Archive | Instant Pot Meals RSS feed for this section

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Pandemic version

18 Mar

Planning meals for the next 14 days was particularly challenging this time around. No frozen veggies to be found.

Well. Here we are.

We are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. The novel coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, has made its way through the world, currently hitting the United States. Week by week, day by day panic has set in nationwide as people prep for the unknown, fearing potential lockdown or shelter in place rulings in cities and states, and in some places, they are already living under that ruling. Since we are not at that point yet in our city or state, many people here are planning and stocking up for the next 14 days at a minimum, and with everyone everywhere doing that, it’s made grocery shopping and meal planning quite challenging. To add to the challenge, two of our three kids are quarantined as they were potentially exposed to COVID-19 at school, while the rest of us are not.

As I began my shopping last week, I did not go in with a specific list of items I needed for definite meals because I had already heard of the difficulty people were having at the stores, with empty shelves everywhere. Instead, I went in hoping to find two weeks’ worth of things I could make meals out of and I planned my meals on the spot as I found items in each store I went to.

Therefore, the list of meals below is what I came up with using what we had on hand at home and what I found between Aldi, Shaw’s, Stop and Shop, Target, Dave’s Market (a local RI market) Price Rite, and Whole Foods over the span of about five days’ time.

Because we are just starting our two weeks of our pandemic menu, the first few days are laid out specifically while the next many are not assigned to certain days yet, but are on deck for any night during the next two weeks.

Sunday, March 15: Corned Beef in the Instant Pot:  (We had purchased the corned beef ahead of time, so we were ready for this and chose to do it as a Sunday dinner instead of on St. Patrick’s Day.

Monday, March 16: Chicken and Steak Fajitas: using this recipe for fajita seasoning from allrecipes.com. I chose this because one store had one package left of stir fry steak and we had a few frozen chicken tenderloins left. The same store with the steak also had beautiful looking peppers, and the inspiration for a meal was made on the spot.

This was a brand new recipe we tried thanks to a friend who shared it on social media that same day.

Tuesday, March 17: Pasta with Bolognese Sauce: This was completely unexpected. I found two, one-pound packages of ground beef at one store, and I had previously stocked up on pasta from another store a few days earlier. I hadn’t decided what to do with the ground beef yet, other than maybe tacos in week two since we’d already done fajitas in week one. A friend posted photos, saying that she was making this recipe (by Giada De Laurentiis) at her house and it looked amazing. I realized I had all the ingredients at home and decided to make it that same night.

Meal options from March 18 through March 29:

4) Barbecued Pork Chops

5) Pork tenderloin with homemade applesauce

6) Steaks (What kind of steaks? I don’t even know but there were two of them left and they looked like they would be enough for our family. I knew we could figure out what they were and what we could do with them later on.)

7) A “big salad”

8) Homemade soup, most likely chicken and rice.

9) Make your own pizzas

10) Teriyaki chicken wings and legs

11) Tacos

12) Hamburgers and french fries

13) Something With Stew Meat

14) Breakfast for dinner: french toast and sausage because we had the sausage already and I finally found a couple of loaves of bread.

 

As I look at the categories listed as options to tag this post, a few of the ones I often use were just out the window this time around, specifically “Eating on a Budget” and “Shopping on a Budget.” I determined early on that we were “Eating What the Store Sold” and “Shopping for Whatever We Could Find No Matter What it Cost Until We Had 14 Meals For 5 People,” for the most part. Everything we make is still allergy-friendly for those with gluten and dairy allergies and they’re all relatively healthy meals.

This meal was a keeper and it was very easy to make.

I hope that all of you are safe and sound, healthy and that you all remain so.  I hope that you have good luck shopping for your own household needs over the coming days and weeks and maybe if you’ve purchased any of the same things I did, you can find some meal inspiration in this post to keep you going.

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our Thanksgiving recipes for you all in one place

25 Nov

These were a delicious after school snack on Friday and breakfast on Saturday.

