Cooking

Sunday: Meals for the Week

stargrace September 10, 2017 2 Comments

When Amazon Prime came around this year I decided to buy an Instant Pot. It was an item that I had seen previous years and those who owned one talked about it almost non-stop. As I looked around my kitchen at the collection of other appliances, I decided I had to have one. It would soon replace my slow cooker, my pressure cooker, my frying pan, and my rice cooker. In fact I’m not even sure I used my oven this summer except once or twice.

The invention of the Instant Pot is Canadian (all the more reason to support it) and it acts as a 7-in-1 appliance that can basically do everything except toast (although I made apple bread in it, so just because it doesn’t toast doesn’t mean you can’t make very moist bread). With the husband gone for another four months and me at home cooking for myself (plus whatever scraps mini-me is eating these days) I decided to also invest in some plastic portion containers and instead of making a new meal (or two, or three) every single day, I would just make one meal for lunch, one meal for dinner, and eat them all week long.

You have to be really comfortable with the meals you decide to make. I’ve learned a few things, like it doesn’t  matter how delicious pasta is, after a week of eating it for dinner I’m tired of it. Some things I don’t get tired of though, like lentils and rice. I’ve also been working on spending less on groceries. In fact if you were to look in my fridge you would wonder if I ate anything at all because the only groceries I have in there are the items I’m using for that week.

Thanks to friends I came across this web site for recipes, which has been an absolute life saver. I typically use it for inspiration and then adapt the recipes to my own tastes and use the IP in some way-shape-form.

This week I’m making roasted corn quesadillas for lunch and for dinner I’m making a variation of mini garden turkey loaves with mixed veggies, stuffing, and gravy (I’m using beef, I’m omitting the carrots, and I’m using my own smokey bbq sauce). For the quesadillas I plan on cooking an entire frozen chicken in the IP, I bought two of them last week and only used one. The meatloaf I plan on making in the IP in silicone containers for individual servings. I was thinking of making mashed potato with it but honestly I prefer stuffing, so I’m going with that instead. I typically check the local grocery flyers on Friday and then plan my menu around that. Groceries are on Sunday and lists are my very best friend. I rarely ever buy something that’s not on my list.

I also made 16+ cups of yogurt this week in my IP. I had no idea it was so easy. Yogurt (especially greek) is very expensive here (we’re talking $7 for 4 cups worth, if that) and for the cost of a carton of whole milk I ended up with creamy delicious yogurt that I strained to the consistency I wanted. I took a portion of that and made it into tzatziki sauce which I served over spicy chicken fried rice (no recipe available for that one, it’s just my own concoction). Delicious. I had that for lunch every day this week and I’m still not tired of it. The same cannot be said however for these lasagna rolls. Delicious? Yes, but I’m tired of them now. There’s just something about pasta.

For breakfast I plan on making some spiced apple compote in the IP and layering it with my homemade yogurt and some oats to create overnight apple oatmeal. It’s another experiment so we’ll see how it turns out.

So those are my meals for the week. I spend an average of $60-80 CAD ($49-65 USD) a week on groceries (this includes things like baby digestible cookies and 3-4 veggie pouches) for me and the little guy and we live in an area where groceries tend to be quite expensive, especially if you want fresh. In the past two months using this new method I’ve saved approx. $50 a week on groceries, and I’ve lost 15lbs. I don’t drink anything except water (and tea, I love tea), and I don’t eat anything I don’t make myself (ie: no fast food or pre-made meals). It’s difficult, but so far I find it rewarding and worth it. Plus I only have to cook meals one day a week instead of stressing about what I’m going to eat every single day.

Mine vs. Theirs (Chefs Plate #3)

stargrace August 13, 2017 No Comments

Today I made the third and final meal from Chefs Plate – garlic noodles with squash and spinach, and some toast with ricotta cheese and cherry tomatoes. It was incredibly delicious and unlike the other two meals the portion felt huge (I had enough for 3-4 plates like the one you see above). The noodles were fresh, and now that I’ve had fresh pasta I’m not sure I can ever go back to the boxed stuff. It was light and fluffy and full of flavour.

It was one of the easier meals to cook and prepare, and as far as value goes it came closest to what I would actually consider paying $10.95 per plate for. It was also their vegetarian option, but you could always add a little chicken or something to stretch the meal out if you wanted.

Final thoughts? Well, Chefs Plate is just not aimed at people like myself. Solo parent of an infant, with no time to cook. It would be great for someone just learning, who wanted to impress themselves (or friends) with delicious meals. Someone who has a bit of time to cook, but no ideas of what to make, and of course, who has the cash. I do like that we can keep the recipes, I’ll make them again in the future using my own purchased ingredients and customizing them the way I prefer. It also gave me some good ideas, like using lime to flavour a slaw (the carrot & cabbage slaw was delicious) and how you don’t need complicated meals to have big flavour. I think the instant pot is geared at me in a much better way – less time in the kitchen, less time watching my food cook and preparing it. So I’ll look for more instant pot meals instead and maybe I’ll post one here weekly (or maybe not, I have no idea if people care that I post food things on my gaming blog).

