Menus:
Monday—grilled cheese and tuna sandwiches with tomato soup
Tuesday—pepperoni and anchovy pizza and salad with birthday cake!
Wednesday—roasted chickpea Greek salad with flatbread
Thursday—chicken and vegetable curry with rice
Friday—bean and cheese empanadas with pico de gallo and roasted cabbage
Saturday—refrigerator dinner
Sunday—lasagna with green beans and garlic bread
Evenings continue to be busy this week as activities spill into dinnertime, so I will do semi-prepping of dinner components to make everything a little easier. Not only does having some components ready to simply assemble help make dinner easier to prepare, but it also reduces the washing up burden. Definitely a win!
Since Monday is my usual semi-prepping day, I didn’t semi-prep for this day, however, I would like to point out for my fellow cooks who must eschew gluten, that you can make a grilled cheese and tuna quesadilla on corn tortillas that is pretty good. I was surprised how well it worked out. It’s not the same as a buttery, crisp sandwich, but it’s not bad.
For Tuesday’s pizza, I can pre-mix the pizza crust dry ingredients, do a quick cure of the ground turkey for sausage, and wash the lettuce. Not having to drag out all of the baking ingredients every day is helpful if you are trying to save time.
For Wednesday, I can make the salad dressing and mix up the flatbread dry ingredients. It sounds like this set of menus has a fair amount of dry ingredient mixing! This is not necessarily a huge time saver for people who are using conventional wheat flour, but it saves a lot of time and counterspace for gluten-free bakers to not have to drag out multiple flour containers every couple of days.
For Thursday, I can brine the chicken and cut up the vegetables so they are ready to go.
For Friday, I can make the bean and cheese mixture and the pico de gallo.
For Sunday, I can make the sauce for the lasagna and mix the dry ingredients for the garlic bread.
Semi-prep schedule:
- Dry ingredient mixing: pizza crust, flatbread, garlic bread
- Meats: salt and season the turkey sausage, chicken breast, and ground beef
- Sauces: make Greek salad dressing, pico de gallo, and lasagna sauce
- Other: soak and cook the beans for the empanadas
I hope that this is helpful to consider! Semi-prepping can be done on any day when you have a bit of extra time. What can you semi-prep this week?
