What We Ate This Week (and How I Actually Made It Happen)
a real look at how I plan, shop, and cook for my family every week
If you didn’t see recent substack, we are moving back to California. I talked through all of it over there. What that means for this week is that I tried hard to use what I had in my pantry, fridge and freezer. It actually made for a few really great meals. I’m sharing what I made with you here.
In this post, you’ll find how I planned my meals, grocery shopped for them, and recipes for family pizza night, fish filets with broccoli and fries, and a baked pasta dump (amazing dinner idea for a big family). Let’s get into it.
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HOW THE WEEK GETS PLANNED
Step 1: Every Sunday morning Olive and I sit down with cookbooks. It sounds more organized than it actually is. Troy chimes in something from about what he’s craving. Olive points at pictures. I flip through my own cookbook to see what I can pull together from everyone’s requests
Step 2: Once we have a rough idea, I do a walkthrough of the freezer, pantry, and fridge before I write a single thing down. This week I had ground beef, fish fillets, chicken sausage, frozen fries, and dry pasta that needed to be used. The meal plan basically wrote itself from there.
Step 3: Then I check the weekly ads for Sprouts, Publix, and Aldi before I finalize the grocery list. Whatever is on sale influences what we eat. This is genuinely how I get the bill down $40 or $50 most weeks without compromising on quality. My family eats organic and that adds up, so I have to be smart about it.
Step 4: Last step is putting the plan into my calendar night by night. If we have an activity and won’t be home until 6:30, I am not planning something that is complicated. That night gets something made ahead, or we eat out. The planning is what makes those nights feel easy instead of stressful.
As annoying as it is, meals for the week have to be planned before the week starts or else it just causes me to be annoyed that I don’t have time to cook, or that I’m hungry and I have nothing in the fridge. It just takes a little bit of time before the week starts. And that doesn’t mean things don’t shift. We are fluid over here. If we need to swap nights, that happens a lot. It’s just more so having a baseline of ideas that can be worked with.
NOW HERE IS WHAT I ACTUALLY MADE
PIZZA NIGHT (Olive’s choice)
This is not really a recipe, it’s more of a system. We had our friends over one night and I thought this would be easy to make. Kids made their own pizzas and adults also made their own.
The base is easy. Either gluten free tortillas or flatbread. You can also use english muffins, sourdough bread, actual pizza dough from the store (dirt cheap). Then I had a jar of leftover pizza sauce, and whatever toppings we have in the fridge. This week that was olives, red onion, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, turkey pepperoni, and shredded mozzarella. Everyone builds their own. Olive treats it like a craft project. Into the oven at 400°F for about 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and the edges are crispy.
Easiest dinner of the week every single time.
FISH FILLETS WITH FRIES AND BROCCOLI (Troy’s choice)
Troy goes fishing from time to time and comes home with the best quality snapper. We vacuum seal it and freeze it so we have this meal often. It’s crispy air fryer fish fillets with Jessie and Ben’s frozen tallow fries and steamed broccoli. Simple, fast, and the whole family ate it. Olive had hers on her divided plate with cucumber and sweet potato fries on the side.
Here’s how we breaded the fish!
Ingredients
2 lbs white fish fillets (grouper, cod, snapper or your choice), skin removed
1 egg, whisked
1 cup breadcrumbs, I used cauliflower breadcrumbs (GF)
Spices: ¼ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, ¼ teaspoon garlic powder, ¼ teaspoon paprika, ¼ teaspoon dried parsley
Avocado oil spray
Instructions
Prep the fish: Pat the fish dry with a paper towel. This helps the breading stick better. Cut into strips or keep the fillets whole, your choice!
Set up the breading station: In one bowl, whisk the egg. In another bowl, mix the breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and dried parsley.
Bread the fish: Dip each piece of fish into the egg, making sure it’s fully coated. Then, press it into the breadcrumb mixture, covering all sides. Shake off any extra crumbs.
Preheat the air fryer: Set it to 400°F and let it heat for a couple of minutes.
Air fry the fish: Lightly spray both sides of the fish with avocado oil and place them in a single layer in the air fryer basket. Cook for 12 minutes, flipping halfway through. The fish is done when it’s golden brown and flakes easily with a fork.
Serve: Enjoy with your favorite dipping sauce, like tartar sauce, honey mustard, or a squeeze of lemon.
BAKED ZITI (THE PANTRY DUMP VERSION)
This one gets its own moment because I made two meals. One for us and one for our neighbor who just had a baby. It came almost entirely from what I already had in the pantry and freezer, which felt like a win given that we’re trying to use everything up before the move.
No exact measurements here. This is a feel-it-out recipe.
Servings: 6 to 8 / Prep: 15 min / Cook: 50 min / Total: about 1 hour
What I used:
Dry pasta noodles (I used a mix of regular pasta and lasagna noodles I needed to finish)
2 jars marinara sauce + water
Whole milk cottage cheese
Shredded mozzarella
Grated parmesan
Chicken sausage, sliced into coins
Optional: frozen spinach or any other cheese or sausage
How I put it together:
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Spread a layer of marinara across the bottom of a large casserole dish. Just enough to cover it so the pasta doesn’t stick.
Add a layer of dry pasta noodles on top. Yes, dry. They cook right in the sauce while everything bakes.
Spoon more marinara over the pasta, along with some water to cover all of the actual noodles. Add big spoonfuls of cottage cheese across the top. It melts into a creamy layer that makes the whole dish taste like it took way more effort than it did.
Add a layer of shredded mozzarella and scatter the sliced chicken sausage across evenly.
Do one more layer of pasta, more marinara, and finish with a generous layer of mozzarella and a good handful of parmesan on top.
Cover tightly with foil and bake at 350°F for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 10 minutes until the top is golden and bubbling.
Let it sit for 10 minutes before you scoop it. It needs that time to set or it’ll fall apart on the plate.
The reel for this is coming soon. I’ll link it when it’s up.
More meals from this week in the next post, including my favorite Persian dish that my mom used to make every week growing up.
If you make any of these, tag me. I actually look at every single one.