Happy Friday! I’m so excited to show you what I made from the farmers market goodies I bought last Sunday.
I’ve broken down the videos by meal and, in an effort to give you a peek into my brain and how it comes up with meal ideas, I’ve included a fair amount of my “behind the scenes” rambling. Also keep in mind that every one of these meals (with the exception of the smoothies and oatmeal) included leftovers that I used later in the week. I honestly did not eat anything other than what you see here! (Oh, and FYI: You won’t see the cherries in the meals because I snacked on them all week. Yum!)
One meal that I didn’t record is this AMAZING Fava Bean Salad with Radishes and Pecorino. Prepping fava beans is a bit work intensive, so this meal went a few minutes over my typical 30 minute meal prep limit. It was sooooo worth it!
Here are a few of the meals I threw together from leftovers.
The last meal I made didn’t look all that great (which is why there are no “after” pics) – I didn’t leave the chicken in the oven long enough without the foil to let it brown; but it tasted great!
Set yourself up for a week of great meals by doing these four things this weekend:
- Stock the pantry! I CANNOT stress this enough. Half the battle of eating healthfully is having what you need on hand. So much of what I made this week was made possible by ingredients I already had in my kitchen. Make a commitment to get it done this weekend – here are some pantry stocking tips to get you started.
- Go to the farmers market and get inspired. I’m a fan of shopping lists, as those who’ve practiced my meal planning system, Meal Planning for Busy People, will tell you. But sometimes it’s nice to go with the flow, especially in the summer when farmers markets are chock full of interesting stuff. Grab a cup of coffee and a shopping bag and head to the market. Most farmers will even give you samples if you ask.
- Get cozy with Google. I have a secret – I don’t just “know how to cook.” I didn’t go to culinary school. I don’t have any formal cooking training. I’ve only taken one or two cooking classes over the years. I’m just a girl who knows how to use the interwebs! Once you have a bag of food from the market, type one or two ingredients into Google along with the word “recipes” and behold the ridiculous amount of information at your finger tips. Don’t over think – just pick a recipe! And save it somewhere so you don’t have to find it again when your browser crashes. I clip all of my recipes into Evernote. Greatest app ever!
- Let go of perfection. Remember that your meals don’t have to be perfect (as evidenced by my roast chicken experiment). For busy people like us, the goal should be nourishing, tasty, and QUICK meals…that’s it. The more you experiment – and make mistakes – the more comfortable you’ll be throwing together last minute meals. Have FUN with it! Treat it like a science experiment. Worst case, you have a slightly less than satisfying meal one night. Use tools like The Flavor Bible to avoid spectacularly awful flavor combinations.
Do something now! Print the pantry list. Look up the time of your local farmers market. Tell me in the comments what you’re going to do to make next week your best meal week ever.
P.S. If you’d like more of these recipes, sign up for my mailing list. I’ll send them out in my next roundup in the first week of August.
