For a busy family, leftovers are a necessary and functional part of our meal planning. Guaranteeing that there are leftovers is usually relatively easy as meal prep often includes doubling recipes. The benefit is one or two nights a week where dinner can be quickly plated by individual and thrown in the microwave. It’s perfect for evenings where I’m seeing patients or the family has to rush somewhere after dinner (albeit the latter has happened a lot less frequently since the pandemic began).
Vacation and travel for parts of our family meant that leftovers were is short supply this week which meant thinking about meal planning a little differently, particularly if I didn’t want to spend the whole week preparing meals. I love to cook but everyone has their limits.
Fortunately, we had a new cookbook to turn to with some fabulous ideas. The team behind the popular Between Carpools blog put together a cookbook called Dinner Done. The cookbook contains 150 recipes to get dinner on the table quickly and efficiently which met our needs for this week. Flipping through the pages produced some great ideas reflected in this week’s menu.
Sunday – Yellow rice with turkey, cut veggies – the recipe from Dinner Done calls for chicken but with a chicken allergy in the house, turkey has become our preferred poultry.
Monday – Falafel, bourekas, Israeli salad – now that I’ve figured out how to use those square puff pastry sheets, bourekas are becoming a regular part of our diet. My next experiment will be with a cheese filling.
Tuesday – Montreal salmon with veggies, fish sticks, smoky sweet potato fries – this is a another recipe from Dinner Done. If we don’t have the Montreal steak seasoning in the house, I may punt and use the Trader Joe’s coffee rub.
Wednesday – Hamburgers, grilled corn, cut veggies – It’s summer and time to barbecue just a little bit more.
Thursday – Pizza
Friday – Chicken with zucchini rice, drunken hassleback salami, cranberry-apple kugel, carrot kugel, yellow squash soup – Dinner is brought to us by a trio of our favorite cookbooks – Dinner Done, the Bais Yaakov Cookbook, and Millennial Kosher
Saturday – Meatballs, spinach soufflé, cut veggies, dips
