Hi, all! Cooking for 2 back in Chattanooga after a lovely 10 days visiting family in California. Actuals listed randomly because I can’t keep track of dates:
Breakfasts included peach muffins and zucchini bread
Dinners included this sausage and white bean braise (super fast and delicious recipe to keep in your back pocket! We made it with Impossible sausage), stir-fried pork and Napa cabbage, burgers with red wine caramelized onions, tomato gratin, and a fabulous salad spread at a friend’s house featuring three-bean salad, roasted green beans with goat cheese, this delicious tomato salad, and a zucchini-tomato tian. I also made chocolate pie and peach and blueberry crisp.
Back home actuals: Fish with citrus butter sauce, vegetable lo mein, and dinner with friends last night with spicy fried chicken from Salt Fat Acid Heat, biscuits, tomato salad with peanuts from Milk Street, and a recent recipe for peach cobbler from the NYT (delicious, but not really a cobbler to my mind…)
Plans:
Breakfast: Orange rolls
Saturday, August 24: Orecchiette with broccoli
Sunday: Pork and kimchi stew, rice, Brussels sprouts, chocolate biscotti
Monday: Mahogany chicken, rice
Tuesday-Friday: Eat from the fridge/takeout
Have a great week, with special thoughts for back to school and off to college families. Happy cooking!
Thanks for all the links. The peach muffins and the sausage & bean braise both look interesting.
I’m very excited about the bean braise - thanks for the link, and welcome home.
Survived the first week of classes. Now to get through the rest of the semester. It’s another busy one!
For two adults in San Diego:
Breakfasts: I’m going to force myself to bake chocolate chip scones tomorrow. I deserve chocolate in the morning.
S: (tonight) takeout - chicken curry fried rice and egg rolls
Su: Shrimp tacos - seafood
M: Potato soup (leftovers from the freezer, extended with more spinach and potatoes) - soup
T: Hummus topped with tomatoes, feta, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, TJs chicken shawarma, green onions - salad
W: Shawarma tacos - chicken, hummus, onions, peppers, feta and hot sauce
R: TJ’s Spinach tortellini, tomatoes, pesto, parmesan -vegetarian
F: Pizza - salami and spinach, salad
Have a good week!
Actuals for Aug 19 week, cooking for 2 in MN. Where I’ve just re-inventoried the freezers (over fridge and upright) and resolved to use the excess over the next month; those grocery BOGO sales are great but there are only 2 of us. And baked goods from the gifted zucchini are also in there, ready to be enjoyed.
Mon: Rotisserie chicken, Potato salad, apple/fennel spinach salad (picture and recipe on SOTD discussion)
Tues: BAKED – breakfast cookies (whole wheat, oatmeal, apple, cranberries, pecans, maple syrup)
Chicken salad on toasted cranberry walnut bread. Sweet potato fries. Spinach/tomato/fresh mozz. salad with balsamic/olive oil dressing.
Wed: BAKED – Chocolate zucchini cupcakes, Zucchini oat loaf (photos and recipes on WAYB discussion. Dinner - Zucchini/corn/tomato soup with added rotisserie chicken. Lemony couscous.
Thurs: lunch- Chicken/feta slider burgers with cucumber sauce on Hawaaian rolls. Dinner - Chicken Provencal w/ fennel and tomatoes skillet meal, hot crash potatoes. Recipes from a cooking class several years ago.
BAKED Savory Zucchini Cheddar Bread (muffins) with chive, onion and dill
Friday - Birthday celebration meals out, at husband’s choice of restaurants. Shortage of staff / servers at both lunch and dinner made for longer-than-usual wait times for all aspects of the meals. Good food, but he’s likely to choose counter-service fast food restaurants next year.
Sat: Reheated Chicken/feta slider burgers with cucumber sauce & tomatoes on Hawaiian rolls. Fresh peach w whipped cream.
Sun: Reheated chicken/fennel/potatoes
Hi everyone, I hope you’re enjoying your weekend. It’s been a busy, full week here and I’m happily being lazy today. Here is what we ate:
Mon: shaking salmon (A. Nguyen) with rice and salad. I loved the salmon.
Tues: shrimp rolls made like lobster rolls, NYT. Inspired by @sallyt’s thread/photos about her summer vacation, and I believe @Saregama suggested doing it this way. Really delicious and easy meal that felt special.
Wed: Colombian chicken, potato, tomato stew
Thurs: carry out
Fri: pasta puttanesca
Sat: carry out
Sun: LLD hoping to make tuna tacos
Made smitten kitchen’s sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake this week, and it was absolutely wonderful.
