Weeknight Meals

Keep it Simple! 3 Quick and Easy Meals

November 13, 2018 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week! I love this time of year. We’re looking forward to getting together with family and friends as always. However, life gets so busy during this season. There’s shopping for gifts, parties, activities, travel and holiday shows – It’s all so much fun, but it can all feel overwhelming if I don’t take the time to plan and keep meals simple. We don’t want to eat out most nights, which is what happens if I try to wing it. Plus, making dinners allows for leftovers for at least a couple of lunches each week.

At the end of the day, as Anna highlighted in her most recent post what you eat for dinner isn’t what’s most important. It’s the meaningful time you spend connecting with your family.

Here are 3 quick and easy meal ideas you can rely on through the holiday season. I’m also going to use Anna’s printable meal planning template (sign up at the top of our blog to receive it) along with a couple of other go-to meals I wrote about last spring to simplify meals.

Sausage (vegetarian or meat) with sweet potato fries and sautéed brussel sprouts

30 minute meal

I tend to buy this Neiman Ranch Sweet Italian Sausage. All four of us really like it. If it’s a vegetarian option you’re after, the Field and Stream sausages are quite good. Shaved or shredded Brussels sprouts are a favorite in our house. Everyone loves them, there’s no prep work and they cook in less than 10 minutes! When I can’t find shredded Brussels sprouts, I buy them whole and run them through my food processor with the grater blade. If I know I don’t have time for that extra step, I’ll cook a frozen vegetable I have on hand.

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Peel N’ Eat Shrimp – A Family Beach Trip Tradition

July 28, 2018 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

Peel N' Eat Shrimp

Anna and I both happened to be at the beach last week (different beaches). Relaxing at the beach took me back to the food we ate during our annual trip to Emerald Isle, NC with dear family friends. We had some sort of fresh seafood most nights, and my mom often made peel n’ eat shrimp. That’s one of Anna’s family beach trip traditions too!

As I watched my children and their cousins laughing and diving and jumping waves, I found myself reflecting on Anna’s most recent post An Open Letter to My Daughter’s Camp Counselor. When we focus on what not to eat or what we think we are supposed to eat, or weight loss; we miss out on life. Instead of enjoying connecting with friends and family, we are distracted. Food provides opportunities to create meaningful connections, traditions and memories.

Peel N' Eat Shrimp

Peel N’ Eat Shrimp

Anna and I each make peel n’ eat shrimp a little differently. I make it the way my mom did: by seasoning the water with some veggies, salt and lemon. Anna’s family cooks the shrimp in unseasoned water. I love this! It doesn’t get any easier!! We had cocktail sauce my mom made by mixing horseradish into ketchup. I think we also had plain ketchup for those who didn’t want any spice. Anna’s family sets out horseraddish and ketchup to allow everyone to make their sauce as spicy or mild as they like.

I’m so glad I made peel n’ eat shrimp when I was at the beach! WHY don’t I make this for dinner at home sometimes??? It’s SO EASY! And the smell of the water as it came to a boil with plenty of salt, celery, carrot, onion and some fresh, flat leaf parsley took me back to heart warming memories of our yearly trips to Emerald Isle.

Another method is to roast it in the oven instead of boiling it. I’m definitely going to try that soon!

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Black Bean Taco Soup

May 17, 2018 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

Black Bean Taco Soup Recipe

Hi! Elizabeth here. Thanks for stopping by! I’ve been thinking a lot about Anna’s post about food rules from last week. So many of our clients come to us with a lifetime of unhelpful, rigid rules around food. A big part of our work is guiding them to establish new, flexible, useful rules or guidelines. Like Anna, I had similar, unrealistic rules about food when my girls were very young. Those rules about organic, local, in-season, etc, etc were impossible to follow without feeling like my head was going to spin off! Thankfully, I have greatly relaxed those rules.

One guideline I use now is that I don’t have to make everything we eat. I love to cook, and most food cooked at home tastes better than what you buy at the store. But we can’t live with me trying to cook everything! I remind myself and my clients that it’s completely fine to buy pre-made, pre-packaged foods. All meals aren’t meant to be made from scratch with a LOOOOONG list of ingredients. I encourage clients to ask themselves, “what can I fix to eat that isn’t complicated and that will meet my (or my family’s) nutritional needs?” Life is often hectic and we need guidelines to help us find balance in our lives – including with food….

White Bean, Sausage and Kale Soup for a Wintery Spring Day

April 7, 2018 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

I hadn’t planned on sharing a soup recipe this week. But the weather has been so up and down, I found myself really craving a nice warm, hearty soup. The weather experts had us expecting a “wintery mix” here in the DC Metro Saturday. Thankfully, the forecast has changed, but it’s still going to be a good weekend for soup.

Ellie and our Scottie, Nessie enjoying the snow a few weeks ago on the first day of spring.

