The “Chapter 5” part pertains to the week of the year it is. I like sharing what I am eating/cooking for my family. Going to document it regularly here to serve as motivation for me to get exciting and tasty food on our table and since I enjoy sharing food ideas with others I hope it may serve as inspiration for you as you are recipe planning. Thinking that it makes the most sense to post these Friday/Saturday evenings before people meal plan for the week…but we’ll see how it plays out.

First up, one night this week Andrew suggested we have leftover soup to which I was like noooo.

I’m fine with leftovers, but then there are those times when no.

So I made us vegetable fried rice. We had some leftover pork potstickers so I chopped those up and put them in here too to use them up.

Served with the best wine on the face of the planet – Peju Province. My parents have started giving me a case of this wine for Christmas each year and I try to make the bottles last as long as possible. As one of my friends put it, “it’s like the best parts of a red wine and a white wine all blended together.”

Eaten in the company of a baby. The older girls had a meltdown while I was cooking, so they helped me shell some edamame and then while I finished cooking they ate an assortment of said edamame, nutella, leftover steak and raw broccoli.

The next night we had fried rice again, so to zhuzh it up I added fried eggs on top. My mom had made some sauce called, “yum yum” sauce. She mentioned it was supposed to be an Asian sauce. We had some leftover in our fridge and I scooped it on underneath the egg and it was so good. I believe it’s made with mayo, tomato paste, pinch of sugar and pinch of any other spices that make sense for what you are doing with it. Mom, if you read this add a comment if that’s the wrong recipe or if I missed an ingredient!

If I’m making something that I think the girls won’t try, we typically have a batch of THE BEST no-bake monster oat balls in the fridge at child level so they can grab them as needed/wanted AND i’ll just move them to the middle of our kitchen table when we eat so there is at least the hope of less whining. Please.

Tuesday night we invited friends over to have dinner. Amongst us there were 7 kids! I made this pot roast recipe and we served it with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. I made the roasted carrots on our Silpat and they came out tasting like the silpat. It was gross. I don’t know why that happened. But that pot roast recipe I heard of from a friend and it is so good.

This is the point in the week the wheels came off. I ended up having to go to the doctor unexpectedly, then Andrew had to work late one night, and then I was not functional one afternoon/evening and was stuck in bed watching HGTV while waiting for a steroid the doctor put me on to kick in. I ended up bed-o-vising, which is a brilliant new parenting technique where I lay in bed and every ten minutes I give my phone to the 3 year old to go take pictures of the 5 year old and the 6 month old to make sure everyone is okay. SO. These nights we did Chick-fil-A and the next night take-out Tex-Mex.

Another day I was craving cold vegetables and chickpeas! So I had an Asian salad kit + orange juice.

One lunch I had a couple breakfast sandwiches.

Tonight we’ll do pizza on the Ooni. We use this dough recipe and it’s our favorite.

I’m also perfecting my coffee cake recipe. Below is trial number 6. I’m trying another batch this weekend and I have a feeling it will be the winner. The texture I’m going for is like a carrot cake, but sturdier.

Hope you have a good weekend and week ahead!