Happy Monday! For many of us, myself included, this is a short week. I am thankful for the short week as it was such a busy weekend.

I’ve been doing a lot of baking these past few days and digging up some older recipes on my blog. Each time I’ve made something, I’ve made a mental note to repost some of these older recipes, so today I’ve decided to post them all in one place.

The Peanut Butter Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins shown here were first posted in 2015, and I made them on Friday afternoon. It had been a long time since I was able to make something for the kids after school, but I had some time on Friday between getting home from one job and heading out to the other. Everyone would be home before me, so I left them with a note that said 1) Yes, these are for you. 2) Yes, you can eat them now. 3) Peanut Butter Pumpkin Chocolate Chip. 4) Yes, they are gluten and dairy-free. 5) Two each. That answered all the questions I knew they’d come in asking me if I were there. They made a great after school snack for them and breakfast in the morning on what would be a busy Saturday with people going in all directions.

Last week, our office had a Friendsgiving, and I decided to make a dessert that I like to make every year, crustless Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes. You serve them with a dollop of whipped cream on top and it’s just like having a little taste of pumpkin pie, minus the crust. I have made these gluten and dairy-free in the past, and I will do that again this week for Thanksgiving. We use a Reddi-Whip dairy-free whipped cream on top. I first posted this recipe in 2012.

These have been a family favorite for years. They can be made jumbo-sized as I did here, or slightly smaller.

Yesterday, my daughter hosted a Friendsgiving at our house. It was a perfect-sized group, not too big or too small, and everyone brought something, which made it manageable for her to host. We made a turkey breast using the Instant Pot, which was phenomenal and cooked in about 40 minutes. In addition, I opted to contribute a gluten and dairy-free option so that our other daughter could have dessert too, even though we had so many others coming. It was not her event, but I knew she’d want to partake in the dessert course. My husband loves these Pilgrim Pies and has been asking for them for a few weeks, so that’s why I chose to make them. I used my Pampered Chef medium scoop to make them but I could have used my small scoop to make even more of them if I wanted to. These have been a favorite for years, and last year my oldest even made a batch to bring back to school with her for all her dorm friends at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend.

One of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions involves this next recipe for Pumpkin Cranberry Bread.  It was a recipe given to me by my mother, and I know that she makes it too. I will start baking up batches of this today and bake several over the next few days. Each batch makes two loaves or one loaf plus three mini loaves. Sometimes I will swap in chocolate chips instead of cranberries for some of the loaves since not everyone loves cranberries. On Thanksgiving morning we slice this up, butter it and grill it for breakfast. When the kids were very small we would line them all up in our bed, pillows propped up behind them and breakfast trays in their laps. They’d eat their bread, drink out of their sippy cups, and watch the Macy’s parade. I have a favorite photo of them doing just that, our littlest one propped up in the middle of the two older ones, and I think of it every time I make this bread.  Now, some sleep through the parade, or we record it to watch later, but we always have the bread. This year we will be at our school’s football game as our youngest is in the marching band and they will be performing. No matter what we do on Thanksgiving morning though, there will always be bread.

The final recipe I will share with you today is also a tradition for our family. It comes from my mother inlaw Marylou and we’ve been making it ever since I had it at her house many years ago. Marylou’s Sweet Potato Casserole is my kind of recipe. It’s got butter and sugar and vanilla and brown sugar. It’s got a root vegetable in there too, so maybe it’s good for you? It doesn’t matter, because it’s Thanksgiving and we eat this just once a year. I am excited to bake this on Wednesday night, but even more excited to eat in on Thursday afternoon. You can make this with nuts or without. In the past, I’ve done both versions, but this year since we have a smaller crowd, most of whom do not like nuts, I will just do one version and skip the nuts.

I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving and enjoy some time to relax and reflect. The weeks ahead will again be busy, but it’s the time we get to spend together as well as the special family traditions we’ve established over the years and look forward to every year,  that makes it all worth it in the end.

