Feb 24 // Meal Inspiration // Lemon-Rosemary Salmon, Awareness Dinner, Strawberry Mousse, and More!
Oatmeal bake, prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, salmon, creamy pasta, awareness dinner, and strawberry mousse!
Hello! As you plan your meals for next week, hopefully you’ll find some things in this newsletter that you’ll want to try. The strawberry mousse is particularly satisfying to make (and eat) and it only uses three ingredients! And if your kids are struggling with entitlement, an Awareness Dinner might help them gain some perspective.
If you want to opt out of these meal planning newsletters, there are more instructions at the bottom.
Here’s what’s in this newsletter ⬇️
Breakfast - Tyler’s Friend’s Overnight Oatmeal Bake
Lunch - Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus
Dinner - Lemon-Rosemary Salmon
Dinner - Creamy Pasta with Salmon and Asparagus
Dinner - Awareness Dinner (Rice + Beans) and a documentary recommendation
Treat - Strawberry Mousse
Exercise - 30-minute cardio and 6-minute yoga
Grocery List
Breakfast
Tyler’s Friend’s Overnight Oatmeal Bake
A reader of the newsletter sent in a picture of her friend’s handwritten recipe and said it’s now on regular rotation for their family’s breakfasts. After trying it out for ourselves, it’s easy to see why, especially since you can mix up the flavors with additional toppings!
Here’s the recipe below, as Tyler’s friend wrote it 😅 Save it to your phone! Handwritten, word-of-mouth recipes are often the best kind.
Baking time varies by your pan size. Also, you can substitute butter for coconut oil and yogurt for applesauce.
Lunch
Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus
Asparagus is an intimidating vegetable for some people, but if you combine it with prosciutto, you might feel more comfortable trying it more often. This is a fun meal to make with kids, and it only takes about eight minutes to bake!
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Rinse your asparagus spears and snap off the tough ends.
Wrap the asparagus in prosciutto. Prosciutto is expensive (though you can find it at Aldi!) and adds more flavor than you’ll expect, so you don’t need to use a whole slice per spear. You can rip and stretch it into strips to wrap around the asparagus.
Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper.
Bake for about 8 to 10 minutes.
Enjoy! You can even eat with your hands. I’ll bet that your kids won’t even remember why they dreaded asparagus in the first place.
Dinner
Lemon-Rosemary Salmon
Salmon might not be as expensive as you might expect—especially if you get a whole big fillet from Aldi—but it’s delicious, easy to cook, and one of the most healthy kinds of meat you could have.
Remove the salmon skin if you choose and prepare the marinade. In ours, we used lemon juice, lemon zest, chopped rosemary, grated garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a dash of liquid smoke. Let your salmon sit in this for 10-30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 F.
Heat a pan to medium-high heat.
Put a little butter on the pan and sauté that salmon! A few minutes on both sides should make it beautiful and crispy.
Put your pan in the oven and bake it for 5 minutes or so (depending on the thickness of your fish.) You know salmon is done when it flakes off with a fork. It’s pretty forgiving and doesn’t dry out too quickly.
If you’d like, drizzle some honey at the end for a little sweetness.
You can pair it with a salad or some kind of vegetables. It’s super yummy, so make a large quantity! You’ll use any leftovers in the recipe below.
Creamy Pasta with Salmon and Asparagus
Salmon leftovers go great in pasta dishes. We loosely adapted this recipe from NYT Cooking with our leftovers from the rosemary salmon above, and it was a big hit.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Cut or snap your stalks of asparagus to about one-inch pieces. Don’t use the very ends.
In a large skillet, melt some butter and soften some shallots and/or garlic. Add heavy cream and simmer until it thickens into a sauce, stirring occasionally.
Cook pasta of your choice! (We used whole wheat spaghetti.)
A few minutes before the pasta is done—or more, depending on your desired tenderness—add the asparagus to the salted water.
Drain the pasta/asparagus and add it to the sauce. Stir in chunks of cooked salmon and add any seasonings and herbs you like. The NYT recipe recommends fresh pepper, lemon juice, and dill (but we used rosemary.)
Awareness Dinner
Sometimes it’s good to slow down and think about how blessed you are just to have enough food to eat. In this newsletter, we clearly value making good food for our families, but many people don’t have the ability to do so. (Maybe you’re in this situation as you read this. Reach out if you need help!)
About 10% of the world lives on less than $2 a day. This documentary (also on Amazon Prime) is really eye-opening.
When you see someone from America slowly savoring every last bite of a banana (the 23-minute mark of the documentary), it’s obvious that some of their entitlement has been stripped away. It can be good for our kids to eat what many other kids are eating and even to go to bed hungry for one night to know what it’s like, and to feel more grateful for the food that they do have.
If you would like to make this meal, simply make rice as you normally would and microwave a drained can of beans. Add a little salt if you’d like, but this meal is supposed to be plain.
One time I had a conversation with someone who moved to our city from an impoverished country, and I asked about his favorite meals from his home country, expecting to hear him reminisce about regional delicacies or home recipes that he misses.
But his reply? “Not really anything. Our food wasn’t good.”
Isn’t that heartbreaking?
I’d love to hear how your kids respond to an awareness dinner! I’ve heard of some families who do this every Monday. Maybe you would benefit from making this a monthly routine!
Treat
Strawberry Mousse
If you’ve never made mousse before, you’ve got to try it. It’s so empowering, and kids will get a kick out of how heavy cream transforms. It’s unbelievable this recipe only has three ingredients. It’s been adapted from An Italian In My Kitchen.
Put strawberries in a blender with a little sweetener such as sugar or honey. We melted frozen strawberries in the microwave and they worked wondrously. Also, the sugar is optional! In one batch of this recipe, we added rosemary. Blend it into a purée.
Pour some of the strawberry purée into the cups, bowls, or glasses that you’ll be serving the mousse in. Reserve some of the purée for the cream.
Put some heavy cream into a mixing bowl, and get to work! It takes a long time, and while it can be done by hand, an electric mixer is ideal. You’ll watch the thick liquid turn into a whipped cream you can pick up with your finger.
When stiff peaks start to form, add the reserved strawberry purée and mix it a little more. Make sure to do plenty of taste tests 😉 Explain to your kids that if you kept mixing the cream, it would separate and turn into butter and buttermilk! (We’ll do that activity/recipe sometime!)
Pour the whipped cream into the prepared cups/bowls and top with something pretty like a sliced fresh strawberry, a sprig of rosemary, etc. It’ll be a big hit!
Exercise
These STRONG by Zumba workouts are extremely challenging, but the way they sync the moves with the music makes you feel like you’re in an action movie. It’s worth a try to even just do a few minutes of this workout.
Here’s a quick stretch if you just finished a big workout like the one above:
Grocery List
Also, if you want to opt out of the meal inspiration emails, we won’t be offended! Family Scripts gives you lots of options so you can do whatever works for you and your family.
Simply go on your account settings and un-check any sections of the newsletter that you don’t want. Reach out if you’re having trouble!
There won’t be a Family Scripts post tomorrow but there will be something more personal from me on Hope’s Notes if you’re subscribed there (it’s free)! Have a great weekend!
Warmly,
Hope from Family Scripts