Menu-Plan Monday -Yummies

Happy first week of August! I can't believe we're almost back to school so I am back to my monthly menu rotations for now. 

Before I get to the menu, however, there's this. Because it is 1 million degrees outside, I am dying to bake these days. Of course that's completely impractical but there it is. Today I am making a treat so decadant that I decided I could only make them if I gave half of them away, pretty much immediately. Yup. I'm making Kouign Amann.  The Blitz smelled the dough rising from 2 rooms away and came out with the timer to do a couple of the roll-outs. He has a touch for baking. 

I first fell in love with these during COVID from Great British Bake-Off and

they have occupied my imagination ever since. If you don't want to spend the half-day it takes to make them and you are lucky enough to live in Lafayette, Louisiana--which I am not--they sometimes sell them at Poupart Bakery. Get there early though because I was about 5th in line and got the last one. Seriously. I'll let you know how they'll turn out, but they're going to turn out amazing, I promise. 

So that's what I'm up, plus getting dinner plans ready for the week. Paul and I prepped this menu last night--it only took a cool 30 minutes--and now I am ready to whip through these meals all week.
Sunday's meal is a bit of celebration. I'm down 2 pounds this week so I bought the "good" steak. I'm within 15 pounds of my goal and almost back to my 1994 weight. What???  I'm going back in time! 

Oh and the Kouign Amann turned out perfectly. 

If you try any of these plans, please let me know your thoughts!

Sunday – Steak Mashed Potatoes Roasted carrots, Pan sauce (mushrooms, apple and red wine in pan sauce (butter thickened).  
I will use a cold sear method for the steak. I don’t have a recipe but I have notes.*

Meatless monday - Hello Fresh Mushroom spaghetti carbonara - 13 WW Points and worth every one. Easy and delicious. 

I will serve this with a bagged salad.

Tex-Mex Tuesday - Calorie-Wise Cheese Enchiladas (Quick) - 5 points each

Cucumber/Watermelon Salad: 1 point each.

• 3 cups cubed seeded watermelon

• 2 cups cubed English cucumber

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1-½  teaspoon white sugar (Optional)

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

• Splash of olive oil

• ½ teaspoon dijon mustard (helps emulsify)

Place the first 2 ingredients in a large bowl
Whisk together remaining ingredients in a small bowl;

Add about half the dressing to the salad; serve remainder on the side. 

Pasta Thursday- Asian Sesame Noodles (WW) - 5 pts.,

Brined and sauteed chicken breast (0 pts without skin),

Salted edamame in pods.

Fishy Friday - Lan Lam’s Double glazed salmon (2 points),

Roasted, diced potatoes (try this one - 3 points),

Green peas. 

Quick note on roasted potatoes: I use the formula from “Modern Proper” linked above, but halve the olive oil and skip the butter for 2 pt. Potatoes.

Saturday - Home-ground burgers** (see below for instructions - calculate points) , potato buns - 4 pts., garnishes,
Green salad, choice of dressing Chips for the kids

------------------------------------------------------------------

**Home ground burgers

Take a little over a pound of lean sirloin for 4 servings.
Trim off all visible fat - do not discard!
Weigh the fat and note the weight.

Quick Fat Weight Point Guide

• 0.25 oz of fat: 3 points

• 0.50 oz of fat: 6 points

• 0.75 oz of fat: 8 points

1.00 oz of fat: 11 points

Use the table above to calculate the points per serving.
Chop the fat and steak into 2-3  inch pieces.
Place all in food processor. Do about 3-10 second pulses.
You want the meat to be between ¼ and ½ inch chop.

Gently form into patties. Don’t over handle!
Cook as usual. (Grill, broil, pan-saute)
—--------------------------------------------------------------------

*Cold Sear method for steaks:

Pat dry
Pepper
(no salt yet -- or salt 45 minutes to 1 day ahead. Not right before cooking.)

Cold pan. No oil.

Heat on high (drive off surface water).
2 minutes flip (not brown yet, will layer)
Same other side 

Reduce heat to gentle sizzle.
Medium ish
No smoking, no splattering. 

Flip every 2 minutes approx.
(depending on steak; may be done after 4, 4, 8 minutes. Keep checking temp.)

Med rare - 125°
Rest 5 minutes

------------------------------

On the horizon for next week, something with Coconut Rice. 

Meal-Plan Monday

 Happy Monday!

First, a little recap. After trying and analyzing three meal-prep services, I posted our family's ratings. Then, we decided to try pre-prepping these meals ourselves, the same way the services do it. 

