March 3 / Meal Inspiration // Balela, Three Cup Chicken, Imaginative Cheeseboards, and More!

Other meals: Ultimate Nachos, Coconut Oil Fudge, and Sweet Sweet Potatoes

Mar 03, 2022

This week’s meals are pretty flexible and laidback. Using what you have to make something easy, healthy, delicious (and colorful) is one of our big values here. Also, some of you asked about vegan recipes; all of these meals are very easily adapted for vegan diets! 🥳

Breakfast: Sweet Sweet Potatoes

Lunch: Imaginative Cheeseboard

Dinners: Three Cup Chicken, Balela, and Ultimate Nachos

Treat: Coconut Oil Fudge

Exercise: 15 minutes of core strengthening, 10 minutes of active recovery

Breakfast

Sweet Sweet Potatoes

No, that’s not a typo. Sweet potatoes make a great breakfast food, and wonderful things happen when you bake them with cinnamon and sugar!

Preheat your oven to 425. Chop sweet potatoes into rounds; it doesn’t take long.

Mix them together with melted coconut oil, cinnamon, brown sugar, and a little salt. Bake for 30-40 minutes or so, flipping over once. Drizzle with a little honey when done.

Bonus: Cook bacon on the stovetop or in the air fryer while the potatoes are baking. Pour some of the rendered fat onto the sweet potatoes when you flip them halfway, and sprinkle some bacon pieces on the the baking tray before serving. It adds a little smoky to the sweet.

Lunch

Imaginative Cheeseboard

Take whatever snacking-platter foods you have in your fridge and invite your kids to use them to create a scene! All prep takes place on the cutting board, which is also the canvas, so nobody has to do dishes. This is a fun activity that gives them some autonomy and you all get to eat it afterward.

“Outer Space with Planets and Stars” by Evey, age 6

Dinner

Three Cup Chicken

This is a dish that supposedly originates from the 13th century, when a Chinese hero named Wen Tianxiang was captured and about to be executed, and a prison warden used limited resources to cook Wen’s final meal. It’s called “three cup chicken” because of the three primary ingredients used in the sauce: rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

There are tons of sanbeiji recipes around the internet, but here’s the gist: sauté chicken thighs (and/or vegetables) on medium-high heat until they’re cooked through. Remember that it takes a lot of work to overcook chicken thighs 😅

To prepare your sauce, take a measuring cup or small bowl and mix the ingredients together in proportions that you like. If your family doesn’t like things too tangy, lower the rice wine (or red wine vinegar, or cooking wine) and maybe add some brown sugar or honey. Add in basil leaves for a more complex flavor.

Or—this makes it a totally different recipe, but it’s great for picky eaters—forget the rice wine and just use teriyaki sauce.

Lower heat to medium and stir in your sauce. This is the really satisfying part: watch your sauce reduce and turn your food into sticky, dark-colored deliciousness. Serve over rice and enjoy!

Balela

This Mediterranean bean salad is a family favorite when we visit Trader Joe’s, but it’s very easy to make at home! All you do is combine drained and rinsed black beans and chickpeas with ingredients such as cut-up tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, parsley, and (bonus) mint. Drizzle in some olive oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper, and freshly minced garlic. We added some za’atar spices, too.

Let your kids taste-test it to see if you got the flavors right. Serve with naan!

Ultimate Nachos

Shout-out to reader Laura for suggesting this one! Simple, flexible recipes are a big win in our book 🙌

All you have to do is preheat your oven to 400 F, lay out some tortilla chips, and sprinkle them with whatever toppings you want. We used bell peppers, shredded cheese, queso fresco, ground beef, tomatoes, drained black beans, etc. Then bake it for like five minutes or however long it takes for the cheese to melt. Top with things like cilantro, limes, and avocados. Put the tray in a central location and invite everyone to dig in!

We found this to be excellent for a laidback evening of enjoying pre-spring weather outside at golden hour. The kids could play, then come back and grab some food, then play some more.

Treat

Coconut Oil Fudge

This recipe is extremely simple and quite tasty: stir together 1 cup of melted coconut oil, 3/4 c honey, and 1 c cocoa powder. Add vanilla and a little salt. Put a piece of parchment paper over a small baking dish or plastic food storage container. Pour your mixture in. You can top with a drizzling of melted peanut butter, chopped nuts, etc. We sprinkled kosher salt on top.

This is a great science lesson too; coconut oil has a low melting point (78 degrees F.) Our friends who live in Florida probably got to skip the “melting coconut oil” step because it was already a liquid! Put your fudge in the fridge and watch harden to a really smooth texture. Enjoy!

Exercise

These 15 minutes will feel like 150, but these are some great core-strengthening exercises you might not have done before. (P.S. OrangeTheory Fitness’s Youtube channel has tons of great at-home workouts! We’re big OrangeTheory fans around here.)

Here’s a 10-minute stretch video that should make you feel really good after!

As always, let us know (and send pictures!) if you try any of the recipes. Also, if you used the “Grocery List” we used to include in each email, just ask and we can start doing that again 😊

Tomorrow’s bonus email includes some tips for planning a last-minute spring break trip!

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts