Weekly Eats: Getting By

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  Believe it or not, I don't have much to say about food this week.  We got by.



Breakfasts
See any previous week

Lunches
Our office refrigerator broke down last week so I rolled with it and just ate lunch at work.  My company provides free catered lunches, and for the most part it's good food.  I don't think I've ever talked about why I (usually) pack my own lunch so let's do that now:

• For the most part, my homemade lunches keep me satisfied.  
• When I pick and choose from the catering lineup, I often end up eating more.
• I can tell the catered food has a lot more salt/fat/etc and I don't necessarily feel great after eating it.
• Not to be a brat, but I don't always feel like eating what work catering has on the menu.

With that said, it's great thing to have free lunch as a backup.

Dinners
Monday and Tuesday (family meals): leftover tacos

Wednesday (date night): I took it easy on myself and ending up making both of us very happy.  Grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, broccoli, and Dove Valentine's Day chocolates for dessert.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): he finished the leftover mashed potatoes and chicken, I had snacks.

Friday (date night): out on the town, we got Chinese

Saturday (date night #3) hey I do cook after all.  Shepherd's Pie.  It's a hybrid of my recipe and Gimme Some Oven.

Sunday (family meal): people who are cool enough to appreciate Shepherd's Pie had leftovers/the kids had Costco chicken skewers, veg, and rice.

Meal Prep
I went outside of my comfort zone: Well Plated's Crockpot Stuffed Peppers.  The filling is TexMex spiced ground chicken and black beans, which is all good stuff, but the thing that's outside of my comfort zone is quinoa.

Now you may have heard that quinoa is just supposed to be the greatest thing ever, but I have a touchy history with it.  It's something that I just never seem to get around to making in the first place, and when I do cook it, I feel like I always end up under cooking it.  And finally, I tried a Trader Joe's frozen quinoa veggie mix last year and it made my stomach hurt, so quinoa just isn't at the top of my food choice list.  But Erin's recipes are always good so if I was going to give quinoa another shot, it was going to be in one of her recipes.

I followed the recipe to the letter EXCEPT there is no way that six bell peppers will fit into my crock pot, so I just made three and froze the excess filling.

Verdict: yum, although I am sad to say that my stomach hurts a little bit and google tells me that's a real thing with quinoa for some people.  I'll see how I do with the leftovers but I would certainly make this again with rice.

Watching
From the treadmill: finished season 3 of Suits and switched over to the latest season of Call the Midwife on Netflix.  It's like catching up with an old friend.

From the couch: finished season 4 of Line of Duty and I'm so happy that there's at least one more season out there.  TBD if I'll be good and wait for it to come to Hulu or if I'll buy it.

Family viewing: we had a rite of passage last night with This is Spinal Tap.  The boys have been hearing for years about the band with the drummer that spontaneously combusted (spoiler?) and they finally got to see it.  I can't say which was better, the movie or their reaction to it.

Reading
Finished an old favorite, A Meddler and her Murder by Joyce Porter.  Now reading Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane.  I learned about this book from this Bev Cooks post, and if it's making the same list as And Then She Was Gone and The Great Alone you bet I'm checking it out.