food planning

Recently I was chatting with some friends about how little time I have to cook lately with my crazy study schedule and just life in general getting in the way. I still love to cook (mostly to eat), but I am just not feeling it lately.

But every weekend I try to do some ahead-of-time preparation for the next week or two of cooking and eating and these are definitely strategies I plan to continue using, especially when I move to DC where we will both have real jobs and less time to spend in the kitchen. None of this is earth-shattering, but maybe you’ll learn a fun new tip and maybe you’ll have suggestions for me?

Sharing is caring, folks.

I hate grocery shopping. HATE IT. So I tend to do one “big” shop every other week and occasionally run to the store mid-week to grab something I’m out of or something I’m craving. I tend to plan out 1 or 2 main “dishes” to make that week and put the ingredients on my shopping list. And I always make sure to stock up on some basics for my fridge and pantry:

• Milk (I’m into unsweetened almond milk these days)
• Eggs & egg whites
• Plain yogurt
• Lean protein in the freezer
• Brown rice
• Pasta
• Frozen vegetables (for when you run out of fresh ones!)
• Bread
• Ketchup (necessary)

With the above ingredients, I can always manage to throw together some kind of a meal with the other ingredients I have. Even if it is boring, I make an effort to use the food I have purchased.

As soon as I get home from the grocery store I launch into Crazy Organizer Meredith and my Type A personality really comes out. For example, if I bought chicken breasts, I will open the package, re-package each breast individually, label, and freeze them. I un-bag my produce and put it away in the fruit basket or vegetable drawer. I buy a lot in bulk (dried beans, rice, nuts) and try to keep them organized by transferring them into tupperware or old glass jars that I wash and reuse (pickle jars and pasta sauce jars work best because they’re big!). It takes 10-15 minutes and the organization is totally worth it.

After all the organization of the fridge and pantry, I start some basic prep. If I am planning on a chicken dish, I’ll start to marinade it. I’ll soak some dried beans so I can boil them up later. I’ll hard boil several eggs to keep in the fridge. I’ll throw some rice in my rice cooker to keep on hand during the week.

When it comes to actually cooking, I like to make meals that are easily transported in a lunchbox to school or easily reheated for quick dinners. Some of my favorite dishes to have on hand are turkey burgers, channa masala, pasta salad, grilled chicken to throw in salads, and pizza dough to keep in the freezer.

I tend to make one dish on Saturday or Sunday and then make another, easier one mid-week. Also, remembering to pull things out of the freezer is now a habit for me. I scan it a few times a week. Do I have chili or cooked turkey burgers in there? Pizza dough? I just pull them out in the mornings and by the time dinner rolls around, they’re easily reheated. If you package individual servings before freezing, it makes it much easier to just pull a hunk o’ lasagna out and enjoy it.

Do you do meal planning or do you just fly by the seat of your pants? 

taboule turkey burgers

I love taboule! Anyone else? If you don’t know what it is, it is basically a very herbacious (just made that up) mixture of parsley, garlic, lemon juice, bulgar wheat, tomato, and magic.

Do you spell it “tabouli” or “taboule”? Or even “tabouleh”? I don’t know which to use! I bought my mix in bulk so that is unhelpful as it has neither a name nor instructions on how to prepare it.

Instead of making it to eat as a dip, I opted to make just a little bit of it to mix into some ground turkey. Turkey breast is, let’s face it, kind of flavorless on its own. But something as flavorful as taboule really punched it up.

If you’ve never had taboule/i/eh, I recommend you go to your local Mediterranean restaurant which likely has it on the appetizer menu. It is great with crackers or pita, and I really like to mix a heaping spoonful into my salads to give them extra flavor. You can also buy it in its prepared form or in dried mixes where you simply add some amount of water, olive oil, lemon juice, and diced tomato and mix to make good things happen. The mixes are widely available, check the part of your grocery store with boxed rice dishes and couscous!

Unrelated side note: do not slice your finger open with an apple slicer while these burgers cook. No bueno. But the Dora the Explorer band-aid is a-okay.

