to have dinner leftovers but there’s really nothing better than leftover birthday cake!
Cookbooks
Andrea Nguyen has a newsletter on Substack called Pass the Fish Sauce and is a go-to reference for Vietnamese cooking. Her recipes in Vietnamese Food Any Day will be familiar to anyone who regularly eats at Vietnamese restaurants. The recipes are approachable and easy to follow so you really can make your own banh mi sandwiches, bún rice noodle bowls and other Vietnamese favorites. You’ll also find lots of flavorful meat marinades, soup recipes and tempting meals like buttery garlic noodles with shiitake mushrooms.
It’s official - our kids now have their own bedrooms after bunking together since they were babies. We spent much of last weekend painting Ophelia’s new bedroom a lovely minty green and much of our free time this week sorting, organizing, cleaning and decorating their bedrooms. We filled the trash bin, dropped two bags off at Goodwill and have four bags of books ready to be donated to our local library. Phew!
This weekend, I’m looking forward to more fun and rest and less cleaning and sorting! What do you have planned?
xo
Jenny
This looks amazing! Definitely going to try this weekend. And, I never thought to broil tofu. Thank you!
Love orzo recipes! The pesto looks divine.