I'm excited to report that the plan worked out, and we now have 6 healthy, tasty, waistline-friendly prepped meals in the refrigerator ready to roll. Okay, 1 is not all of those things, but it is yummy!. It's our

Sunday meal. It took an hour to prep all these, including mixing the sauces and seasoning, as well as measuring whatever needs to be measured. Why, you ask, didn't we just measure them when we cooked them?  The answer is twofold: first, economy of scale. Everything was already out, right there, including the measuring implements. Paul and I worked together; it definitly would have taken longer by myself, probably another 20 minutes to half-hour. 

As I cook each meal, I will go in and update the actual cooking time. This is not something I normally record on my own recipes, but I will start doing so. 

Our main dishes for this week are: 

Easy Chana Masala with brown rice (9 pts. including rice)
35 minutes for rice; 15 for the rest. 

Healthy Kung Pao Chicken  with brown rice and broccoli (6 WW points per serving for the chicken, 3 for the rice). This took a cool 35 minutes to cook but only 20 active minutes. 

Millionaire Spaghetti, Lightened up, with Ceasar Salad (bag from store) - 9 points for the main dish.  I will halve this next time; nine servings is too many for us!  30 minutes prep, 30 cook. 

Fun Friday Fish Tacos, with cabbage slaw (7 pts. for 4) and Home Chef's Mexican Street Salad (it's corn). 

Sweet Soy-Honey Chicken (Hello Fresh Recipe) 8 pts  - with jasmine rice (3 WW pts) and green beans.  20 minutes to cook. 
I halved the sauce for this recipe. It makes tons and we don't want to spend the points on it!  If you don't halve it it's 2 more points. 

We made something else. I can't remember what it is but I know we put 6 together. Whatever it is, we're eating in on Saturday!

Let me know if you cook any of these and what you think about it!

Making my Own Meal Prep Service!

 As I mentioned recently, after trying 3 different meal delivery services, I still wasn’t completely happy. You can read more about that in this blog post; the crux of it is in this paragraph: 

My goal as a home cook: Cook delicious, healthy food that doesn’t taste “healthy.” I want meals that appeal to the senses, including looking pretty. As a self-trained home cook, plating is a learning curve for me. As far as macro nutrients go, for my family we strive for high protein, high fiber and “regular” sized servings of carbs. 

I started thinking about how I could cook our “regular” food with the convenience and sumptuousness of the delivery services. I already use curbside for my groceries; I haven’t been inside the grocery store in 3 months. Here was my brainstorm:  I struck a deal with my hubby (Paul.) On Saturday we will pick up all the food for the week (which will be 6 meals) and he will help me sort and pre-prep it on Saturday evening.

Know that I'm coming to you as a former "once-a-month-cooking expert." I don't do that now mostly because the food that I was able to serve back then with 5 growing children is not the same as what's needed in a house with 4 adults. In other words, I know how to prep meals and prepare ahead of time to cook, so Paul was pretty surprised when I asked/volun-told him that his help was essential. He's a good sport though, and agreed without complaint.

I then set out to plan a week of waistline-friendly–in my case, Weight Watchers friendly– but still delicious meals. I followed the usual pattern of meals: Meatless Monday, Taco–TexMex–Tuesday, eat-out Wednesday, Pasta Thursday, Fish Friday, and then whatever strikes my fancy on Saturday and Sunday. Sundays are usually kept pretty simple as I am often making lunches for the work week on Sundays. (If you want to know more about why I follow a pattern, read this post.)

I thought about what supplies I would need to make this all come together. I ordered some disposable portion cups in ¼ and ½ cup size and jumbo zip locks to make storage easier (plus the huge zip locks can be reused). It occurred to me that I will have to empty the fridge a bit to make room for SIX meals when
we’ve only been storing  3 pre-packaged kits. Depending on the week, I may have to freeze some of the meat to keep it fresh enough. That’s fine. 

I ordered only the groceries for those specific meals–not our staples, milk, bread, etc.-- so I can more fairly compare the price. The grocery bill was $132 for 6 meals including main dish and side veggies. I bought the brands (mostly name brand) I would normally buy and didn’t look at the total until I placed the curbside order. For this week, at least, it is about half the cost of the services since we got twice as many meals out of it.

Looking back at my review of the meal service recipes, there are two main components I wanted to incorporate: sauces and seasonings.  A big part of the convenience is in the seasonings. The seasonings are already mixed for you and you don’t have to have a bunch of individual ingredients, or dig them out of your pantry and measure them. I have noticed that if the mix is “taco seasoning,” without a label, it will taste EXACTLY like most people think taco seasoning should taste. That’s what makes this all easier than it seems. 

Ditto for the sauces; most of them are put together with some sort of “base,” like chicken base, water and some sort of creamy addition, either actual cream or sour cream. For that reason, I decided to add a few mixes and bases to my pantry. These things are expensive on the surface because they contain multiple applications so they are not included in my grocery bill for next week. 

Things I added to the pantry. 

