Ep. 91 - Meal Planning - What Works for Us

Mommin' Ain't Easy the Podcast

Hey everybody!! We are (we think) recovered from a great (and exhausting) week of VBS! Ha! Any of you gearing up for VBS at your church? Ain’t no tired like VBS tired, amiright? But always so fun and so rewarding!! We hope you loved hearing from Ms. Margaret last week! This week we are getting practical and talking meal planning! Who needs some meal planning? If you’re like Jennifer, she has no real plan! Ha! But if it works for you, it’s a plan!

Our friends over at the Midlife Matters podcast just did a meal planning episode right when we were recording ours, so go check out their episode 27: What’s for Dinner, Mom? We talked about one of our regularly occurring meals of beans and rice in our Episode 10: Raising Grateful Children. Courtney is a big fan of The Lazy Genius Podcast and mentioned their episode 94: Guide to Freezer Meals. We talked about the books Dinner, A Love Story by Jenny Rosentrach and Loving My Actual Life by Alexandra Kuykendall in this episode as well. And check our Martha Stewart’s Checkerboard Cookies that were mentioned!

We promised you a recipe to share, so here they are!

Jennifer’s Asian pasta recipe (she usually doubles or triples):

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup sesame seeds

Mix and saute until toasty looking. Remove from heat and let cool for a few minutes.

1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Combine all. Mix in cooled-ish sesame seed mixture and set aside.

Cook one box of tricolor rotini pasta and grill chicken. Nathan’s famous chicken marinade (you thought I was gonna say hot dogs, didn’t you?) includes olive oil, brown sugar, fish sauce, and Mr. Yoshida’s marinade. Toss sauce, pasta, and cut up chicken and serve over raw spinach. (Jennifer cuts it up with scissors and mixes it in so the kids can’t avoid it.) It’s amazing hot, but is sooo good cold the next day! May need to put a little more red wine vinegar on to wet it a bit. YUM!!!!

Courtney’s Pesto Chicken Pasta:

Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Add chicken breast (as much as needed per person). Season chicken as it cooks with Lemon Pepper Seasoning and Worcestershire sauce. You want the chicken to end up pretty dark, so don’t hold back with the seasoning/sauce. As chicken cooks, break into smaller, bite sized pieces.

Boil water for pasta. Salt water appropriately and boil pasta according to package directions. Once pasta is cooked, return to pan. Add 1-2 Tbsp prepared pesto to pasta and toss. For a great pesto recipe, check out Sara Snow’s pesto! Top with cooked chicken and enjoy!

From our “I’m Totally Into…” segment:

Jennifer is totally into maxi skirts! She is literally swooning over at least 2 dozen from the Anthropologie skirt section RIGHT NOW! But she did just buy this fabulous midi from Target - all sizes available, including plus sizes!

Courtney is totally into two Instagram accounts: Art Camp LA and Handmade Charlotte. Perfect to check out for summer!

Don’t forget to listen to Episode 88 of Chatologie podcast “Sick of Me” featuring Whitney Capps, hosted by Angie Elkins! We are excited to chat about it soon!! And be sure to keep reading our next book club book - Make Something Good Today by Erin & Ben Napier!

We hope you are finding your summer groove with the kids and enjoying all the margin!!! 😉 Have a great week, mamas!