When I planned what I’m cooking this week 8/28/2022, I started as I always do and identified what items I had to use up in the fridge. I have cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes and green beans from the garden to start my recipe search this week.
Menu Planning Tips:
As I browsed my recipes, I looked carefully for things that can be prepped in advance to cut back on cooking time as well as ingredients within a recipe that I would not get used up. I planned additional meals around those two factors: what can I make extra of, and what will I have leftover.
What I’m Cooking This Week 8/28/2022 Days 1-2
The first recipe I planned for was heirloom cherry tomato jam, which will use up a significant portion of my cherry tomatoes. I decided to use it to make fancy grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner on two nights. Also, I identified that I could use it on cold sandwiches for lunches.
Advanced Prep Idea: The tomato jam can be made in advance so I can will make it over the weekend for a fast weeknight dinner.
Day 3
Next, to finish off my cherry tomatoes, I planned to make zucchini feta rye berry cakes with roasted cherry tomatoes. This will make one dinner for two people and have an extra for lunch.
Extra Ingredients: I will have leftover feta.
Advanced Prep Idea: Cook the rye berries in advance to greatly shorten the cooking tim for this recipe. You could also batch cook the rye berries if you want extras, but that didn’t work into this week’s plan for me.
Day 4
To use up my green beans, I decided to make trout piccata with green beans and rice.
What I can make extra of: This provided me an opportunity to batch cook rice to use in other dishes.
Extra Ingredients: Piccata will also leave me with leftover fresh lemon.
Day 5
I decided to make vegetarian cheeseburger pizza to use up at least 3 slicing tomatoes. The pizza will use this homemade whole wheat pizza dough and make 6 slices. This will make one dinner for two people and have an extra for lunch.
Advanced Prep Idea: I will peel any remaining tomatoes and can them for fall soup and chili recipes.
Extra Ingredients: I will have leftover romaine lettuce.
Day 6
At this point I have feta, romaine and lemon left to use up, so I will make a batch of lemon feta vinaigrette and serve it as over a romaine salad with chickpeas for protein, and add some homemade croutons for crunch.
Advanced Prep Ideas: The croutons can be made in advance, as can the dressing.
Day 7
I needed one more meal idea, so I settled on kimchi fried rice with cabbage and peas. This is one of those meals that I usually have all the ingredients for: I always have cabbage and eggs in the fridge, peas are a great freezer staple and kimich practically never goes bad so it’s easy to keep on hand.
Without the idea to have leftover rice from the trout piccata, who knows what I might have planned. In this case, identifing what I can make extra of helped to me finish my plan for the week.
Lunches
For leftovers, I have a few servings of cold cherry tomato jam sandwiches, one serving of zucchini feta rye berry cakes, and one serving of cheeseburger pizza. I will need 2-3 more lunches to finish the week, so I will make a batch of edamame and corn salad, a great light and fresh lunch for the end of summer.
If you decide to try one of these recipes in your own menu plan, let us know which one and why you chose it in the comments below!