Here’s what I purchased and I am keeping them all together in a plastic basket (For the pantry staples). I have decided to make a designated area of the fridge for the refrigerated items I will be using for seasonings and sauces so I can easily grab whatever I need. Most of these brands are the exact brands I received in packets from the meal service companies so I feel pretty confident in my ability to put those amazing sauces together. The 

Spiceology Smoky Honey Habanero Seasoning

 is fire (ha,ha.). Well worth the price. 

There are a few other things I know I will use that are already in my stock ingredients:

Refrigerator go-tos. 

Pantry Staples

Freezer Must-Haves

Okay. That's the plan. On Meal-Plan Monday, I'll post the story of how it worked out!

Memorial Day Eats and a quick Catch Up

Memorial Day Eats and a Quick Catch Up

I haven't posted in over 2 years! Wow! Shortly after my last post, Mom got sick and by July, she was gone. I have been thinking about her so much the last couple of days because my parents ALWAYS cooked something special for Memorial Day and I hardly ever have. I've only stepped it up since my folks moved down here in 2019.

So . . . last week I did a LOT of celebrating -- my graduation with my M.Ed, the kids finishing school, and today, Tink turned 18. So even though I wanted special food for Memorial Day, I needed it Weight Watchers friendly.

Did I mention I've lost 50 pounds in the past 12 months?  Yup. Still losing; I have about 20 to go. So here is my kind of crazy WW-friendly Menu for Memorial day. 9 Points total !! 

• Almost BBQ Chicken  - this one is the long game, start w/ sous vide, dry and cool, then end with air fryer - 1 point if you remove the skin before eating. 
•     WW's Easy Pasta Salad (on app) (4 points)  I add celery for zero points. 
•     WW's Air Fryer Corn Ribs (on app) (2 points) 
•     2 Point Strawberry Dream Cups - adapted from a Facebook post - super simple 

       PREP: 

1. Place muffin cups into cupcake pan - silicone are amazing 
2. Crush up 1/2 (2 rectangles) of Chocolate Graham cracker
3. Put graham crackers into muffin cups 
4. Make 1 recipe of Dream Whip
   
5. Mix 1 - .03 oz. packet of Sugar-Free Strawberry Jello into the Dream Whip
6. Cut up as many fresh strawberries as you like
7. Add to the Dream Whip
8. Fill muffin cups
9. Enjoy!

   This whole meal is only 9 points, provided you take the skin off whatever chicken you eat! I leave the skin on for cooking as it makes it so much moister and more flavorful. My family really loves the beautiful crispy BBQ skin so . . . it's worth the little bit of extra work and time. It's still MUCH easier than actually grilling it!

It was SO delicious that I decided I could re-run the whole menu for Independence Day.  Maybe with a green salad and some blueberries added to the dessert. 

Of course, you grillers could actually grill instead of air fry, but you know me -- I love cooking in the A/C!

No pics this time. We gobbled it up so quickly. 

We Compared 3 Popular Meal Delivery Services

 

We Compared 3 Popular Meal Delivery Services

Here's what we loved. . . and did not love

I'm a working mom and currently, a student. I need to put fast, delicious meals on the table most days of the week. That's what led us to try meal delivery services.

My family tried 3 of the 5 best known meal preparation services and here is our experience. To summarize in case you don't want to read the whole chart, they were all easy to prepare but Home Chef was more difficult to read or follow. The freshest food was from Hello Fresh. The best tasting meat was from Blue Apron. The least amount of veggies was in Home Chef and it was also the least flavorful. They all had way too many carbs. Bottom line, if I was choosing today, it would be Hello Fresh, although Blue Apron was a close second. (Chart at the end of the post).

When we returned from our vacation, between Home Chef and Blue Apron trials, we had a week of cooking the “usual” way. This made me happy as our weight needed to recover a bit from overeating on vacation. Following that vacation, we had 2 weeks of Blue Apron. 

It's probably important to mention here that I am currently a member of Weight Watchers and I've had great success in the past year - 50 lbs. down. I normally serve published portions of carbs to my family – 1 cup of pasta, half a cup of rice, etc. All three meal services serve 2 to 3 times that. amount. I’ll say this, you are never hungry afterward. I can only eat a half-serving of these meals. I also serve higher fiber when possible; it’s so good for your heart. That’s why the Blue Apron trial lasted only 2 weeks.

Here’s the thing. With the exception, in my opinion, of Home Chef, these meals are DELICIOUS. The reason they are so good: excellent seasoning and sauces plus full fat ingredients adds up to yummy. My buddy CHAT GPT made you this graphic:

It’s not just the convenience that sells people on these services, although they are  VERY convenient. The simple instructions, the sauces made with 2 or 3 prepackaged (delicious) ingredients, and the full flavor you get with all of those plus fat is what sells. Suddenly, a homemade meal literally tastes and looks like a restaurant meal. All 3 tell you how to present the meal because we “eat with our eyes” first. Plus, most of the meals can be put together in the time it takes to drive to a restaurant and be seated. Arguably, the cost is also lower than a restaurant meal. So, what to do? 

