Weekly Menu Planning - February 2024

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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Let’s use this thread to share concise weekly dinner menus for each week in February. It’s helpful if you can include your location and how many people you are feeding. Links to recipes are always appreciated, and sources help. We all know plans can change, so it’s fine (practically expected) when your week gets rearranged from your posted plan. You may choose to report actuals for the prior week to share ideas with others.

“The torch of love is lit in the kitchen.” What will you have for your Valentine’s Day meal?

Will your parties for watching the big games and sporting events feature old favorites or something new?

Please keep comments menu / food related.

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Greetings from Pasadena, CA, where the first of the forecasted atmospheric rivers blew through overnight/this morning - the one arriving on Sunday, a “Pineapple Express,” is supposed to be more intense. Perfect weather for soup and some baking, I say!

January was a semi-mess with following through on the planned menus (life, plus a lingering virus), but we adapted. (Edited to Add: We have not, however, managed to completely de-decorate from the holidays; maybe this weekend?)

Looking ahead:
2-1 Thu (today): salad, roasted sprouts with garlic, pierogies (potato/onion) from freezer with marinara (also from freezer)

2-2 Fri: repeat, plus bread pudding for dessert

2-3 Sat: salad, chickpea/tofu/butternut squash curry over brown rice

2-4 Sun: repeat, plus start pot of split pea soup

2-5 Mon: salad, split pea soup, cornbread
Bake pumpkin breads for freezer

2-6 Tues: repeat, plus roasted broccoli

2-7 Wed: repeat, freeze what’s left of the soup?

Hope everyone is healthy, warm, and well!

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Don’t feel bad - our tree (artificial) is still up!

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I finally managed to get our family “holiday” card planned, produced, and mailed before the end of January. Happy New Year, indeed! And arrived before February 1!

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I’ll see you an artificial tree and raise you a second, artificial, mini-tree. (The live tree came down in early January when floor needles > tree needles.)

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I posted a few unscheduled dinners at the end of the January thread, but now have them sorted for this week. Here’s the February part:

Tonight: breaded turkey cutlets (finally found not-gross gluten free breadcrumbs!), Greek roasted potatoes, green beans

Fri: fast bolognese (The Dinner Plan) with rigatoni

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You have no idea how much better this makes me feel! :joy:

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Greetings, people.

We’re opting for a week of easy meal preps. DH put in an order from the fancy deli in the city, stocking us up on charcuterie and cheese. I spent Wednesday making two kinds of crackers and two kinds of bread to go with. We’ll buy some salad greens and fruit to round things out. If we’re jonesin’ for a hot meal, there’s a good selection of heat-and-serve leftovers in the freezer (soup, tacos, pizza, chili). It’ll be Buckdancer’s Choice all week.

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,ours is too!

I love watching tv in the evening with just the tree lights on. Unless we are hosting a Super Bowl party it usually stays up till March

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It’s so pretty!

When the pandemic hit we still had our tree up. We normally keep it in a public storage facility, so we figured it would be safer to just keep it up. At some point in that first year I decided I needed to do something to make it seem less Christmasy. Lulu was obsessed with all things Greek, so I bought some blue lights and white/silver/blue ornaments from amazon and redecorated it, and we called it The Treek. Boy was I happy when we finally felt comfortable taking it back to storage.

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Hi, all! Cooking for 2 in Chattanooga, where I need to get outside and enjoy the spectacular weather! Hope all of you on the West Coast stay adequately dry.
Breakfast: Cinnamon puffs from the Breakfast Book
Friday, February 2 (today): Leek and Gruyère bread pudding from Family with green beans plus my first post-dry-January glass of wine
Saturday: Waterzooi (Belgian chicken soup) and rolls. I volunteered to make 4 large loaves of bread for church on Sunday, so I may siphon off some dough for us…
Sunday: Grilled or broiled vaguely Asian flank steak, rice, salad, chocolate swirl ice cream
Monday-Tuesday: Scrounge/go out
Wednesday: Cauliflower, lots of chickpeas, and tahini. Maybe save some extra bread dough for that as well?
Thursday: More scrounging
Friday: Another recipe from Family
Have a good week no matter what the groundhog tells us! Happy cooking!

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That bread pudding sounds wonderful.

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Hi everyone

I’ve been waiting for a day that is not grey since I got back, of all the strange things to be hoping for.

Anyway, last week included a lot of meals out to catch up with various people, so I didn’t get to much of my plan. Rolling forward some of it and factoring in COTM Ethiopia:

— Miso black cod (Nobu) + sushi rice + garlic spinach
— Beg Alicha / Simple stewed lamb (COTM Ethiopia) + faux-injera crepes + tbd veg
— Ikea copycat broccoli cakes / medallions + maybe steak, maybe meatballs
-– Ants climbing a tree + Chinese steamed egg
-– Oyako Donburi
-– Vietnamese pork chop (marinated and frozen) + slaw + Umami garlic noodles

Still need to do these:
-– Chinatown trip for mushrooms & greens I’ve been missing
-– Beet-cured salmon

Have a lovely weekend!

