Meal Inspiration // January 31 - February 6
We've got some Olympic-themed (and even groundhog-themed) meals planned for you this week!
Happy Monday! The 2022 Winter Olympics begin on Friday, so this week we included a few Olympics-themed meals. Normally, most recipes are made from scratch, but this week there are some processed-food ingredients to make your meal efforts a little more simple. Enjoy!
Here’s an overview of this week’s meals:
Breakfast: Olympic Rings Bagels
Lunch: Pepper Torches
Dinner: “Ground Hog in the Forest”
Winter Salad with Naan
Spicy Garlic Noodles
Treat: Snowballs from Around the World
Breakfast
Olympic Rings Bagels
Simply arrange five bagels and top them with items colored blue, black, red, yellow, and green to resemble the Olympic rings. (Fun fact: the five rings represent the union of five continents.)
We used blueberries, blackberry jam, frozen raspberries, orange marmalade from last week, and kiwis. We spread yogurt underneath some of the toppings.
Note: Save any foil yogurt lids for pretend silver medals. (If you can find gold-lidded yogurt, even better.) More details tomorrow.
Lunch
Pepper Torches
To make a torch resembling the Olympic Flame, simply slice red, orange, and/or yellow bell peppers or mini bell peppers and stand them up in an ice cream cone. We added yogurt to help them stay put. It’s a fun, portable way to get some raw veggies in.
Dinner
“Ground Hog in the Forest”
This might be a stretch, but Groundhog Day is Wednesday (February 2), so it might be a fun to eat “ground hog” (crumbled sausage.) Drain most of the fat, then stir in some broccoli and/or cauliflower (which resemble trees) and you’ve got a whole forest setting for your ground hog. The way the rendered fat flavors and sears the vegetables is just wondrous. (Don’t forget to add salt and pepper too. We use this grilling pepper all the time.)
Ultimate Winter Salad with Naan
Grab a bag of shredded greens and mix in whatever you have that sounds good; mandarin orange segments, cranberries, and candied pecans are marvelous in a winter salad.
Our favorite dressing: combine juice from 1 large lemon (about 3 Tbsp), 1 Tbsp maple syrup, a pinch of salt and pepper, and 3 Tbsp olive oil.
A delicious carb to go with this salad is naan seasoned with olive oil and za’atar. Toast the naan or heat it in the microwave until it’s warm and soft.
Spicy Garlic Noodles
If you haven’t tried sautéing pasta before, now’s a great time to try!
First, boil a pot of pasta. (We used Trader Joe’s tricolor spaghetti.)
Saute some sliced bell peppers and plenty of fresh garlic in olive oil. Add some red pepper flakes; a little goes a long way.
Drain the pasta and add it to the pan.
Stir in some sesame oil and soy sauce. Keep stirring—and tasting—until you think it’s ready to serve!
Treat
Snowballs from Around the World
A fun way to celebrate the Olympics is to make little flags of countries that you and your kids are interested in and stick them in “snowballs” (truffles.)
All you do is combine a package of sandwich cookies (see note below) and a brick of cream cheese in your food processor or blender. Make them into little balls, then freeze. Melt almond bark or white chocolate and cover the little balls with that topping.
Draw or cut out flags from your favorite countries and tape them to a toothpick, then stick them in your snowball truffles. We bought a design asset by Wingsart and arranged some flags into a PDF below for you to print out at home!
The snowballs will look best if you use light-colored cookies—such as vanilla Oreo’s—and dip them in white almond bark. You can We used Oreo’s and high-quality white chocolate for ours, but as you can see, they don’t look as pretty as the truffles made by Sally’s Baking Addiction.
Note: One of the at-home Olympic events we’ll recommend tomorrow is a modified game of curling: sliding Oreo’s into a goal. If you plan on playing that, buy a family size package of sandwich cookies and set about 10 of them aside for curling before moving on with the snowball truffle recipe.
And yes, even though Antarctica is not in the Olympics, we included their flag, in case you have a 9-year-old in your house who likes to be different 😉
Exercise
You can pretend you’re an Olympic athlete in training and take your pick: figure skating or snowboarding.
Here’s a 15-minute exercise and stretch for figure skaters, and here’s a 30-minute conditioning workout for snowbaorders.
Story Prompt
Two good options this week:
Write or tell a story about the life of America’s official weather prognosticator, groundhog Punxsutawney Phil. (Or, if you live in the South, your primary groundhog is General Beaureguard Lee, and you can visit his miniature mansion in Jackson, GA. Our family has seen it!)
Write or tell a story about the time you competed in the Olympics. (Fictionalized personal histories are a blast!)
Grocery List
Enjoy these meals, and as always, please reply to this email and let us know if you tried any of them!
Warmly,
Hope from Family Scripts