I’m always looking for meal inspiration and I thought that you might too. Here’s what we’re eating this week.
First, I made two salads and some pizza bites for the kids’ lunches. The first salad is white rice with tuna, tomatoes and cucumber. I season it with a vinaigrette made of olive oil, red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard. Two of my kids will eat this. Then I made a salad of cooked (duh!) barley, brown rice and lentils mixed with dates, feta cheese and toasted walnuts with vinaigrette. Because of the nuts, only my high school kids will take this to school… scratch this, only my daughter will take this to school. My son doesn’t like packing a lunch: he much prefers packing his allowance to buy sushi at Sobey’s. The pizza bites are a mini pita cut in two (so you have two circles, not two pockets… get it?) with pizza sauce, one slice of pepperoni and cheese, baked in the oven. The elementary school kids eat them cold at lunch. The high school kids would like to but they take the bus before I’ve had time to inhale my coffee. And nothing happens until I’ve inhaled my coffee.
Monday is Meatless Monday. This may come as a surprise to my children reading this blog because I never call it Meatless Monday. I make vegetarian meals on Mondays kids, gotchaaaa! Tonight, we’re having leek and potato soup with black bean quesadilla. We’ll be having the quesadilla with the salsa my mom made with our garden’s tomatoes. YUMMY!! Yeah, and my mom was over at my house this afternoon making the soup too. Aren’t I lucky or what? Hey, I DID buy the ingredients ok?
Tuesday we’re having chicken stew with root vegetables (Squash, potatoes, onions, carrots and others I can’t say in English – panais and navet). Jury is still out on whether or not there will be dumplings. I think that dumplings are the best part of the stew but some of my kids were asking “Why do you always put the bread thingy on top?”… The bread thingy?? Are. You. Kidding??
Wednesday is Shepherds’ Pie. I have this awesome recipe from Bon Appetit… The recipe thought it was breaking new ground by making the pie with stewing beef instead of ground and adding a generous helping of red wine in the meat part. What? Everybody doesn’t put red wine in anything they make with beef and sauce? Everybody hasn’t lived yet apparently.
Thursday is Chinese Fried Rice. Don’t know yet what kind of pork product I will use. I could make it Meatless Thursday but it doesn’t sound nearly as good without the alliteration. Plus, one of my daughters has gymnastics that evening and doesn’t like coming home to a low protein meal after four hours of training. Wonder why… (not really).
Friday is Fish Friday. I could say it’s because we’re Catholics but I’d be lying: fish is not penance for us and I serve it with real-ass French fries from the deep fryer. It’s the highlight of the week. I make French fries on Friday because there are no extra-curricular activities and we can have dessert too. At our house, Friday is the new Sunday.
What about you? Are you cooking anything special this week?
Hey Vero 
Moi ce soir c’est tian de pommes de terre : des pommes de terres coupées en tranches fines, que l’on dispose en couches successives dans un plat en alternant de temps en temps avec une couche de tomate. On assaisonne avec du sel, du poivre, du thym, de l’ail et de l’huile d’olive, et zou ! au four 40 minutes (au moins). C’est super bon.
Sinon, un truc que j’adore c’est la salade fenouil (cru)-concombre-champignon (cru), assaisonée avec une sauce yaourt-moutarde-un filet d’huile d’olive.
Il est 19 heures et je commence à avoir faim…
Hmmm, tian de pommes de terre. Bonne idée! Merci Alice!
Après avoir fait un potage aux légumes l’année dernière, j’ai appris que panais est parsnip. Je n’avais jamais acheté de panais auparavant alors je devais apprendre la traduction pour l’acheter au Sobey’s (après avoir appelée ou amie bilingue pour qu’elle regarde sur Google).