Week 1, 2022

This year, I’m going to attempt to share our weekly recipes. Maybe it’ll be inspiration. At the very least, I can better credit the food bloggers who inspire us.

Mon 1/3: Colcannon Soup (aka Irish Potato and Cabbage Soup with Bacon). Flat 493 doesn’t do leek or onion and only very rarely shallot. And we only had half the potatoes we needed. But this was still dang tasty. On the side we had the rest of the Hawaiian dinner rolls bought for a pre-Christmas dinner party, toasted up with butter and garlic powder.

Tues 1/4: andouille, collards, red beans, rice — leftover New Year collards that were cooked way down with a ham hock, Crystal hot sauce, and Liquid Smoke. Kidney beans zhuzhed up with low-sodium Tony Chachere’s and some random NoLa-ish spice gifted by a former colleague.

Wed 1/5: moule frites, salad — Costco refrigerated mussels added to a sauce built with bacon, chorizo, and white wine. Frozen Trader Joe’s fries. Arugula, parm, and lemon salad.

Thur 1/6: Mushroom, Lemon, and Lentil Salad. We added feta, capers, currants, and walnuts bc why not. The dressing we used was leftover from the night before.

Fri 1/7: Cugino Forno — we planned to go out after my hair appointment but then someone worried us bc of all the calls to the local COVID hotline — not from Cugino Forno, specifically, but in general. So we cooked! As much as I love Hampton’s usual port wine steak sauce, we shook things up with leftover mushrooms in a creamy Brandy Diane sauce.

Sat 1/8: duck w/sour cherry sauce, couscous, horseradish/arugula salad. Turns out — our sour cherries went bad since the last time we did a fridge check. So Hampton made up a sauce with port wine and ginger beer, grainy mustard, and horseradish. We used Nosh with Tash’s salad recipe as a base, but we didn’t have tangerine juice and subbed pomegranate vinegar.

Sun 1/9: Thai Roast Chicken Thighs With Coconut Rice and cabbage — to use up the cabbage we bought for New Year’s.

Meal Prep Lunches: Creamy Turkey & Rice Bake

So, naturally, because I decided to try to share more food stuff this year, this day, my Sunday day o’ cooking, was a bit of a hot mess. Firstly: I delayed meal prep ’til after Hampton got home from work so I could snuggle puppies. I started the rice for meal prep while I did my workout [I have had this particular GLAMOUR mag plan printed out for so many years, it’s apparently no longer available online.]. After showering and vampire face masking, I got to the rest of the zucchini/mushroom bake. And then realized I never added zucchini and mushroom to the shopping list. [PS, this is the app Hampton and I use to sync shopping lists between iOS and Android phones.]

After making the meal prep work with cabbage, kale, and cabbage, I got to dinner. Which is when I realized the chicken was supposed to have been marinating already.

SO… I got the chicken thighs marinating and then started the coconut rice. While I was doing do, (a) I realized I was supposed to save out some of the marinade and (b) in attempting to open the drawer that always sticks to get a measuring cup out of it, I Hulked off the facing of the undersink part of the cabinet because I was distracted and apparently wasn’t actually trying to open the drawer.

SO… after all that… I took the chicken out of its short marinade bath, attempted to dry it and then sear, skin side down. But apparently, while I normally have the heat too low, this time I had it too high and proceeded to overly brown the skin while it still remained flabby because apparently it wasn’t actually properly dried? After getting a close-enough sear on the skin, I took the chicken out and seared off the cabbage wedges in the cast iron. After the cabbage was browned, I added the chicken on top… ish… and then poured the rest of the marinade in the bag into the cast iron, mainly covering the cabbage and being sure it didn’t cover too much of the (questionable) chicken skin.

At the end of the day… it all worked out quite well! Cooking rice in coconut milk was a revelation. And we usually braise chicken thighs with white wine/capers/etc. so using Thai flavors like lime a fish sauce was new and very welcome. I’m still excited to try the “proper” version of this recipe, but also darn proud of how well it worked out, Flat 493-style.

And all this is to say: stuff happens. Your meal plan doesn’t work out exactly as planned — it’s fine. Trust your gut. Trust Pinterest. You got this. Just cook.