Meal Plan for Week of 12/05/2025 – 18/05/2025
Monday – 12/05/2025
Monday is a busy night round our place with Nipper 3.0 at guitar, Nipper 2.0 at singing lessons, me coming in from the office, and Himself out at running. The latter is a casual running group that evolved partly from a coaching group we used to be in and partly from parkrun. While I used to join in, my various injuries has slowed me down and, at times in the last four years, stopped me entirely. It’s not that everyone in the group is very fast, I just hate running in the evening. Either way it frees me up to drive Nipper 3.0 to her guitar class. Strictly speaking I am driving the guitar to the class and Nipper 3.0 is just availing of the lift. She used to cycle every week when she was learning the piano…
Himself usually works from home on a Monday and has the dinner more or less ready to go before heading out to run. So the other chores fall to the rest of us. While Nipper 3.0 is at her lesson I’ll nip around to Lidl and get entirely distracted by the middle aisle and pick up any bits needed for upcoming meals and some staples that we always buy in Lidl such as dark chocolate for baking, lardons and some “snacky bits” as we call them that the Nippers like to include in their lunchboxes. We are on the last stretch of schooldays at this stage.
The Hearty Pasta soup is an okay option for a day like this. It reheats well but whenI eat it I always think, “I wished I had made the soup yesterday and added the pasta today.” A vegetable soup or stew always benefits from a resting period, I feel. I think I did suggest to Himself as I was leaving that morning that he should make it right now.
• Rachel Allen’s Nutty Granola or a variation thereof
I actually end up making this way later in the week as I keep running out of time. I can’t remember which day but I was having rice crispies for breakfast in the meantime. They really didn’t cut it!
Tuesday – 13/05/2025
Creole chicken dish
(The instructions on AnyList read top drawer shed freezer but this is from Pinch of Yum who has some great slow cooker recipes.)
Leftovers from the freezer as I thought I was going to my parents entirely forgetting that they were departing for Paris, France. Leftovers were delish so no harm, no foul.
Wednesday – 14/05/2025
DINNER
I’m usually on dinner duty on Wednesdays as I work from home. This was our first time having this dish and while it was tasty there definitely wasn’t enough for all of us. I served it with green beans per the recipe but entirely missed the rice part. There was a lot of grumbling and rumbling tummies. Fair. Less washing up though!
I don’t like to eat much at all on Wednesdays as I have been back to Yogalates since January. Best/ Easiest decision ever.
Thursday – 15/05/2025
Chickpea & Chorizo Fideos
This dish. I feel it has a lot of potential. Maybe it’s delicious but sometimes that toasted pasta doesn’t quite work and the chickpeas are chalky and the chorizo isn’t melt in the mouth. There’s a lot of places to go wrong with it. If anyone has a variation on this recipe I’d love to try it.
I tried the link in my AnyList App and it now links to a Chorizo, Chickpea and Spinach soup. Not. The. Same. At. All.
So here is our current recipe – let me know if you try it and what you think.
Chickpea & Chorizo Fideos
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons/ 45ml extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 8 oz/ 225 g whole-wheat angel hair pasta or spagehetti, broken into 2-inch pieces
- 2 large cloves garlic, minced
- ½ cup/ 60g chopped Spanish chorizo or pepperoni (about 2 ounces)
- 1 14-ounce/ 400g can petite diced tomatoes
- 1½ cups/ 360ml water
- ½ cup/120ml dry white wine
- 1 can chickpeas, rinsed
- 3 scallions ( ½ bunch), sliced
Directions
- Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. (Le Creuset works well for this recipe if you have one) Add pasta pieces and cook, stirring, until toasted and browned in spots. Original recipe says 2 to 3 minutes but I feel this takes longer. maybe because we use spaghetti. Transfer to a bowl.
- Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the pan and heat over medium heat. Add garlic and chorizo (or pepperoni) and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes, water, wine and the toasted pasta; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed, about 8 minutes. Stir in chickpeas and scallions and cook 1 minute more.
