Monday, February 22, 2021

Weekly Eats: A Curry in a Hurry


A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition I made a curry in a hurry, kept my family fed, and hubs and I did a Siskel vs Ebert throwdown.

Breakfasts

The classic cereal bar, string cheese, and fruit.  


The homemade Egg McMuffin was another frequent hitter this week. 


Lunches

I hit up a fair amount of Costco's pad thai and eggs with breakfast potatoes (from last weekend's meal prep) to get through the week.  Tragically I ran out of salsa early in the week so I had to resort to ketchup to dip my potatoes.

At some point I'd picked up some curry tofu nuggets and I wanted to do "something" with them this weekend.

I settled on a variation of my go to "lunch salad": rice, roasted sweet potatoes (both from the freezer), and cole slaw mix.  The nuggets were good, but they weren't very saucy so I put together a "curry in a hurry" for my second serving: one can of Trader Joe's coconut milk (they have a "lighter" coconut milk that's a perfect compromise between full fat and fat free).  I simmered it with a few spoons of thai red curry paste and a few kaffir lime leaves and got my "sauce" fix.  Afterwards I air fried up a block of tofu for the leftover sauce so I've got a few days of lunch ready to go.


Dinners

Monday & Tuesday: for context, I'm working on a MegaBig project at work and my family has activities most weeknights, so there is a high likelihood of me missing family dinners and a guarantee that I will not be free to cook them (don't cry for us, this is something that I've wanted to work on for a long time and my husband knows his way around the kitchen...my workload isn't obscene but I'm working until 5:30-6 most nights which is after dinner time).  To prepare for the first week of "new normal" last Sunday I made a fairly big batch of fried rice, which is a current hit with all members of the family.  Normally I add a chicken breast for my husband's benefit but we didn't have any so I broke out the pound of frozen ground chicken that we had in the freezer and it worked just fine, though given the choice we'd probably use chicken breast.

Wednesday: was the first night that I had to work later than family dinner.  Hubs took care of himself and the boys and I got done with work just in time for the family dog walk.  After everyone got where they needed to be I broke out leftover mashed potatoes from Sunday and added a chicken sausage and peas.

 

Thursday: is the night where the boys have an event that starts before dinner so I can work late and still have time to cook!!!  Or to take a few things out of the freezer and make it look like I cooked;-)  Chicken parm ala Costco Panko Chicken.


Friday: date night!  The kids and the dog went to their mom's and hubs and I went out on the town to the drive in hamburger place.

Saturday: date night II.  Mexican takeout (including takeout margaritas).


Sunday: hubs remembered an old favorite dinner that we hadn't had in a while which is dead easy to cook.  Baked chimichangas with leftovers for next week.  Verdict: this is a forgotten dinner that we need to have more often.


Watching

Kids in the Hall!!!! A.k.a the show that would have made life in the 90's so much easier if I had known that it existed at the time.  Hubs pulled up a playlist of a bunch of clips on Youtube and the thing took off from there.  My favorite sketch that we saw this weekend:


And then the playlist came up with their movie, Brain Candy.  We watched a few minutes and it was dragging a bit.  Hubs said that he saw it when it came out and he didn't remember it as a "watch twice" kind of movie and he remembered that Roger Ebert had really slammed it.  So we went to the source and hubs was correct that Ebert hated it and Siskel (memba them?) loved it.


We decided to keep watching long enough to see whether we were Team Siskel or Team Ebert.

Verdict: Team Siskel!!!  I mean the movie was nothing earth shattering but it had some lol moments.

Reading

Almost done with The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

14 comments:

  1. What I love is that despite working late and missing family dinner you still manage to go on family dog walks together. So you're not missing out on family time too much.
    I've never heard of Kids in the Hall! I will have a look at it, it seems hilarious!
    How long will your MegaBig Project go on for?

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    1. I'll never miss out on family time...just dinner cooking time lol. I had never heard of Kids in the Hall until I met my husband and I'm kind of mad about it. It would have made the 90's a lot better.

      Project MegaBig is a 3-6 month thing.

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  2. I need a better mix of leftovers in my fridge because I keep grabbing a baked potato on the nights I'm on my own. And I should learn how to meal plan better (and make a bunch of stuff ahead of time). I used to love Siskel and Ebert at the Movies LOL

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    1. Ain't nothing wrong with a baked potato and I really need to do that for lunch sometime. Our meal planning is the best we can do right now. I'd like to figure out how not to have the same thing 2-3 nights in a row early in the week but we haven't cracked that code yet.

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  3. Ugh, why is dinner SO HARD. You're doing amazing, especially considering everything you've got going on. You're reminding me that I want to try those Hodo curry nuggets. I get their burgers and my son really likes them. Hope your week is going well- just one more night till date night, right?

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    1. I went through a really big cooking slump last year. Some weeks my posts were "we had mac n'cheese every night this week, how you doin'?" So far we're getting by with my new work schedule, we'll see how it goes.

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  4. Your curry sauce sounds wonderful. And so easy!! I am going to have to remember that. And mmmm...Mexican take out. Pair with a homemade margarita? Perfect! The only Mexican restaurant in our town is just OK. We may have to venture farther afield to find some good take out.

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    1. Oh no there's nothing worse than "OK" Mexican. I've made margaritas from scratch before but honestly the restaurant does it way better. I'm the biggest fan of takeout margaritas.

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  5. I'm sorry but only 1 egg on that plate? My stomach is growling just looking at it, lol! In all seriousness, your healthy eating diligence is impressive!!!

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    1. I follow a modified see-food diet. I see food, I pretty much eat it as long as my jeans fit.

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  6. We like sausages, potatoes and peas around here every other week :)

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  7. I have to check out those curry nuggets! Don't laugh but since our kids are grown, my husband and I eat different dinners. I am vegetarian and he is most certainly not. It makes things a lot easier over here!

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    1. I'm not laughing one bit...that's totally the future I see for the hubs and me. The kids have grown up a lot and are more accepting of different foods, but we used to have "similar" meals with a slightly different version for the kids.

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