Taboule Turkey Burgers (makes 4 or 5 patties)
2 T dried taboule mix
1 T olive oil
1 T water
1/2 cup diced tomato (remove the seeds if you prefer)
1 1/4 lb lean ground turkey breast
1 egg white
salt & pepper to taste
In a small mixing bowl, combine the dried taboule mix with water and olive oil. Allow to sit for a few minutes while the bulgar wheat soaks up the liquid. Dice your tomato and stir it into the taboule mix. It is important to taste this mixture and possibly add salt and pepper — my mix wasn’t very salty so I added a healthy pinch of both salt and pepper! In a large mixing bowl combine the ground turkey breast, egg white, taboule, and (optional) salt and pepper. Mix well but don’t over mix. Divide the mixture into 4 or 5 equal parts and gently form into patties. You can cook them in a pan or bake them (like I did) at 375* for 25 minutes. They will be juicy and perfectly cooked! Remove them from the baking sheet immediately so any excess fat doesn’t re-coagulate on them. Serve on a bun with plenty of ketchup

bbq chicken orzo salad

Hey y’all!

I’m back in Austin after a month on the East Coast, where I visited with family for the holidays and stayed with Rahul in DC for 2 weeks. It was so nice to relax and especially to be with Rahul for so long, but I had to return to Texas eventually. And now we’re in the home stretch of my Master’s degree and it will be May sooner than I know!

While hanging out in DC, I cooked for Rahul but nothing blogworthy. In fact, I made this, this, and this recipe because they’re easy and make for lots of leftovers! I know them by heart. And so should you.

However, now that I am back in my own kitchen and a need to have food on hand to pack lunches, I got to cooking a bit yesterday and made a really simple pasta salad. Have I ever told you how much I love pasta salad? I really, really love pasta salad. And this one is simple, healthy, and contains one of my favorite condiments: barbecue sauce.

Note: this dinner seemed a little beige so I added some broccoli on the side at the last minute. Next time, I’d probably add it to the actual pasta salad, but that is your judgement call.

BBQ Chicken & Orzo Salad (serves 4-5)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup barbecue sauce (of choice), divided
1/2 cup orzo, uncooked
1 1/2 cup corn
1/3 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
1 tsp garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
In a bowl, marinate chicken breasts in 3 T of barbecue sauce for 20-30 minutes. Bake chicken at 375* for 30 minutes or until fully cooked. Using two forks, shred the chicken breasts and set aside in a mixing bowl to cool. Boil and drain the orzo, adding it to the bowl with the shredded chicken. Drain the corn (if using canned corn) and add to mixing bowl. In a small bowl, combine 1 T barbecue sauce with yogurt and garlic powder. If you use Greek yogurt, your mixture will be too thick so you may want to thin it out with a touch of water. Pour the yogurt mixture over the chicken, orzo, and corn and mix thoroughly. Add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate at least 2-3 hours and serve chilled.

a most perfect Thanksgiving

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all!

Tuesday I flew out to DC to spend my Thanksgiving break with Rahul. After several hours stuck in traffic, he finally got to the airport and whisked me away and since then, I’ve been deeply involved in cooking preparations, folding his laundry, and planning our (failed) Black Friday plan of attack.

We had a Living Social deal for Whole Foods and spent way too much money on a Thanksgiving feast for 2 people, but it was so much fun to cook Thanksgiving for him! If you read me regularly, you’ll know that Rahul is from India, so I made several un-PC jokes about pilgrims and Indians.

My Thanksgiving feast last year was for 8 people and very busy so making a simple turkey breast (with this recipe — I definitely recommend it!!) and traditional sides was really enjoyable. And the DC weather was so great that we went for a run pre-cooking and ended up taking our stuff outside for a picnic.

I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving as well! I am currently spending my last couple days in DC soaking up the vacation bliss — semester finals are coming up and I’m trying to not think of them. I’ll be back next week with some kind of food. If I ever find room in my stomach again.

old school tacos

When I was growing up, about once a week we had Taco Night, and it was one of my favorite nights of the week.

My mom would buy a packet of taco seasoning from the grocery store that she mixed with ground beef. My brother and I were in charge of preparing the condiments, so we would pull out all the bowls in the cabinet and fill them with shredded cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. We always had soft taco shells (for my brother, Hunter) and hard taco shells for me!

Now, as an adult, I tend to go to the grocery store and buy random things without meals in mind. As I stared at the ground turkey I had in the refrigerator, visions of Taco Night swam in my head and I knew I had to find a way to make my own taco meat!

