During this particular week, we had a lot of easy eats which is pretty much normal around here. You may also be able to tell I bought a bulk pack of chicken thighs from Costco when you see our meals below. Haha! You’ll see a decent number of chicken dishes, pasta, breakfast for dinner and a couple new-to-me food finds we tried and enjoyed.
Week of Weeknight Meals
I swear I use the marinade I shared in my blog post about Easy Marinated Pork Chops just as often for chicken as I do for pork. It’s versatile and delicious and worked perfectly on the chicken thighs I made for dinner Monday night. After marinating them all day long, I cooked the chicken thighs in the air fryer and served them with blistered shishito peppers cooked in olive oil with a little garlic salt and lemon quinoa and butternut squash from a bag of Daily Harvest grains. So good!
On the kids’ plates: Applegate Farms organic chicken nuggets with ketchup, bell peppers and raspberries
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Tuesday: Sausage and Spinach Frittata with Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Breakfast for dinner! We had some leftover pork breakfast sausage from the weekend so I used it to make a frittata with spinach, onions, bell pepper and shredded cheese. I also prepared a few sweet potatoes in the air fryer and them mashed them up with some salted butter as a side dish.
On the kids’ plates: Scrambled eggs with sausage, fresh spinach leaves with ranch for dipping (aka their version of “salad”) and strawberries
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Wednesday: Marinara Chicken Thighs with Palmini
Wednesday’s dinner was an interesting one. I placed chicken thighs on top of thinly sliced onion and grape tomatoes tossed with minced garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. I then poured some Rao’s marinara sauce on top and sprinkled everything with parmesan cheese before baking the chicken thighs. We then enjoyed them with more marinara sauce on top of Palmini, a pasta-like dish I bought from ALDI that is made with hearts of palm. It intrigued me and while it was nowhere near the same thing as pasta, it was still quite tasted smothered in marinara. If you’re expecting it to be a pasta substitute it would be a big disappointment but if you’re looking at it as a way to enjoy hearts of palm in a new way, it was pretty good! I liked it enough to buy again but might think of a new way to serve it because marinara sauce makes me want real pasta.
On the kids’ plates: Grilled cheese, carrots with hummus for dipping and clementines
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Thursday: Instant Pot BBQ Pulled Chicken Thighs with Green Beans and Mashed Sweet Potatoes
On Thursday night, I prepared a batch of BBQ pulled chicken thighs in the Instant Pot by following this recipe from Meaningful Eats. There’s clearly a reason the recipe has so many positive reviews! It was delicious and I’ll absolutely make it again. Along with the BBQ chicken thighs we had steamed green beans seasoned with garlic salt and leftover mashed sweet potatoes from the big batch I made for Tuesday night’s dinner.
On the kids’ plates: Quesadillas with green beans and blueberries
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Friday: Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Meatballs and Marinara
When I don’t know what to make for dinner, spaghetti is always a winner! It’s something we almost always have on hand and since I already had a large jar of Rao’s marinara open from Thursday’s dinner, it was a no-brainer. While I boiled the pasta, I threw some frozen meatballs into the air fryer and then stirred them into the marinara once they were done cooking. The meatballs were actually a new-to-me find from Costco. They were the Amylu Paleo spinach and red pepper meatballs and we all liked them!
On the kids’ plates: Spaghetti noodles without sauce (kids, man), meatballs with ketchup for dipping, cucumber slices and a clementine
Question of the Day
What was your favorite meal of the week last week?
Any new must-try recipes to share? Links welcome!