Wishing everyone a wonderful week!
Sunday
Cypriot lamb tava, mentioned by a Cypriot cyber friend
Monday
Maybe the Walz turkey tot hot dish? 
I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. https://www.kare11.com/article/life/food/recipes/rep-tim-walzs-winning-hotdish-recipe/89-107523676
Tuesday
Eggplant parm
Not sure what else yet!
That does sound like a great recipe! Bookmarked 
The salt and pepper shrimp rolls from NYT?
When does Lulu leave for college? What an intense time for your family!
No, it’s a recipe for lobster rolls, but shrimp are much easier to come by so I used them instead. The large frozen Argentinian ones. We had two sandwiches each, and they were very satisfying. But I do love those salt & pepper shrimp sandwiches too.
Lulu leaves in just over a week - her college is on a quarter system. Definitely lots of feelings floating through our house!
Best wishes to all 3 of you!
Hi, everyone. It’s our last weekend before school starts - feels like just yesterday we were at kindergarten orientation but DS is off to high school! It was weird going to get the first round of school supplies yesterday: a mouse for his laptop and an assignment notebook. No glue sticks or safety scissors. 
(we’ll have to go Weds/Thurs to get whatever specific stuff the teachers tell him… sort of annoying but I guess the laptop is 90% of what he needs?)
Work has been uncharacteristically busy for me lately - lots of knot-untangling and problem-solving. It means that cooking dinner is a nice break, usually.
Sun: we’re having one of the few Melissa Clark recipes I like, harissa chicken with potatoes and leeks, with steamed green beans. I also made a batch of spaghetti sauce (NYT) and my usual granola for breakfasts.
Mon: a chicken/corn/feta skillet meal from How to Cook Everything Fast (toss chunks of b/s chicken in cornmeal mixed with chili powder, sauté till done, then remove and char some corn kernels… top with crumbled cheese, scallions, and hot sauce). Refried black beans.
Tues: spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread. Carb-loading for brain power!
Weds: fried chicken but not in sandwich form. Oven fries, carrot sticks.
Thurs: Greek tacos - roughly based on this but using ground pork to go faster. I will also make flatbreads for myself based on this Loopy Whisk recipe for stuffed flatbreads. Guys get store-bought pita, lol.
Fri: tbd - might be a TGIF celebration dinner, might be takeout if the guy coming to revamp our home wifi this afternoon is still here at dinnertime…
Delicious week! The chicken with corn and feta sounds really good, and I love the Melissa Clark recipe. Also: high school!!
I had faux-lobster (aka argentinian shrimp) rolls 3 or 4 times when I bought that bag of hot dog buns 
They’re great with variations (sriracha, wasabi, etc) but I just kept craving the classic.
(If you poach or gently sauté in butter and then use scant mayo it’s the best of both worlds. I also chop the shrimp smaller for easy eating.)
I thought I remembered reading about you doing this - made me want it myself. I did the gentle saute in butter, and not much mayo (although it may look like a lot, it was only 1/4 cup for a pound of shrimp). I loved the buttery crunch from cooking the buns in a bit of butter too. I loved it. Gotta say, the wasabi and sriracha variations sound very good too.
I don’t like celery so I use a bit of onion and some diced fennel when I have it. Scallions are nice too.
And absolutely yes on griddling the buns with butter!
( couldn’t find butter lettuce so I used the soft parts of napa cabbage.)
Btw — also great variations for chicken salad.
I’ll be buying hot dog buns just for this again 
I have to stop frying fish or grilling sword fish on the gas grill and I’m loving these fish recipes. I might use sour cream as I always keep that on hand.
Gosh, with us moving next weekend, I may actually have to give our remaining dinners this week more than an afterthought 
Today: TBD
Tuesday / final ladies night with my bishes 
: leftovers from our Sunday potluck, i.e. lamb & a few mezze
Wednesday: is going to be hot AF, so perhaps grilled fish & some of the KOS I hoarded, not taking into account our impending departure
Thursday: final Sichuan jour fixe with our chili head group
Friday: TBD
Saturday: moving day, not a clue — probably takeout
Sunday: ditto
I’d also had grand plans to make stock with the abundance of shrimp shells in the freezer, but they’ll keep until we get back, so no rush on that. Phew!
Whoa - September is almost here. So I’ve got the new month discussion queued up - use it when your plan is more for September than August.