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Survived the first week of the semester! When my husband saw the rain and cold (for San Diego) weather in the forecast, he said it was “soup weather.” I haven’t done a theme week in ages! So, lo and behold, it is Soup Week.

For two adults in San Diego:

Breakfasts: My husband bought some pastries for me last week because he knew I was stressed. So, I’ll probably bake chocolate chip scones this week.

S: (tonight) takeout - chicken pot pies with gravy

Su: Creamy chicken noodle soup

M: Taco soup - leftover taco filling, extra veggies, tomatoes, stock, topped with cheese, chips and avocado

T: Chowder, using either shrimp or fish tbd - seafood

W: Bean and ham soup, from the freezer

Th: Tomato soup with cheesy garlic bread - vegetarian

F: Potstickers (purchased) and veggies in chicken stock

Have a good week!

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I want to eat all of this.

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Hi everyone, hope you’re having a great weekend. LLD and I are driving up to DC today for dental appointments tomorrow morning. We have a date tonight, and I’ll be breaking my dry January run. This month will have various travel and dinner commitments so there won’t be as much cooking as usual. Here’s what we ate this week:

Mon: chicken with potatoes, red onion, feta, lemon, and dill (last month’s COTM), cucumber salad

Tues: turmeric shrimp with shallots and chilies; rice, cabbage salad

Wed: soyrizo and black bean stew, tortilla chips

Thurs: carry out

Fri: pasta puttenesca

Sat: UNC v Duke meant we needed to stay home (it gets very busy on our street). LLD made salmon tacos.

Sun: hot date in the big city!

I baked a very disappointing cake from the baking book of the months, Snacking Bakes. Made up for it by taking a friend out for cake for her birthday. Daffodils are trying to come up in our neighborhood, and I worry that for the third year in a row they’re trying too early and we’ll miss them again this year.

Have a wonderful and delicious week!

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Actuals for the past week, cooking for 2 in MN. Where we’ve not been able to fully enjoy the mid-winter thaw (40-50 degrees F. out) due to health - a nasty cold with cough for me, slow recovery from back strain for my husband. Menu planning helped a lot, with a couple of larger batch recipes supplemented by commercially frozen mains making many reheat & eat meals.

Mon: Crispy pollack fish strips w/ tartar sauce, grain bowl w sweet potatoes and craisins, both commercial from freezer. Fresh pear w cottage cheese.
Tues: Spicy (but not too) Shrimp w corn and black beans. Naan. Fresh pineapple, red grapes. This is a very quick and easy main dish. I double the lime juice (bottled is fine), and use 2 T. dried cilantro leaf instead of fresh.
Wed: Pork chili w sweet potato and beans, using cocoa, cumin and chili spices. Beer bread. Red grapes.
Thurs: A family favorite - Chicken Livers w onion & mushrooms in wine sauce, over rice, From Dinner a Day cookbook. Peas topped with cashews.
Fri: Reheat Chicken Livers w onion & mushrooms in wine sauce, over rice, Peas topped with cashews.
Sat: Pizza (commercial frozen)
Sun today: Surimi crab & cheese spread on crackers, Salmon, sweet potato puffs

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Hi friends, grumpily cooking… again… I’m firmly in an anti-cooking mood right now, but squaring my shoulders and pushing on.

Sun: I made the Tex-mex kasha (NYT) for my lunches this week, as it didn’t happen last week. The recipe was vague and I’ve added some comments on it.

Dinner tonight was haddock with garlic butter bread crumbs (based on this ) and hasselback potatoes (Ree Drummond). Both were misses, properly cooked but super bland.

Mon: Tex-mex beef stew, either rice or cornbread on the side

Tues: long day in the office for me. Easy dinner of IP chipotle-honey chicken tacos (NYT)

Weds: probably stew again

Thurs: I’d planned to make skillet enchiladas al pastor (https://whattocook.substack.com/p/30-minute-al-pastor-enchiladas) but the grocery store did not have salsa verde, so… tbd.

Fri: if I feel like cooking, it will be this dish called “Asapao” which is, according to Cooking Light circa 2007, a “stewlike dish… popular in Puerto Rico and Cuba.” Chicken, rice, tomatoes, peppers, roasted red peppers, and Manchego cheese.

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I really get the non cooking mood. Can you do carry out a few nights? Make enough for a leftover night?

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Believe it or not, takeout is also a cause for battles around here. We find it hard to agree on what and where - and DH has this odd perception that we all need to eat from the same restaurant. I need more food truck festivals to disabuse him of that notion!

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