Weekly Eats: Zoup's On!

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  This week I was on the verge of having our dinners planned out and tried out a new soup recipe.

Breakfasts 

Nothing new to see here.

Lunches

I made do with what I had.  I finished off my stash of veggie burritos and desperately need to make more.  I made a concoction of roasted sweet potatoes and eggs to get through the week.

 

On Sunday I stepped it up and made a batch of fried rice for lunches next week, very loosely based on Gimme Some Oven and very largely based on what I had in the house.  It's hard to see but there really is rice under the eggs and wonton strips.

 

Dinners

Monday: leftover pasta

 

Tuesday: look at me being all organized and planning ahead!  White BBQ grilled chicken, though I had my husband do the grilling (because he likes doing it and I don't particularly).

Wednesday: right now Wednesday is a designated "fend for yourself" night.  Hubs had a tuna sandwich, I had brinner, and the boys had dinner with their mom.

Thursday: grilled cheese and soup.

Friday: pizza night!  It used to be that the kids would only eat cheese pizza and hubs would only eat pepperoni pizza.  Now hubs and stepson #2 are team pepperoni and stepson #1 and I are team "white sauce and veggies".

Saturday: burger night!  The spooky guy sitting behind my plate is a Rogue's Dead Guy Ale, which we haven't had in a while.  Hubs pointed out that it was seasonally appropriate for Halloween.

Sunday: Something new!  I've been craving soup and I thought there was a decent chance that Gimme Some Oven's Zouppa Toscana would go over well with the fam.  Unfortunately the boys now have a Sunday night time event (in addition to their Monday and Tuesday events) and I misunderstood what time they needed to leave, so dinner wasn't ready in time.  And frickin' Instant Pot is not instant...that thing takes forever to come up to pressure so that was another delay in the process.  But I think that it's the way to go for a potato based soup since it's pretty much guaranteed that the potatoes will get cooked through.  

I had a delicious bowl of soup by myself, and the "warm" setting on the Insta kept everything ready for the menfolk when they got home.  I also got a humongous loaf of French bread to go with it and our very hungry caterpillars put a serious dent in it.

The only changes that I made were using half and half instead of cream (cream is great if you whip it and put it on a pie, but honestly I find it a bit heavy in anything else) and spinach instead of kale.  It seemed a little bland at first but with each bite I craved more.  For something with sausage and bacon it was surprisingly light.  Which was fine for me but a drawback for everyone else, since they all needed snacks after dinner (though I don't think anyone minded that much).

Watching

Still in a dry spell for TV.

Reading

Still reading a few chapters of Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones each night, still liking it very much and in no hurry to finish.