-Jen

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

What’s for dinner Wednesday? Instant Pot Beef Stew

20 Nov

Sunday was busy. It was also cold, rainy, and we even saw flurries. Beef Stew was a perfect meal for such a day.

I’m on a roll! Two posts in one week.

Today’s post brings back the often requested “What’s for Dinner Wednesday” posts. I am going to share the meal we had on Sunday night, which was the night we were finishing up our weekend of bathroom renovation painting, I worked during the day, and my husband planned the meals while I worked and did the week’s grocery shopping. It was a super-busy day and it was cold.

While I was at work I got a text asking if he could plan Beef Stew for dinner for that night. He wasn’t sure if anyone besides him actually liked it. I said to go for it, and he found a recipe for the Instantpot, which would help us cook while we painted right up through dinnertime.

The recipe was from a site we had never visited before, The Salty Marshmallow. They boast having quick and easy recipes for the everyday cook. That’s us. We are everyday cooks and we needed quick and easy. You can find the recipe here. 

The Salty Marshmallow said their recipe was “the best ever” Beef Stew recipe, and I think they were right. This was the best, most tender, most flavorful Beef Stew I have had. I am not a huge fan of cooked carrots (unless they’re cooked in honey and butter and raisins and brown sugar, but that’s a whole different recipe) so we also threw in a bag of frozen whole green beans as well. As this meal cooked, our house smelled so delicious. Our mouths were watering by the time it was finished.

This was the most delicious Beef Stew I have ever had.

Because this recipe calls for cornstarch at the end, it was gluten-free and that made it something that all of us could eat. My youngest who not only has food allergies but also doesn’t love meat, ate an entire bowl of stew (minus the actual meat itself). That was huge. The stew was incredibly flavorful and the meat, for those of us who did eat it, was tender and delicious.

This was a meal we’d most definitely make again and I think we were all wishing we’d made it sooner.  Over at The Salty Marshmallow, there are some tips for success when making this stew and I hope you’ll check them out before making the recipe.

Have a great day and enjoy the stew!

Tags: , , , , ,

Barbecued roast beef and a new Cave Tools product

20 Mar

New recipe and new tool!

Recently my husband and I ate dinner in a local restaurant that was new to us. We shared two meals, one of which was a barbecued beef brisket. It was similar to the pulled pork that we often make at home, but yet it was different because of the beef that was used, and the flavor was intense. We loved it so much we decided to try to make it here at home, using our Instantpot to cook the beef.

Luckily, we had a new Cave Tools product to try out, a set of two stainless steel shredding meat claws. They were going to be perfect for the meat that we would be making that night. The handles were sturdy and strong, and came with textured non-slip handles and plenty of space for our hands, thanks to the extended knuckle space. Interestingly, they are shaped like a bear’s paws, which provides a really good grip on the meat you’re working with.

We used the claws to hold the meat with one hand and a knife with the other to slice some of it off.

The claws can be used in a variety of ways and we definitely made us of them when we lifted the meat out of the Instantpot, when we shredded it, and even when we decided to slice off a portion to taste, we used the claws to hold the meat with one hand and the knife with the other.

These meat claws were fantastic for shredding the roast beef.

They’re also great for shredding the meat, which we did for most of it, since we were looking for a pulled beef consistency at the end and we planned to shred it, return it to the Instantpot for a bit longer, and then take it back out for serving.

Once the shredded meat was finished cooking, having the claws in hand for removing it from the Instantpot was key. They were helpful in scooping out good-sized amounts of meat at a time from the pot.

These stainless steel claws are available two ways. You can find them on Amazon.com here, or on the Cave Tools website here, but be sure to use the discount code MEATCLAWS on the Cave Tools site to receive a discount of 15% off.

 

Putting the meat back into the Instantpot was easy with the meat claws.

Be sure to read all of the care and safety information in your box when you get your tools. You’ll be sure to smile when you read the reference to “Wolverine” in the safety instructions!