What do you love about soup? I love soup for so many reasons. It’s quick, easy and economical to make. You can make a soup with pretty much any ingredients you like. It’s also wonderful because you can easily make a big batch and have enough leftovers to use for lunches and still freeze some for those nights you need a ready-made meal. And most of all, it’s warm and comforting. …

Favorite Everyday Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette

March 19, 2018 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

Anna and I were recently brainstorming topics to share with our readers. She mentioned her clients often ask her how to make a good salad and suggested I write a post about salads. So, I thought I’d go ahead and share my family’s Favorite Everyday Salad.

We all love salad in our house! But that hasn’t always been the case. It’s one of those examples of food I kept serving even though the girls didn’t touch it for years. They’d eat apples dipped in mustard vinaigrette or cucumbers and carrots dipped in dressing, but no salad. I followed (and still do) the Ellyn Satter Division of Responsibility that Anna talks about in Family Feeding – The Long Haul. Letting kids decide what and how much they’ll eat of what’s offered allows kids to use their internal and intuitive cues….

Two Simple 20 Minute Meals

March 4, 2018 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

Hi! Elizabeth here. I hope everyone stayed safe during the storm on Friday and Saturday! I planned on finishing this post on simple 20 minute meals on Friday during the nor’easter. Kept finding myself wondering if our power would hold out so I could finish this post. Well, our power never went out, BUT a neighbor’s tree fell on part of our house. It sounded and felt like an earthquake!

Thankfully, no one was hurt.

I’m grateful to our neighbor for finding a tree removal service that was able to come out Saturday afternoon.

Next step is to schedule the repairs. Since we’ll be coordinating those this week (hopefully!), I’ll definitely make these super simple 20 minute meals:

Trader Joes’ Mandarin Chicken with rice and green beans
Spaghetti and Meatballs with broccoli

Both these meals are so quick and easy, you might worry they don’t count as real meals. They both only take 20 minutes to make. As I mentioned in my last post, meals don’t have to be perfect to be “real.” As much as I love to cook, opening packages, jars, boxes, and heating up food and putting it on a plate counts as cooking. Just like with life it’s not black and white. Cooking also falls on a spectrum. There are times someone else cooks your food. Sometimes you cook frozen meals from a bag. Other times you have a sandwich and sometimes you make a 3 course meal. Well, you likely only do that if you like to cook and definitely not on a weeknight! …

A Favorite Go To Meal

February 26, 2018 by Elizabeth 2 Comments

Mustard salmon with broccoli and couscous is one of my family’s favorite meals. Go to meal: Mustard salmon with broccoli and cous cous

Hi, Elizabeth here. The past few weeks have been busier than usual. That means I’ve let writing out my typical weekly plan for meals slip, even though I know having a plan makes me feel less overwhelmed! It’s during these times that I rely on my Go To Meals. Life can get so hectic. I like to keep a supply of items we can use to get dinner on the table when I haven’t had a chance to get to the store, or for those nights when there’s only 30 minutes to get dinner on the table. You know those nights! You had to be at work late and everyone else in the house has some sort of lesson or practice they have to get to soon. …

Cooking With Kids

January 15, 2018 by Elizabeth Leave a Comment

Shortly after the holidays, my younger daughter, who’s 10, told me she’d like to help make dinner once a week. I was so excited! Cooking with kids of all ages can be a fun filled activity. It offers an avenue for exploring other cultures, food science, history, math, reading, creativity and so much more. And kids feel such a sense of pride and self confidence while they’re cooking and in the finished product.

As with anything, there are a few obstacles. I know I have to get past all the worries and inconveniences running through my mind: this will take forever, it will be easier if I do it myself, what about the mess? Yes, it will take longer to get dinner on the table or lunches in the lunch boxes. And yes, there will be a bigger mess than if you cooked it yourself. By assuming the process will take longer, I avoid feeling rushed which takes the fun out of it for all of us. And the clean up will take longer, but your child can lead the clean up crew if he or she is old enough. What a great opportunity for your child to be in charge! And if your child is younger, he or she can help dry the dishes or put them away.…

Pork, Sauerkraut & Black Eyed Peas

January 7, 2018 by Anna Lutz Leave a Comment

It was New Year’s Eve 1996. My new boyfriend from Ohio was visiting me at home in Raleigh. We went to Duke, 30 minutes down the road, but being with my family in Raleigh was exposure to southern culture. On New Year’s Eve, my mother asked Dan, “What does your family have to eat on New Year’s Day?” With a shocked look on his face he replied, “Pork and Saurkraut, like the rest of the world!?” As he tells it now, (he stuck around and now I’m married to him) he didn’t know anyone who didn’t have pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day. It was such a shocking question to him. This interaction between my mother and Dan prompted a discussion about New Year’s Day food traditions and certainly black eyed peas and greens. As I understand it, the southern tradition is to have black eyed peas (often served in Hoppin’ John) and greens on New Year’s Day for good luck! The peas represent the coins and the greens the dollars that you will acquire over the next year….

Weeknight Meals

Sausage (vegetarian or meat) with sweet potato fries and sautéed brussel sprouts

Trader Joes’ Mandarin Chicken with rice and green beans

Spaghetti and Meatballs with broccoli

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