My goal as a home cook: Cook delicious, healthy food that doesn’t taste “healthy.” I want meals that appeal to the senses, including looking pretty. As a self-trained home cook, this is a learning curve for me. As far as macro nutrients go, for my family we strive for high protein, high fiber and “regular” carbs.

The first night of the 2nd week of Blue Apron, I came up with a plan that gives us everything we want, with only a little more work on my part. That’s fodder for the next installment!

Category/Numerical	Hello Fresh (HF)	Home Chef	Blue Apron.
Weeks Tried and why - 3 meals per week on average	We started here so we ran a 12 week trial because it was all pretty good - 38 meals	We did a 3 week trial for fairness but would not have renewed - 9 meals	2 week trial  - it was fine but  . . . well, read the blog post!
Average Cost for us including shipping. All were 4 servings, 3 meals a week.	$150/week  - included 0.5 “premium” meals per week. 3 meals plus a 2 serving snack or dessert.	$140/week  Inc. 2 premium meals in the 3 week trial; 3 meals per week.	$139; I bought these al a carte so no extras but 1.5 premiums per week.
Taste	Very good! There were a few things not preferred for personal preference but excellent seasonings and sauces	It was just ‘lacking” in some way. Not bad, by any stretch, just nothing amazing. The sauces were just okay. Seasonings fine. Teens asked me to go back to HF.	It was delicious and simple. Very similar to Hello Fresh.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	4.75	3.5	4.9
Freshness of Ingredients	The ingredients were fresh 90% of the time. I had one small package of herbs I’d consider “past it’s prime" but it was still useable.	We had some issues here. In our 12 meals, 3 had spoiling produce; 2 of those could be salvaged.	We had 2 issues.The veg tends to be a little “on the edge.” For our first box we cooked all 3 recipes in 4 days and yet 2 meals still  had “gone” produce.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	4.9	4	3
Durability (could it still be cooked safely on the 7th day after delivery)	I cooked 11 meals on the 7th day. All were perfect.	Major downside: has to be cooked by the 4th day, so you have to cook them all day after day and then figure the rest of the week.	They don’t state how fast you need to cook it, but I’d be surprised if it held up past 5 days. It’s just not as fresh, which might be due to the produce being more prepped, so it’s a tradeoff.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	5	1	4
Quality of ingredients Quantified by an average of 3 MAJOR ingredients in each meal and then one point for the minor ingredients. So each meal could have a max score of 20.	My only “beef” with HF is the beef. The steak items have a “livery” taste about half the time. The burger is great. No one else in my family tasted this. You may not notice! I just order my steak from the grocery store instead.	The ingredient quality was fine. I already addressed produce in freshness. Packaging impacted my rating here; many ingredients were pre-sliced or prechopped which speeds prep but impacts quality.	The beef is fine - delicious in fact. That gives Blue Apron a leg up on Hello Fresh. Aside from freshness, the ingredients were great and their seasonings were SO good.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	4	3.25	5
Ease of Preparation	Each meal is packaged separately which speeds up prep. You do need some chopping skills unless you opt for the “low lift” in which more ingredients are “pre-prepped”	Very fast prep due to many pre-prepped ingredients. Meals are packaged separately. You won’t learn anything here if you are hoping to improve your skill in the kitchen.	Very similar to HF. You have to chop the veg about half the time. That’s fine. It was really very simple; a novice cook could do it well.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	4.5	5	5
Recipes	All recipes have very clear step-by-step instructions. A novice teen cook was able to prepare them with no adult support. The timings are fairly accurate. Includes a clear color picture of plating.	The recipe cards were a little hard to read at first and I did not always agree with the order of preparation. The sauces were combined in bowls but not “cooked” so lacked depth.	Well laid out, logical, easy to read. Very similar to HF. Nice photos. I was never once confused.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	5	4	5
Nutrition	¾ of recipes contain at least a cup of veggies; many contain more. Full nutritional information is supplied. Offers calorie conscious, vegetarian  and high protein options plus many more options. That said, although lower in calories, they still often have high carbs so read the macros if carbs, fiber and protein are important to you, so you know what you’re into.	½ of recipes contain at least a cup of veggies; some contain more. Full nutritional information is supplied. I liked their method of filtering by category better than HFs.	¾ of recipes contain at least a cup of veggies; many contain more. Full nutritional information is supplied. Offers calorie conscious, vegetarian  and high protein options plus other choices. I  have the same concerns as HF. While delicious, they tend to be very high calorie and even lower calorie choices tend to be high in carbs.
0 to 5 (worst/perfect)	4	4	4
Averaged Score	4.6	3.5	4.4