Word or the week – Instagram dinners and other oddities
Despite the best-laid plans, our kids’ schools decided to change from in-person to virtual. They kindly updated us, parents, Sunday afternoon, stating that Monday would be a superintendent day. Basically no school.
During Monday, the school discussed the availability of teachers due to the fecking Omicron and the “safety” of the kids and decided to switch to full virtual.
Welcome to 2022! Not the best of starts to the new year for the kids. I hate when their education is jeopardized, but let’s be optimistic and hope that virtual school is just one week.
Winter is coming
Unfortunately, we did not get a white Christmas. We had some dusting on the 24th of December, but it quickly melted and left us with a vet and slippery landing for Santa.
This quickly changed during the week, when Mother Nature flicked her fingers and dialed the knob over to snow. Approx. 5-6 inches of snow arrived early Friday morning, meaning I had to warm up the beast and plow our lengthy driveway.
We should’ve known that the area we live in get large quantities of snow every winter, as the previous owner left his snowblower in the garage. He moved to Florida and felt the snowblower was not needed unless he could fight off alligators with it.
Despite being a virtual school all week, the school used one of the snow days for the kids. As a result, their first week of school was only three days.
Back to School … again
This week’s theme and inspiration come from Instagram. Some sources may be rather dubiously skilled home chefs like me, but they do offer some excellent options.
The beauty about cooking is that you can tweak each recipe to suit your personal skill, flavors, and cooking styles.
While each recipe I use comes with clear instructions, I always make modifications.
Instead of heavy cream, I often use coconut cream or 1/4 cup of butter mixed with 3/4 cup of milk. For some reason, the latter can be friendlier on some people’s digestive system, and perhaps not as fattening as heavy cream.
The meals have a nice mix of meat, vegetables, complexity, and delicious flavors. I’m convinced my kids are impressing their classmates with the variety of school lunches.
Fire up the Traeger. Ready your Dutch oven. Go shopping, and let’s start cooking—another Sunday in the Kitchen with music on the magical Demerbox and wonderful aromas filling the room.
| Weekday | Snacks n’ Breakfasts | Lunch | Dinner |
| Monday | Yogurts | Vietnamese steak sandwich | Hot n’ Sexy Chicken in creamy coconut sauce with cauliflower rice |
| Tuesday | Egg sandwich | Hippie Dippie salad bowl | Fish Taco Tuesday; tilapia, sliced cabbage, and hot sauces |
| Wednesday | Overnight oats | Philly cheesesteak sandwich | Garlic steak bites, mixed with hot sausages and potatoes, with curry aioli |
| Thursday | Cereal | Grilled chicken Caesar salad with homemade dressing | Creamy spaghetti with chicken, sundried tomatoes, and mushrooms |
| Friday | Yogurts | Dumplings with soy dip | Louisiana shrimp and corn chowder |
One day, I might get so organized that I will link the meals below to my recipes. We can only live in hope!
Have a fantastic week, my friends. I hope you enjoy these meal plans. It is so much easier to make food in advance, although you need to invest several hours during the weekend to prepare the meals.
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