Now, in essence, this isn’t a difficult dish and hardly a “recipe”, but simply because it took me straight back to childhood I had to share it with y’all. It was delicious with whole wheat tortillas in tacos and even better the next day as a healthy taco salad!

Taco Night Turkey (serves 4)
1 lb lean (93/7) ground turkey
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 T chili powder
1/2 T cumin
1 tsp garlic
1/2 tsp cayenne (add more or less for spice)
salt & pepper
In a skillet, combine raw turkey and onions over medium heat. Stir occasionally, browning the meat and cooking the onions. When the turkey is almost fully browned, after about 5-7 minutes, stir in the spices, adding salt & pepper to taste. Mix thoroughly and reduce the heat to medium-low, mincing the meat into small crumbles as you stir. When the meat is fully browned, about 10 minutes total after starting, and the spices are uniformly mixed. Serve hot in tacos or cold in a taco salad!

mmmm sammies

Before you get to the food, let me just say: Happy Halloween!! 

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I have a thing about sammies (or, to use the lay term, “sandwiches”). I hate making them at home because they’re always disappointing, but I am almost always craving one. Why is it that Thundercloud makes a better turkey sandwich than I do? And as far as gyros and pitas go, I stink.

Over the weekend I was watching an embarrassing amount of Comedy Central and there were several commercials for a nasty-looking Taco Bell flatbread sandwich thing. And I knew I wanted one. But not from Taco Bell, obviously. I do not wish that intestinal pain on anyone.

But I endeavored to make a delicious sandwich for myself, inspired by the flatbread and inspired by the fish in my freezer that needed eating. I started by cutting Bobby Flay’s Flatbread recipe in half and baking that up. It tasted great, but it was kind of dense. I think my yeast didn’t develop enough.

Then, I thawed the fish and channeled my inner Mediterranean (non-existant) and came up with a super delicious, healthful marinade to bake the fish in and threw together some other ingredients to put on the sandwich.

The result was a super messy yet super yummy sammie that I will be recreating soon!

Tilapia Flatbread Sandwich (serves 2)
2 pieces flatbread (store-bought or homemade)
2 filets tilapia, thawed
2 T tomato sauce
1 T olive oil
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp oregano
2-3 T plain yogurt
1/4 small onion, grated (use a microplane!)
salt & pepper
In a baking dish, season fish with olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard seed, and oregano. Cover fish filets on both sides with spices and spread tomato sauce on top. Bake at 375* for 10 minutes and allow to cool slightly. While fish is cooling, mix together yogurt and grated onion and spread on flatbread. Top the sandwich with any veggies you want (I used some leftover steamed asparagus — awesome). Place fish on top of spread and any veggies and fold the bread over. Enjoy!

something smells fishy

I love fish. I grew up in an area known as “Tidewater” in Virginia, so as you can probably guess there was a lot of seafood. My mother is not particularly fond of the stuff, but I can’t get enough fish! The only problem is the smell. I never cook fish in my apartment simply because of the smell!

But I braved the scent when I was inspired to make a Thai fish dish. I believe this dish is traditionally made with salmon, but I’m a graduate student and it saved me serious money to swap tilapia for salmon! But I think the tilapia was perfect since it flakes so nicely. It made a great texture and really absorbed the flavors.

This dish requires very few ingredients, which I am very into these days. If you haven’t noticed, lately I’ve been making dishes with very minimal ingredients and I’m loving the simplicity of flavors!

If you don’t normally cook with these ingredients, coconut milk and sriracha sauce can easily be found in the Asian section of your grocery store. I bought a small bottle of sriracha since I don’t use it at home a lot!

Red Curry Fish (serves 2-3)
2-3 filets of tilapia or other white fish, depending on size
1 cup light coconut milk
1 clove garlic, minced
1 pinch salt & pepper
1-2 T sriracha sauce (spicy — add to taste!)
1 cup frozen sugar snap peas
In a mixing bowl, combine coconut milk, salt, pepper, garlic, and sriracha sauce. Marinate the fish (defrost it if it was frozen!) for 10-15 minutes in the coconut milk mixture. Heat up a large skillet (cast iron if you have it!) to medium-high heat. Pour in the coconut milk mixture and the sugar snap peas. Watch carefully and turn the heat down to medium when the liquid starts to bubble. Stir gently; the fish will start to turn white and flake off as you stir but you don’t want to break it too much (6-7 minutes). Once all of the fish has gone from translucent to white and the sauce has thickened a little, cut the heat off and let it sit for another minute to thicken. Serve hot with some rice and enjoy!

a hearty fall pasta

A few weeks ago, I discovered that a local farmer is selling his preservative-free, fresh chicken sausage! There are several flavors available, but I opted for the (spicy) Italian sausage variety. After eating one of the links with some peppers and onions, I decided to throw the rest into a pasta salad.