- (From EatingWell but no longer on that site alas)
Friday – 16/05/2025
Detroit-Style Pan Pizza
Doom Slice has a lot to answer for. I brought the two younger Nippers there after a Fringe Festival show last year. This was my third go at this Detroit Style Pizza. I doubled everything this time after complaints about the lack of abundance last time. I also used a larger and shallower pan. The first time I made this I spent €12 on a delicious raclette from Sheridan’s Cheesemonger. It resulted in the best result so far. (see image above: mouth-watering)
For my next go round I asked Nipper 1.0 to bring home some raclette from Switzerland. While he did, it may not have been the raclette I would have chosen. It was sliced rather than in a block. For the purposes of pizza and that frijo cheesy crust vibe with Detroit Pan pizza, this probably would have been fine in block form but did you know that sliced cheese and grated cheese when bought in those forms are treated with a dessicant to keep them separated? I fear that this might have impacted the outcome. It was definitely still very edible but the base wasn’t as light and airy as the first time I made it. I have used Kenji Lopez-Alt’s foolproof recipe for this. There’s a lot of reading but as always with Kenji, it’s interesting and to the point of the food. (Unlike yours truly!)
We eat and leg it leaving the Nippers to tidy up the already mostly tidy kitchen as we head out to a birthday party. If I say I’m going to a party at all this year, just presume I’m off to a 50th Birthday party. The great weather continues and we all celebrate in the Cheeses’ beautiful back garden. I eventually leave to cycle home about 1am and leave Himself to it as I have an earlyish start the next day.
Saturday – 17/05/2025
Brioche Burger Buns with Pulled Pork (Slow Cooker)
I took myself off to Belfast for the day to see a college friend’s MFA exhibition. It was a lovely day out to myself. I took the train north after a long night out chatting and therefore not drinking too much thankfully at the Cheese’s 50th. On the train journey north I finished the third of 14 socks (7 pairs) that I am making for friends to mark our 50th go around the sun. I am way behind schedule and when I blocked this one it still didn’t work so it has been frogged and redesigned. All that said it was nice to get in a couple of hours of uninterrupted knitting on the train to Belfast.
And when I got there, what a joy to reconnect with old friends and make more plans. Actually that has been quite the theme this year which is getting me through a lot of work-generated anxiety. That and therapy!
All this meant the others could go for Pulled Pork while I was away. In recent years I can’t manage pork as I once did. There are many foods I struggle with (excuse the reality lorry coming at you.) but pork I can live without. I actually don’t mind slow cooked pulled pork so much because it is so tenderised but there is no way I’m eating a pork chop.
I have no idea where this recipe came from but it is a cinch if you have a slow cooker. If you are reading this and are cooking for a family, it’s a great invesetment. Ours is just a no-name brand from Lidl. It has three settings and an on-off button. I know Caitríona Redmond gets fancy with a timer switch on the plug but so far we’ve never needed this.
So our recipe is as follows:
Pulled Pork (Slow Cooker)
Ingredients
- 1 kg pork roast (shoulder)
- 2 onions
- 1 bottle barbecue sauce, whatever brand catches your fancy
- 3/4 cup sultanas
- 200 ml Chicken Stock
Directions
- 1. Slice both onions but keep separate. Put one in slow cooker.
- Put in the pork and cover with the other sliced onion.
- Pour over barbecus sauce and chicken stock
- Cover and cook on low for about 12 hours or medium for 8 hours
- Shred the pork with two forks about 2 hours before serving.
- Serve with the delicious brioche buns that you have been making in the meanwhile or the best burger buns you can find. Sliced Dill Pickles go well too and leftovers freeze well.
And these Brioche Buns wow! So easy, so successful. I had made these once before so recommended that Himself give them a go and they turned out just as successful. Time is needed as with any yeasted breads but these seem very successful compared to other attempts I have made in the past. Yes there is a little bit of faffing with the Tangzhong (all is explained in the recipe) but all the effort (really not much) is worth it. Also why these are slated for a Saturday and not a weekday.
Meanwhile I had a delicious dinner al fresco in Belfast. Great company and a lift home to my front door 🙂
Sunday – 18/05/2025
The Nippers love this but it’s such a ridiculous meal. It’s never enough and it makes me feel like a bad parent. Ah well it was a busy week.
(actually from the freebie leaflet that came with the Irish Times a while back but when I get a bigger recipe bookshelf, it might go on it. Maybe I should start loading them onto my Kindle app on the iPad…)
