menu plan for the week of 09/16

Full disclosure #1: This image was supposed to be sliced and individually linked to the recipes. However, I could not get it to work correctly and in the interest of not throat punching WordPress, I am just providing the links below. Better luck next time, I suppose. If you are a WordPress expert and have some advice on this feature, don’t be shy. Any and all advice is welcome!

  • The jambalaya recipe will be adapted from the Gumbo Shop Cookbook (pp. 54). And by adapted, I mean I’m too cheap to buy shrimp, so will have extra chicken and sausage to make up for the pound that I’m removing. This will make enough leftovers for at least one, if not two, days worth of lunches. I found the roasted okra recipe on Pinterest and this will be the first time I try it. Embarrassingly enough (or awesomely, depending on the way you look at it), one of the big factors in me deciding to go to school in Oklahoma was my love for southern cooking, specifically fried okra. I could eat a Luby’s out of business, y’all (I am going to make the best senior citizen ever!). Of course, when you’re eating healthier, you have to try lightened versions of things, so here’s hoping it’s good.
  • The cheeseburger wraps are actually lower cal than regular hamburgers, so we’re going to try those. We’ll be adding pickles, red onion and lettuce (well, I will. Nick will just be adding pickles to his). The carrot fries come from a Martha Stewart recipe that calls for carrots and parsnips, but the store was out of parsnips, so it looks like it will just be carrot fries.
  • The asian-style pork belly is a little labor intensive, but so worth it. I make a quinoa salad with quinoa, mango, black beans, red onion, mint and a lime juice-grapeseed oil dressing that is light and bright and will pair well with the heavy, fatty pork belly. I’ll post the recipe for the quinoa salad soon.
  • Nick has been talking about making a souffle for a while, and this Wednesday is our lucky night. Souffles intimidate me a bit, so I’m glad he’s going to make our first one. I’m even more excited about the fact that it’s a bacon and cheese souffle. Oh, yeah.
  • We were going to try to eat lighter this week, but the pork belly and this carbonara may defeat the purpose. It was going to be our cheat meal for the week, but it looks like we won’t be eating light enough this week to consider this a cheat meal. It will pretty much just be a meal. That said, I’m going to serve it with salad, so that makes it healthier, right? The only swap out I’m having to make is regular ‘bellos for the called for baby ‘bellos, which should be fine.
  • I’m super excited for the tilapia burgers. They’re topped with a watermelon salsa and avocado, which should pair nicely with a cool avocado soup. I may end up adding feta to the watermelon salsa. Yum! We have a kickball game Friday night, so hopefully these burgers will fuel our charge to victory!
  • The last (and only) time I tried to make Chinese food here it was an unmitigated disaster. I attempted to make salt & pepper squid, but the squid was too fishy and the coating turned into a gelatinous mess. Hopefully the Panda Express copycat orange chicken will turn out better.

So I’ve got to know, what are you having this week?

much love, Cayley


Posted by in Th(is) Prep Work