I also had some of my favorite fall produce lying around… butternut squash and asparagus! I roasted the squash with some olive oil and just steamed the asparagus.

Fun fact about that vegetable steamer basket: that is the very same steamer basket I used to pretend was a UFO during bath time as a small child. I was way too cool to handle back in the early 90′s.

After heating the sauce and (pre-cooked) sausage, I tossed it all together for a super hearty, healthy pasta! I ate the leftovers for days and it was still as delicious each time!

Rigatoni with Sausage and Squash (serves 4-6)
3 links Italian chicken sausage (3/4 lb.)
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cut into small chunks
1-2 T olive oil
salt & pepper
20 spears asparagus, cut into thirds
3/4 lb. (dried) rigatoni pasta
1 1/2-2 cups pasta sauce (your favorite variety)
Peel and cut the butternut squash. Place on a baking sheet and coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper, tossing to make sure every piece is covered. Roast for 35-40 minutes in an oven heated to 400*, stirring once halfway through. Remove from oven and put into a large mixing bowl. While the squash is roasting, cut the asparagus and steam it so it retains just a touch of crispness (5-6 minutes). Put the asparagus into the same mixing bowl in which you put the squash. If sausage is uncooked, boil until cooked through. Slice sausage links into bite-sized rounds and put in bowl with asparagus and roasted squash. Cook and drain the pasta, tossing it in with the vegetables and sausage while still hot. Heat up your favorite pasta sauce and pour over the mixture in the bowl, mixing thoroughly. Serve immediately or cool and reheat when ready to serve!

my fall favorites

I suppose it is “fall” now, being that we have had weather consistently in the high 80′s for the past week.

And fall makes me think of comforting foods, prepared lovingly by my family. I was looking through some old pictures and was reminded of these foods.

So here are my 3 favorite fall foods… plus bagels because I just love them so much.

First up: My Aunt Nell’s Classic Apple Pie

Next, we have Hot Virginia Dip. Oh how I long for it…

Now for my Mama’s (Famous) Mac n Cheese (and my most popular recipe ever!)…

And now for the bagels… Oh the bagels!

Feed some friends this weekend! Happy cooking!

my new comfort food

Indian food now, clearly, reminds me of my beloved. One of the first dishes Rahul made for me — which clearly solidified him as Grade A Boyfriend Material — was chicken tikka masala, the national favorite food of Britain and, of course, a staple from his homeland.

I know of the spice packets to choose from at the local Indian grocer where I now go on occasion, but I also know the basics of how to make the dish myself without the pre-measured, perfect spices.

CTM has become my new favorite comfort food and the way I make it isn’t terribly unhealthy! You can easily find the required ingredients and if you don’t want to invest in the jars of the spices, you can find them in the bulk bins at your grocery store. I recommend eating this with a piece of naan and some basmati rice.

Majorly comforting and guilt free. Namaste!

Chicken Tikka Masala (makes 5-6 servings)
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sliced in chunks
1 cup plain non-fat yogurt
1/2 cup water
1-15 oz. can cushed tomato
1/2 small white onion, sliced thinly
1 T vegetable oil
1 T garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
1/2-1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
salt & pepper
Slice the chicken into large chunks, removing any excess skin. Place in a bowl with a pinch of salt and pepper, yogurt, and water, stirring until the chicken is fully coated. Set aside and let marinate for 30 minutes – 1 hour. When the chicken is ready, slice the onions thinly. In a deep wok or Dutch oven (it’s what I use!), heat the vegetable oil and stir in the onions, cooking until slightly tender. Pour in the canned tomato and the spices, stirring well. When everything is mixed, add in the chicken including all yogurt in the bowl. Stir and cover, reducing heat to medium-low. Let the mixture simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to help the dairy in the sauce not break. After simmering for 30 minutes, serve hot over basmati rice. If it is too spicy, top with more plain yogurt and some cilantro if you have it on hand!