Meal Inspiration // Jan 17 - 23
There’s lots of sickness going around these days, so this week’s menu includes a lot of fruit to boost that Vitamin C. As always, let us know if you’ve tried making any of these meals! Reply to this email or reach out on Instagram! 😊
Here’s an overview of this week’s meals:
Breakfast: Mango-Spinach Smoothie
Lunch: Fresh Mozz and Tomatoes
Dinners: Sweet Potato Buffet, Butternut Squash Soup, Copycat Chick-fil-A Nuggets
Treat: Winter Fruit Salad
Breakfast
Mango-Spinach Smoothie
Shout-out to Panera’s Green Passion smoothie for teaching us that spinach and mangoes taste (and look) great together. But this version—with only three ingredients and no fillers or added sugar—is just better.
Simply combine frozen mango, fresh spinach, and some orange juice in a blender. Go ahead, be generous with the spinach. (In the batch above, we used more than half the bag.) It’s so creamy and sweet that it doesn’t taste like spinach.
Lunch
Fresh Mozz and Tomatoes
It doesn’t qualify as a Caprese salad, but we’ve had trouble finding basil in the winter. This meal is so simple that your kids will love to make it!
Thinly slice tomatoes. Thinly slice fresh mozzarella. Arrange them on a plate so they “take turns” in a circle. Drizzle with balsamic glaze if you have it and add some flair. (Our kids used sage and a sprinkling of parmesan.) Provide tongs for serving.
It’s simple, filling, delicious, and pretty. Enjoy!
Dinners
Sweet Potato Buffet
Preheat oven to 450 degrees, scrub sweet potatoes clean, poke holes in them, and bake for 45-55 minutes. (They ooze juice so you might want to line your baking tray with foil.)
Serve the sweet potatoes with topping options such as butter, cinnamon, maple syrup, candied pecans, ground sausage, chili, etc. It’s great for crowds because you can do the potatoes and ask each person to bring a topping!
Butternut Squash Soup
This recipe is adapted from this one by Love & Lemons. It’s a good introduction to healthy soup, made appetizing to picky eaters by serving it with crusty bread for dipping. (You can just buy it; we will learn how to make bread from scratch in a future newsletter 😅)
In a stovetop pot, saute onions and garlic.
Chop up butternut squash into big chunks. (Opinion: no need to peel it, but you’ll want to cut out the seeds.)
Add the squash to the pot along with about 3 cups of chicken broth, as well as sage, rosemary, salt, pepper, and ginger.
Bring to a boil, cover, then lower heat to simmer until the squash is soft.
Pour everything into a blender and blend.
Garnish with fresh sage and serve with crusty bread! (You can tell picky eaters that the soup is like a sauce for the bread.) Enjoy!
Copycat Chick-fil-A Nuggets
Chick-fil-A nuggets might not be a health food, but they’re delicious. (This is probably going to be the only time we tell you to deep-fry something. It’s just worth it.) Making your own is satisfying and will surely impress your family. You can serve leftover sweet potatoes as a side.
Stir an egg into a bowl of milk or buttermilk. Cut up chicken breasts into small pieces—smaller than you would expect a nugget to be—and soak them in the milk. Keep in the fridge for an hour or so. (Or don’t; it will still work, but all the recipes recommend a soak.)
In a tray for dredging or a gallon zip-loc bag, combine a generous amount of flour, paprika, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and some sugar. Use more seasoning than you’d expect because you probably won’t be using all of it.
Take the nuggets out of the bowl and place them in the bag, then shake it up.
Bonus step: take the nuggets out, dip them back in the milk bowl, and put them back in the flour bag again. This will make the coating even thicker.
Though most recipes recommend using peanut oil in a large skillet or deep fryer, we use about $2 worth of olive oil in a small pot. Whatever your method, use medium-high heat with a vessel that’s filled with enough oil to cover half a chicken nugget (like a bit less than an inch.) You want the oil hot enough to bubble up when you drop your nuggets in it, but not so hot it burns.
Prepare a plate or tray with a paper towel for placing the finished nuggets.
Drop the nuggets into the hot oil and flip them halfway. You want them brown, not burned. When you think they might be done, either check a sample nugget’s temperature for 165 F or take a nugget out and cut it open.
When nuggets are done, take them out with tongs or a slotted spoon and place them on the tray. Serve immediately with BBQ sauce or homemade Chick-fil-a sauce (1/4 cup mayo, 1 teaspoon mustard, 1 tablespoon barbecue sauce, 1 tablespoon honey, according to this recipe.)
Treat
Winter Fruit Salad
Chop up whatever fruits you can easily find (pictured is pears, apples, oranges, pomegranates, dried cranberries.) and stir together in a big bowl. Try to make it colorful! For dressing, combine 2 Tbsp maple syrup with 1 Tbsp lime juice. Enjoy!
Exercise
This is a fun 15-minute hip-hop dance workout by Les Mills. Those wavy arms are too good.
Many people do 5 reps of these 5 exercises every day to stretch and be strong. It’s harder than it looks, and it’s fun to challenge yourself and see how many times you can cycle through all 5 exercises before you’re totally spent!
Story Prompt
Tell a story or draw a picture about little figurines in a snowglobe coming to life.
Shopping List
Hopefully this was helpful and inspiring!
Warmly,
Hope from Family Scripts
P.S. Next week’s whole menu is Hobbit-themed 😉