This week was a really great week for our meals (and life in general, but the purpose of this post is solely about food). I recently switched us over to a more fall-ish menu, and it’s a very welcome change. Especially the addition of soup + sourdough night. The highlights were that there was zero food waste, and we spent very little money dining out. Which is great, because I spent an absurd amount on groceries this week. Here’s what a week of dinners and prep looked like for our family of six.
WEEKLY PREP + SNACKS
This week felt quite heavy, preparation wise. It almost felt like working in a micro-restaurant, one that exclusively feeds the same six people, three meals a day, seven days a week. Plus snacks, always snacks. There is absolutely no way that this could’ve been done in one meal prep session on a Sunday (we’ve all seen those videos). To make everything feel manageable, I typically spread the prep throughout the week, because again, doing this in one go isn’t sustainable. Here’s everything I prepped:
- Two boules of sourdough, my four year old goes through A LOT of sourdough with softened butter
- Two large cheese pizzas, one to serve for school lunches, the other for Sunday lunch
- Four school lunches on Sunday
- Using Sunday nights roasted chicken bone scraps, I turned chicken bones into twenty+ cups of bone broth, most of which got frozen into one-cup portions. There was so much, that the freezing and storing took place over two days
- Divided up 5 pounds of Costco ground beef into 5 ziplock portions for the freezer
- Two large batches of cookie dough balls (yielded over 50 cookie dough balls, most of which my children will consume raw, straight from the freezer)
- Using a small pumpkin, I roasted the guts for pumpkin-oat muffins I plan to make next week, and then roasted the seeds as a snack
- A batch of homemade bagels for school lunches (one batch yields me eight large fluffy bagels)
- Another four school lunches on Tuesday (this time with bagels)
- Sandwich bread, one batch yields two full loaves of bread my family uses for toast
- Shabbos lunch: with 1/6 of a jar of sun-dried tomatoes that I just wanted out of my fridge, and a handful of spinach, I whipped up a chickpea + coconut milk curry that took all of 15 minutes on Friday afternoon, earmarked to be had for Shabbos lunch over a bed of rice.
WHAT I SPENT | Grocery Total = $400.43 | Dining Out Total = $12.61
I ended up spending much more than average, especially at Costco. We seemed to be out of a lot staples like honey, sugar, bread-flour, chicken thighs, ground beef, etc.
- $90.98 at Aldi (the main Monday shop)
- $229.13 at Costco
- $80.32 at Trader Joes (the mid-week Thursday shop)
Thrilled to report that money spent on dining out was quite minimal — $6.61 for four hot dogs at Costco on Monday afternoon. I did also purchase an iced cappuccino for myself, which ran $6, but otherwise, lunches and dinners were home-cooked, homemade. As they should be after spending over $400 on groceries this week!
SUNDAY: WHOLE ROASTED CHICKEN WITH POTATOES, CARROTS, LEMON, AND ROSEMARY
We’ve fallen into a really nice Sunday morning / afternoon rhythm: my husband and I tag in and out for the gym and a barre class, respectively. I catch up on weekend laundry, prep school lunch boxes, our older two children typically have playdates, and then early afternoon piano lessons, all while I get us ready for the week ahead, maybe squeeze in an afternoon walk. I’ve also gotten into the habit of making two large pizzas, one to serve as Sunday lunch, and the other to serve in school lunch boxes.
For dinner that night, I knew I was running low on bone broth, so I decided to go with a whole roasted chicken. I love that it feeds my entire family of six one night, provides a handful of lunch leftovers, added bonus is using the leftover bones to make homemade broth. It really feels like a win-win.
MONDAY: MEATBALLS AND PASTA
Our oldest daughter is now doing gymnastics afterschool on Mondays, which means I need to have dinner prepared ahead of time, and I figured a really great meal to have already made would be pasta and meatballs. I let our incredibly simple, 3 ingredient sauce (butter, onions, whole peeled tomatoes) simmer all afternoon, and then plopped homemade meatballs into the pasta sauce before I left for school pick-up, and the straight to gymnastics. This allowed the meatballs to slow cook in the sauce for over 2 hours. Which, by the way, is my new and favorite way to cook meatballs, I will never go back to sautéing or roasting them, ever. If you haven’t tried it… you’re missing out. All that was left when we got home was to boil pasta, add freshly grated parmesan, a bit of parsley garnish, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. So good!
TUESDAY: LENTIL SOUP + SOURDOUGH
The plan was actually to prepare minestrone soup, but I realized that morning that I was missing a couple of ingredients, so I went with Plan B instead, which was a super simple, yet hearty lentil soup. The only ingredients needed are lentil, onions, carrots, celery, broth, parsley, which we almost always have on hand, so it’s a good fall back plan. Served with a fresh loaf of sourdough, which is our four year olds favorite. He likes his sourdough spread with room temperature butter, and it truly is heaven.
WEDNESDAY: SALMON NIGHT
Wednesday has been salmon night for all of existence. I honestly cannot remember a time when our family didn’t have salmon on Wednesdays. I roasted up a large batch of green beans and Brussel sprouts along side the salmon, and made a large batch of brown rice. I was feeling very uninspired, and pretty lazy, so I gave everyone a big drizzle of Bachan’s Japanese BBQ sauce (really clean, simple ingredients) instead of a homemade topping.
THURSDAY: MEATLOAF & MASH
This is my mom’s recipe that we all really love and enjoy. Ground beef, onion powder, garlic powder, an egg, a handful of breadcrumbs, a squeeze of ketchup, a splash of broth, salt and pepper, baked in a loaf pan, topped with a ketchup glaze. I pair it up with creamy mashed potatoes, loaded with butter, half and half, and seasoned with the same garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper to compliment the meatloaf flavors. I also threw together a quick salad of mixed greens, carrots, cucumbers, olives with a homemade balsamic vinegar. It was perfect.
FRIDAY: MAPLE-DIJION CHICKEN THIGHS WITH MASHED POTATOES AND GREENS
In a large baking dish, I threw in last nights mashed potatoes and green beans, and chicken thighs. I made a simple maple-dijon sauce for the chicken, and allowed the whole thing to roast at 375 until the chicken was cooked through and the leftovers were heated. It was simple, and an excellent way to use up leftovers.
SATURDAY: EVERYTHING MUST GO NIGHT
I absolutely love using Saturday night as a leftover night. It’s definitely a bit hodgepodge, as none of us eats the same meal, the goal is to clear out the fridge of pyrex containers, and bonus, I don’t have to cook, just reheat. This week was a great one, the fridge was left pretty bare by the time dinner was done. Which makes it easy to wipe down, and restock after a grocery shop this upcoming Monday. We had just enough food to work with for the upcoming weeks school lunchboxes, plus lunch and dinner for Sunday night.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It was a pretty solid meal planning week this week. Dinner portions were large and plentiful, which lent a hand into providing lunches throughout the week. The overall flow felt really lovely, and like the kitchen as a whole, had a really solid flow to it. And by that, I mean every component to running a kitchen efficiently: planning, shopping, preparation, baking, cooking, cleaning, and organizing.
I hope this week’s post gives you a little inspiration for your own family rhythm — whether that’s meal planning, lunch-packing, or just staying afloat in the endless loop of feeding small humans.