Normally this is where I’d be thanking you for reading yet another edition of the newsletter, but this week there isn’t one. I mean, I’m sending one, but there’s nothing here. Real life has been extremely busy and mentally taxing lately, and the first cut my brain made was “thinking of something to write for next week.”
I think everyone can relate to the feeling of being stretched thin over the past week/month/year. Everyone’s got a lot on their plate right now, and sometimes you have to take some things off to preserve your sanity. I’d also rather do this than halfass a post I don’t feel proud of, just for the sake of getting something out the door. I respect you, dear reader, far too much to do that.
Thank you for your continued readership. I’ll be back next week (probably!), but in the meantime, let’s talk about our all-time favorite weeknight meals in the comments. I’m talking something that can be on the table in like a half hour, no sweat. It’s all well and good to want to embark upon fabulous, multi-hour cooking expeditions, but some of us have kids and need to prioritize efficiency over artistry.
One of my favorite easy meals is just a quick pasta using frozen tortellini. They cook in just a few minutes and give a little more substance and heft than regular pasta. You can simmer some crushed tomatoes with garlic, oregano and red pepper while it cooks and it comes together pretty much instantly. You can dress it up with some meat and veggies if you want, or just play it simple.
My wife's cousin just had their first baby last month and so we of course signed up to take them a meal. We weren't quite sure what to bring them but having done this a few times for various friends, we have found the best move is to bring a light and healthy meal along with a casserole or some sort of easy to reheat meal that should provide a handful of meals on its own.
This time we settled on a salmon salad as the fresh meal, and enchiladas as the reheatable dish. We also figured we could make several pans of enchiladas that we ourselves could eat for lunch this week, and some to freeze. So on Sunday I set out to make enchiladas while our almost two year old got to napping.
As far as the prep goes, it was incredibly easy. In my cast iron, I browned almost 5 lbs. of ground beef (in two batches), seasoning each batch with 3 packets of taco seasoning. I then scooped that into flour tortillas, rolled them up like burritos, and lined an aluminum baking pan with them. Then topped with red enchilada sauce from a can, and sprinkled on some mexican blend cheese. This yielded 3.5 pans of red enchiladas. For the chicken enchiladas, I boiled chicken breasts, shredded them, seasoned them with some complete seasoning, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper, then did the same thing, filled tortillas, rolled them up, topped with green enchilada sauce, and mozzarella cheese. But things got interesting.
In the process, I realized I did not have enough chicken to make the same 3.5 pans of green enchiladas so I had to try to quickly unfreeze more chicken breasts to cook to finish off the tortillas and the pans I had already planned to use. Except now we were approaching the end of my kid's naptime, and we had plans for visiting her grandmother after she woke up.
This was when all hell broke loose.
So I was rushing to thaw frozen raw chicken in the sink so I could get it boiling. I was having a hard time getting the styrofoam tray off of the chicken, tearing it several times in the process, then couldn't get the little absorbant gel pack thing they place between the chicken and the tray out either. I tried breaking the frozen chicken breasts apart to help get the gel pack thing off, and in trying to break them apart by using the sink divider as a brace, managed to break the entire sink free from the kitchen countertop. Undeterred, I moved to the bathroom sink to continue this saga, running through the house holding wet, frozen, raw chicken because I am a psychopath. Well, I also managed to break open the gel pack thing, which was now dripping that weird absorbant goo throughout the house, actively creating a contamination warzone. I got the chicken thawed enough to separate the gel pack thing, but I'm almost certain enough of that stuff ended up down a drain that it is currently forming a nearly solidified barrier in my plumbing network somewhere that I will have to contend with in the near future. I managed to get the chicken cleaned off and started cooking that while I thoroughly cleaned the bathroom and the floor between said bathroom and the kitchen. It was around this time that our child woke up from her nap, none the wiser. My wife, bless her heart, got her ready for Mimi's house while I finished making the enchiladas. Couldn't clean the kitchen up too thoroughly though since I broke the damn sink.
Last night, we were getting ready to drop off the meals we had prepped for the new parents, and I said to my wife "hey, do you think 3 pans of enchiladas is too many to take over there?" and there was ZERO time elapsed between my saying that sentence and my wife saying "YES." So we took them a single pan of enchiladas. We now have SIX (6!) pans of enchiladas in our fridge/freezer and we laughed the entire ride over at how absurd it would have been to show up with 3 pans of enchiladas plus a salmon salad. We would have been branded the enchilada cousins and never invited over again.
Anyway, the sink gets fixed today.