The Dinner Edit: Completely Unhelpful Meal Planning Edition (Week of 5/26/25)

Hello I'm drinking milk thistle herbal tea <3

Hello from the dad gum breast pump happy hour. I’ll go ahead and call it the most abysmal piece of equipment this side of the industrial revolution but what are we going to do about that except deal with it.

I apologize I haven’t written sooner. You know, three children and all that jazz.

Meal planning lately has been extremely off the cuff so I’m not exactly here to help you.

Heavens, we had people over Sunday, and as they ARRIVED at our house, I was still deciding the menu. Live! With guests in the kitchen! Granted, I did feel slightly like my hair was on fire, so don’t think I’ll be taking this same approach again. But we did end up with some honey chipotle grilled chicken, potato casserole (which, tangent, I put the potatoes in the oven before church so I had at least thought that far ahead. When I walked in the house, I thought it smelled extremely potato-y and turns out, a potato will explode if you bake it at 350 for 2 hours and forget to poke holes in it. Always thought that was an unnecessary step. And yeah I’ll go back to poking holes in the potatoes. Not every potato exploded, but enough potato exploded to require me vacuuming my oven out with a shop vac. It had cooled down, obviously, don’t want you sitting here thinking I’m vacuuming up potato embers or something.)

So anyways we had grilled chicken and potato casserole and grilled corn and a rather chaotic charred broccoli and snap pea salad that I kept adding dressing ingredients to until it tasted to my liking. Our friends asked what all I put on the vegetables, and I had to tell them I really didn’t know. Lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil. pomegranate molasses, chopped up dates??? I’m seriously going to apply for Chopped I think I’d at least make it to the entrée round. Lunch was great, by the way, and felt like we didn’t completely scare off our new friends, mazel tov!

On another note, I’m reaching new lows in my lunches. Yesterday, I ate a bowl of cottage cheese and some cold leftover salmon. I absolutely could not be bothered to even make a sandwich or heaven forbid microwave a leftover piece of fish.

The first round of the fish, sorry to be out of order, was some fantastic fish tacos I made for Memorial Day. Blackened salmon, mango pineapple salsa, fresh guacamole, romaine tossed — this is key — in a little red wine vinegar, and a smattering of spicy, creamy, punchy condiments to finish it off. If you know me by now, you’ll know I am not exactly a recipe writer, so I hope you can take that description, and the included photo, and figure it out.

And last but not least, I made some excellent granola this weekend. Except that I totally torched one pan, poof zap zam, burnt to a crisp. We’ll blame it on my somewhat unreliable 1982 oven.

Roughly, I did follow a recipe. Cookie & Kate’s Orange Almond Granola. Except I swapped almonds for pistachios and dried black currants for raisins. But other than that, business as usual. I keep finding myself sneaking little handfuls or just taking a spoon to the container and eating it at random intervals. Why make my own granola? Well my 2-year-old son eats granola at least twice a day, and a 10-pound bag of oats from Costco is a lot cheaper than 10 pounds worth of store-bought granola.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. I don’t write to provide any kind of practical tips. Pure entertainment today.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, take out for dinner.

XOXO

Allison