Weekly Eats: Valentine's Day and More Instant Pot Adventures

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  Valentine's Day is a hit or miss holiday for us, some years we play it up and some years it barely registers.



This was our Valentine's Day last year, it was just a coincidence that our only free weekend that winter fell on Valentine's Day.

And this was our Valentine's Day this year:

A big storm came in on Wednesday, and the roads to work were iffy, so we stayed home for the rest of the week.  On Friday we both pared our workloads down to the essentials and got some Staycation time.  I got flowers and the other lady of the house got an extra W-A-L-K and doggie ice cream.  In return I made a romantic dinner and stepdog kept us safe from invading squirrels and Amazon delivery trucks.  And though a long weekend at an adults only all inclusive is nice, there's a lot to be said for staycating with your valentine.

Breakfasts
See any previous week, waffles from my valentine on Saturday.

Lunches
Chowed down on Skinny Taste's Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken, which was the first thing I made in our new instant pot (I used frozen chicken and cooked it for 25 minutes on manual high pressure).

Dinners
Monday and Tuesday (family meals): all the leftovers!  Meatloaf and twice baked potatoes.

Wednesday (date night): we had a big storm coming in, so I picked up ingredients for baked ziti and streak for Valentine's Day.   Hubs and I figured that it would be better to have steak on Wednesday since it was more pleasant grilling weather.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): I paired leftover mashed potatoes with a chicken sausage and peas.

Friday and Saturday (date nights, Valentine's Day Edition): single digit temps, hot pasta inside wtih baked ziti.

Sunday (family meal): I did my long run on Sunday instead of Saturday and I was wiped and we had places to be, so we needed a quick dinner.  Hubs suggested a chicken and rice deal and I wanted to test the instant pot's rice cooking feature so I threw everything in there.  White rice takes 5 minutes in the instant pot BUT that doesn't include pressurizing time, so it ended up being a 15 minute meal as promised.

P.S. this was hub's idea and I wasn't sure if I would be into it let alone that the kids would be into it...well, surprises all around b/c everyone chowed down.

Meal Prep
A brand new batch of breakfast burritos and I since I had the instant pot out anyway, I made up a wild rice pilaf for lunches.  This recipe used the pot's sautee function and I thought it was interesting that the pot pressurized up really quickly, not sure if it was a fluke or if having the pot up to temperature makes it faster, so stand by while further experiments are conducted.

Watching

• Treadmill TV: finished the latest season of Call the Midwife on Netflix and I want another season stat.
• Couch Solo TV: A Few Good Men (first time seeing it, I recently heard Demi Moore's book on Audible)
• Family TV: Wayne's World!  What can I say, it's held up.  Unfortunately it kind of bombed with the younger members of the family.  Kids these days.

Reading
Finished Ask Again Yes, thumbs up there.  Started Long Bright River.