As with all of their products, this one comes with a Lifetime guarantee and you can return it at any time if you are not 100% satisfied. Although we love a company that stands by their products, we won’t be utilizing that any time soon, as we already have plans to make use of these meat claws again soon. They’re definitely going to be a go-to tool in our kitchen from here on in.

To make the barbecued roast beef, saute an onion on the saute setting with olive oil and garlic. Add in a cup of your favorite barbecue sauce. Add in 1/4 cup of water to cut the sauce a bit. Whisk the sauce for consistency. Put in your roast, cook it on the manual setting for an hour. Do a quick release, remove the roast beef and shred it with your metal claws. Place the beef back into the Instantpot for another ten minutes on manual. Remove when done. This can be served as a sandwich or just as is. We did a little of each.

Ready to eat! There were hardly any leftovers and we can’t wait to make this again!

 

Tags: , ,

What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Two weeks of meals

7 Mar

Ratatouille has become a favorite meal of ours.

Welcome to the month of March! It’s been quite some time since I posted a two-week menu plan, and I thought this week might be a good week to do one.

We are marching into spring and it’s about to be our busy season at work and at school so I am reveling in this relative calm before the storm. Over these two weeks however, two of our kids are booked just about every night for “tech week” as they prepare for this weekend’s upcoming theater performances and next weekend’s drama festival competition. Therefore, we are not necessarily eating all together as we usually do, but rather in a group of three, and then a group of two later on. They come in starving at about 9:00 p.m. and their first question is always, “What was for dinner?” as they look to reheat whatever it is that we had. They’ve eaten, but it’s usually between when school ends at 2:00 and when their theater responsibilities begin at 4:00.

That said, here is our list of meals for these two weeks.

TWO WEEKS OF MEALS

SUNDAY: Shaved steak and cheese sandwiches with tomato salad and steak fries
MONDAY: Burritos and quesadillas
TUESDAY: Chicken, broccoli and pasta
WEDNESDAY: Ratatouille
THURSDAY: Cranberry chicken
FRIDAY: Opening night for theater! Out to dinner
SATURDAY: Grilled kielbasa kebabs (this is a new meal, so look for it to be featured in the future!)

SUNDAY: Pulled beef brisket (this is a new recipe, so look for it to be featured in the future!)
MONDAY: Grilled teriyaki chicken breasts
TUESDAY: Spaghetti with tuna sauce
WEDNESDAY: Nicoise salad
THURSDAY: Leftovers
FRIDAY: Homemade Pizza
 

Hopefully this inspires some meals for your next two weeks of meals!
Have a wonderful week!

Tags: , , ,

Two weeks of meals before the holiday rush

4 Dec

It’s hard to believe, but it’s the first week of December already. There are exactly three weeks until Christmas. Although I’ve been behind in posting some weekly menus, I thought that now might be a good time to provide some meal inspiration as a way to get us through the next three weeks. I also know that in the next two weeks or so, my posts will be filled with Christmas cookie recipes, and although we’d like to just eat those for dinner, most nights we can’t.

This was one we hadn’t had in a while and we devoured it. Not a morsel left.

Below are some meal options to get you through the next few weeks, with links included for every single one, not necessarily even in the order we’ve had them on our menu but more of a list of our past weeks’ “best of” meals that will let you peruse and choose what works for you in any given week.

TWO WEEKS OF MEALS

  1. Taco Bake
  2. Chicken, Broccoli, Cauliflower Casserole
  3. Kielbasa and Cabbage
  4. Parmesan Chicken Cutlets
  5. Instant Pot Chicken Marsala
  6. Beef and Broccoli
  7. Turkey Meatloaf Burgers
  8. Sweet and sour meatballs

    One of my favorite fall meals ever: Cranberry Chicken

  9. Shepherd’s Pie
  10. Instant Pot Macaroni and Cheese
  11. Chicken with White Wine and Mushrooms
  12. Cranberry Chicken
  13. Steak Lettuce Tacos
  14. Pork Tenderloin (instead of brisket) with applesauce and potato pancakes

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,