Simple Summer Dinners
No recipes and 5-minute meal planning are my coping skills
I’m back from vacation and up to my eyeballs in real life. The annual summer onslaught of ants has begun in our living room, the whole house needs a thorough cleaning and we came back to an unavoidable home renovation that really needs to be dealt with. The calendar is filling up with new school orientations and back-to-school events and my inbox is filling up with school emails. The kids need haircuts and new shoes and shorts that don’t have holes in them.
My husband and I are trying to get back into work mode and we’re trying to get the kids back into school mode by insisting on earlier bedtimes and earlier wake-up times. It’s not going great so far.
I’m trying to keep dinner as simple as possible around here, as my time and energy are needed elsewhere. For me, this means sticking to a “protein-veg-starch” meal planning strategy.
I took a deeper dive into this strategy earlier this year in my newsletter “How to Give Yourself a Break.” The short and simple explanation is that you draw a quick chart for your grocery list and then fill it in with 5 proteins, 5 starches and 5 vegetables. That’s your meal plan for the week.
Each item is cooked as simply as possible, with very little fuss or fanfare. Do not start looking up recipes on the internet, unless you need to look up a basic cooking technique like how long to grill chicken thighs.
(Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything cookbook series is great for learning basic techniques).
So here’s what we’re eating this week:
On Monday, I grilled pre-marinated chicken thighs with zucchini and bell pepper and also steamed potatoes in the Instant Pot.
On Tuesday, I grilled pork chops and made pinto beans in the Instant Pot (add BBQ sauce to the beans before serving to make them taste like baked beans). The veg was leftover grilled vegetables from the night before.
On Wednesday, I roasted salmon and Trader Joe’s latkes (400F, 12 minutes for the salmon and 16 minutes for the latkes) and served it with raw snap peas and cucumbers.
Tonight, it’s pork meatballs (a recipe I know by heart) with ravioli and roasted broccoli.
You get the picture: A simple protein, with a simple veg and a simple starch = dinners that require very little mental energy.
A Few Tips to Make Meals Easier
Buy pre-marinated meat at the grocery store. I’ve bought marinated meat at regular supermarkets, fancier Whole Foods-like stores and Trader Joe’s. They are all pretty good. Being able to throw marinated meat directly on the grill with no prep is a real time and energy saver.
Buy a grill basket for easy grilled vegetables. Chop up veggies, lightly toss them in olive and salt, and grill them for about 10 minutes. Any type of veggie works. I’ve been especially enjoying grilled broccoli this summer.
Use your Instant Pot (pressure cooker). On my food blog I have lots of one-pot Instant Pot dinners, but the best use of an Instant Pot is cooking side dishes like potatoes, beans and grains. One recipe you can try is Instant Pot potatoes and carrots.
A Bonus for Paid Subscribers - I’m working on an Instant Pot cheat sheet that you can hang in your kitchen and easily reference for time-saving side dishes like veggies, pasta, grains and beans. It will be coming to your inbox soon!
Reading
A friend gifted her old Kindle to me recently, which came in handy when I needed something to read on our flight home. I downloaded Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson from Libby and I’m about 50% through it.
I like the book so far, but I can’t tell where it’s going and I feel like the ending will ultimately determine how I feel about the book. It’s supposed to have a “staggering” ending, so we’ll see!
I’m new to reading on a Kindle and I have mixed feelings. It’s very convenient, especially for travel. The constant swiping to a new page annoys me though, so it seems likely that the Kindle will be a backup choice for reading, not my first choice.
Next up on my book shelf is What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins.
This weekend we have an outdoor movie night at Josie’s new grade school, a yard that is in desperate need of attention and hopefully a Sunday night that involves sitting out on our back patio watching the sunset.
Whether you’re still enjoying summer break or already heading back to school, hope you all have a relaxing weekend!
Jenny