Week of Weeknight Meals: April 2020

Hot on the heels of Monday’s recap of my Week of Workouts from April 2020, I’m here to share a peek into a week of our weeknight meals on the blog today as part of my monthly series. I started this series a while pack and after compeltely neglecting it for months, I had a number of you ask me to bring it back at the start of the year, and I’ve been doing my best to remember to snap pics of our dinners every weeknight at least one week a month to share with you. No fancy food photography is allowed — just a real life look into what we’ve been eating for dinner in the Fagan household!

As you will see below, last week’s meals included a variety of dishes ranging from two vegetarian meals to a couple of slow cooker dinners, breakfast for dinner and more. It was a delicious week over here that ended on a high note with my all-time favorite roasted chicken recipe for dinner on Friday night.

I’d love to hear a little bit about what meals look like for you right now. We are trying to limit our grocery store visits and Instacart orders and using pantry staples, freezer food (especially meats), eggs and produce that doesn’t go bad as quickly (carrots, squash, onions, potatoes, etc.) has been key for us.

Week of Weeknight Dinners: April 2020

Monday: Crustless Vegetable Quiche with Buttered Jelly Toast

It was a breakfast for dinner kind of night last Monday! I whipped up a crustless vegetable quiche and we loved it! I followed my original recipe almost exactly, though I swapped out the mushrooms and used chopped zucchini in its place since that’s what we had on hand. We rounded out our breakfast for dinner night with some buttered jelly toast and it hit the spot!

Tuesday: Veggie-Packed Meatloaf Spaghetti Squash Bowl

If you read the day-in-the-life blog post I shared last week, this meal will look awfully familiar. I initially planned to serve the veggie-packed meatloaf I found on Jen’s blog for dinner on Tuesday evening but after prepping the meatloaf earlier in the day, it smelled too good to resist, so we ate it for lunch. (See the first picture! I swapped out the turkey in favor of ground chuck, used Italian breadcrumbs in place of panko and yellow squash in place of zucchini.) Since I wasn’t about to spend more time in the kitchen in the evening, the meatloaf resurfaced in a new way. I mashed it up and stirred it together with some leftover spaghetti squash (see the second pic) and loved it this way, too!

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Black Lentil Soup

It feels like slow cooker season is slowly slipping away from us but since I am someone who appreciates my slow cooker and pressure cooker year round, I can assure you I will still be using them regularly even when its 90 degrees outside. Despite the warm, sunny weather on Wednesday, a slow cooker meal sounded perfect because I wasn’t in the mood to spend a ton of time in the kitchen. I quickly Googled a recipe for black lentil soup and crossed my fingers I’d find a good one that utilized ingredients I already had on hand that I might be able to morph into a slow cooker recipe. I lucked out with this one from AllRecipes.com and basically dumped everything in the slow cooker (with the exception of the bacon, which I omitted) and after 5(ish) hours on low, the soup was ready and delicious.

Thursday: Slow Cooker Cilantro Lime Chicken with Roasted Acorn Squash and Zucchini

Like Tuesday’s meatloaf, this Slow Cooker Cilantro Lime Chicken was another meal we ate for lunch and then revamped for dinner on Thursday. For lunch, we ate it grain bowl-style with brown rice, shredded cabbage, black beans, corn, diced cherry tomatoes and fresh cilantro. Dinner looked like the chicken (topped with parsley because we ran out of cilantro at lunch) served with roasted acorn squash and zucchini. I roasted the veggies simultaneously in the oven (the acorn squash took a bit longer) and drizzled both of them with avocado oil and sprinkled them with garlic salt and pepper. Easy, nutritious and tasty!

Friday: Roasted Lemon Pepper Chicken with Potatoes, Carrots, Celery and Onions

Some random things have been hard to come by ever since we began to feel the effects of the pandemic and whole organic chickens seem to be one of them. I felt like we majorly lucked out when we got one at the grocery store earlier in the week and I knew immediately that I wanted to use it to make my all-time favorite roasted chicken recipe from The Whole Smith’s Good Food Cookbook (one of my all-time favorite cookbooks). It’s our family’s go-to (even my parents and sister after I introduced it to them!) and tastes like the best kind of comfort food. (I totally forgot to set a timer so I accidentally burned the skin a little bit.) A big-time bonus: This chicken makes the whole house smell amazing! Oh and as written, the recipe does not call for potatoes but slicing up some small golden potatoes  to include in the mix of veggies is always a welcomed addition in our house.

Questions of the Day

Any great dinner recipes to share? 

What do meals look like in your house right now? Have you noticed a difference in the availability of certain foods in your area? 

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