Week of Weeknight Meals: May 2021

Hello, hello! Happy Wednesday to YOU! I’m comin’ at you today with May’s edition of my monthly Week of Weeknight Meals series. I hope you brought your appetite!

I began this series as a way to share a glimpse into what our weeknight dinners look like for one week every month with photos snapped in real time — no fancy schmancy food styling allowed.

This week we had a lot of good eats — the return of chicken sausage, a simple salmon meal, two vegetarian meals and our go-to grilled chicken.

Hopefully one of the meals we enjoyed will pop out at you and help give you some dinner ideas if you’re looking for some dinner inspiration!

Week of Weeknight Meals: May 2021 

• Monday: Chicken Sausage with Peppers, Onions and Cilantro Rice

I used to buy chicken sausage on a weekly basis for years. Somehow I fell out of the habit but I need to change that because I almost forgot what a great weeknight staple it is since it’s so easy to prepare. For Monday night’s dinner, I sliced up some bell peppers and onions, tossed them in some olive oil and garlic salt and then place a few hot Italian chicken sausages on top before baking everything in the oven. In addition to the veggies on the side we also enjoyed some cilantro rice.

• Tuesday: Lentil Pasta Sauce with Whole Wheat Spaghetti

Tuesday night’s dinner was a vegetarian delight! I whipped up simple sauce to serve on top of whole wheat spaghetti that included lentils, marinara sauce, tomato paste, a splash of heavy cream, Italian seasonings, salt and pepper. It was a bit of a recipe experimentation but ended up tasting incredible!! The sauce was one of those semi-homemade successes thanks to a jar of marinara sauce that I just doctored up and I was very pleased with the results. I need to incorporate more lentils into my meals because every time I eat them I am reminded how much I love them.

• Wednesday: Salmon with Roasted Veggies, Rice and Black Beans

This is a bit of a lazy cooking hack, but lately I’ve been loving roasting bags of coleslaw mix. Coleslaw mix is just a mix of shredded cabbage and carrots and roasting the whole bag saves me time (no chopping veggies!) so I’m all about it! I paired the roasted coleslaw mix with salmon and sides that included roasted broccoli, buttery brown rice (which for some reason looks kind of white in the above pic?) and black bean beans.

Thursday: Daily Harvest Red Lentil Harvest Bowl + Chickpeas

Thursday evenings the boys have soccer so unless I have the opportunity to prep dinner ahead of time during the day or Ryan finishes work early, we’re often left scrambling when it comes to putting dinner together for everyone. Thank goodness for Daily Harvest! Ryan likes their harvest bowls as much as I do and I’ll often combine a couple of them as a base for a dinner for the two of us and beef them up a bit with some kind of leftover protein, beans or edamame. In the case of last Thursday night, I used a can of chickpeas to give the Daily Harvest harvest bowl a little more staying power and it was a simple but tasty meal.

Friday: Paleo Marinated Chicken Thighs with Shishito Peppers and Mashed Sweet Potatoes

It feels like not a week goes by that we don’t make these Paleo marinated chicken thighs in our house! I typically bake them all through the winter but now that the weather is so gorgeous outside, our grill is getting a lot of use. I absolutely prefer the chicken thighs grilled versus baked so that makes me a very happy camper! Ryan grilled the chicken while I prepped some mashed sweet potatoes and blistered shishito peppers for us to eat on the side. In the shocker of all shockers, Chase liked the shishito peppers! He thought it was cool when told him that one in 10 are spicy so naturally it became a game for our family to try to find a hot one.

Questions of the Day

What was your favorite meal of the week last week? Any new recipe successes to share?