In the end, I’m very glad I spent the $32 to try Chefs Plate out – but there’s no way I’d pay full price ($65) for three meals (6 servings total). That’s almost my entire weekly budget for groceries, and doesn’t cover lunch or breakfast (or even 7 days of dinners) or anything for my kid. That being said, if you want to give it a try you can get a discount on your first order by clicking here.

Lets get back to some gaming posts!

Theirs vs. Mine (Chefs Plate #2)

stargrace August 12, 2017 No Comments

My second Chefs Plate meal was fish taquitos with a cabbage & carrot slaw. None of the ingredients were rotten this time which was nice. I was worried about the avocado because those have such a short “not ripe not ripe BAM RIPE rotten” stage, but it turned out excellent.

The food itself was fantastic and very filling – but I had a few issues. I had to grate the giant carrot and the chunk of cabbage by hand which was a pain. When it comes to value, I didn’t think that the supplies were worth $10.95 (the cost of a single plate) even if the overall meal was delicious. They sent me 2 fish fillets (very good), a small pouch of spices, a small container of sour cream, an avocado, a lime, 2 cloves of garlic, 6 flour tortilla wraps (very small), a carrot, and a chunk of purple cabbage. Now sure if you buy this stuff in the store it comes to more than $10.95 because the portions are a lot larger – but I felt like they sent me very little and I had to do all the work on top of it. I’m a busy mother of a 10 month old baby doing the solo parent thing for 6 months, cost is only a portion of what I was trying this for, time it takes to prepare the meal is another one. If the cabbage and carrots had come pre-shredded that would have made a world of difference.

For this meal I put the little guy in his bouncy chair and tried to keep him entertained long enough to make everything. I got right up to the stage where they go into the oven for 10 minutes which was pretty good. The meals all advertise to take between 25-30 minutes to make from start to finish and I find this to be pretty accurate – but I am rushing around doing things the entire time, so if you happen to work slower the meals would probably take around 45 minutes.

I’ve got one more meal to go, a fettuccini meal that I’m pretty excited about. That’ll be tomorrow (or when I can find the time to make it). I’ll do a final blog post with overall thoughts and if anyone has a question don’t hesitate to let me know.

Chefs Plate (Canada edition)

stargrace August 10, 2017 No Comments

Gasp, I know, a non-gaming post, but a few folks were interested in details so I figured I’d put it here. Chefs Plate is another one of those meal delivery type things like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh where you choose from a selection of weekly recipes and they send you the ingredients and you cook it. There are tons of different plans and prices, but for Chefs Plate it’s $10.95 (CAD) per meal. I happened to have a 50% off coupon. They don’t offer meals for one person, but they did have a 2 person meal combo, so I went for that. They have 2-3-4 meal options. I went with 3. This put my order at $32 (CAD) for 3 different meals, 2 of each meal.

The box is 100% recyclable, as is everything in it (yay). My stuff arrived and it was nice and cold, even the meat. The recipes are printed on GIANT pieces of stiff paper, I wish they were more index card sized. Even if you decide not to go with further shipments (there’s no commitment here) you get to keep some (hopefully) amazing recipes.

My fist meal was grilled beef & pesto burgers with grilled mushrooms, peppers, and a nectarine salad. The facebook page claimed meals “could feed 3-4” but that’s not true, especially not for these burgers where you only get 2 buns. Ingredients are supposed to be local to Canada, but my red pepper has a big “U.S.A” sticker on it. The meat is Canadian, and I do like supporting our local farmers. Cutting into the red pepper showed me it was completely rotten inside, black mold everywhere. Gross.

The beef was *amazing* whoever they’re getting it from in Canada is doing a fantastic job. It was probably one of the best tasting burgers I’ve ever made. With the grilled red pepper and mushroom on top, it didn’t need anything else. Making the pesto by hand was a pain, you have to dice up arugula and sunflower seeds. The pesto wasn’t that great, but when you added the red wine vinegar to it, the flavours were incredible. No complaints about the burger at all.

The salad.. was nothing to write home about. The red wine vinegar was used there too and it overpowered the nectarine and the radish. Was this plate worth $10.95? I don’t personally think so.  I do have two more dishes to go, plus the second portion of this one (which I will have tomorrow) and if the steady price was $32 I’d be MUCH more inclined to purchase from them. In the meantime, at least I got some neat recipes to try out on my own.