Weekly Eats: Busy Busy Busy

A weekly roundup: eats, watches, and reads.  This week was my busy week at work, so I spent a lot of time in our upstairs office doing #thuglife accounting things while my family somehow survived.

 

Breakfasts 

Obligatory Saturday air fryer French toast shown above.

 

Lunches

A happy repeat of last week's lunch with more veggies.  From bottom to top that's rice, roasted sweet potatoes, cole slaw mix, chick peas, cucumber, garden fresh tomato, kalamata olives, feta, and an olive oil/red wine vinegar dressing.

Dinners

All of the leftovers!  The adults had a few meals of chili mac and the kids leaned more toward the side of leftover pizza and chicken from last weekend's party.  When the leftover well went dry we selflessly supported the takeout industry with Chipotle and the drive in hamburger place.

By Saturday I was ready to resume my family responsibilities, by which I mean I bought a flat iron steak and had my husband grill it up.  I was craving a baked sweet potato, so I scratched that itch.  For my family I found mashed potatoes and rice in the freezer so everyone got to have their side of choice.

On Sunday I turned my thoughts toward meal planning.  We're in the same bind that we've always been in, even without the commute my work day tends to go on longer than my husband's and the kids' extracurricular activities have started back up again but earlier because everything is virtual.  We're always in a time crunch for dinner.  How do I get dinner to magically appear on the table at dinner time and where to make the compromise on what four different taste palates want to eat?

I decided to throw back to my single girl days and put in some Sunday kitchen hours to make a few meals that I wanted to eat and that I was reasonably sure that the kids would be into (we're in meatless territory which isn't the hub's favorite but I'm sure he will survive and/or has a stash of chicken in the freezer that he can cook up in case of emergency).  I can't tell exactly how many dinners that we will get out of the deal but I think we're set for the next few days and the leftovers are freezer friendly.  Our Sunday dinner was my beloved spinach artichoke pasta, which I ate as a complete meal but everyone else had as a side with a piece of Costco's panko chicken.  I'll reveal our other dinner next week.

Stepson #2 put in a kitchen hour himself and made us a batch of brownies for dessert.  So Sunday dinner was a huge success for everyone and I have a good feeling about next week.

Watching

On my own...flapperpalooza!  Our Dancing Daughters and Our Modern Maidens are cute movies to look out for on TCM or (if you're like me and don't have cable) rent from Amazon for a few bucks.  Once you've seen them you're kind of obligated to watch Our Blushing Brides even though in my mind it's the where "fun Joan Crawford" ends and "no wire hangers Joan Crawford" begins.

 

With the fam:

The Producers!  The kids wanted nothing to do with this at first but soon got sucked in.  And then they had a lot of questions for me about creative accounting.

Our second undertaking was Lawrence of Arabia, which we watched up to the intermission and will finish up next week because all 3 hours and 48 minutes in one go is a bit of a slog.  The kids bought into this one right away.  Full disclosure that this falls into the category of "movies that I enjoy watching with my family but would not be into on my own".

Reading

Finished The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and if you haven't read this yet I don't know what you're doing with your life.  Nah, I totally know what you're doing with your life, sometimes when "everyone" is reading something I get tired of being told that I "have to" read it as well.  But I feel pretty confident in recommending this one.

Currently reading something in a similar vein: Passing by Nella Larson.