Meatless Monday, a few light lunches and an extra mid-week treat – this week’s meal plan is full of tasty recipes for you to enjoy.
Notes from the weekly meal plan:
Mexican Chicken and Quinoa Bowls
- Quinoa is a great source of protein and you can basically put anything on top for a healthy meal.
- For more flavor, you can cook your quinoa in chicken stock or 1 tsp. Better than Bullion instead of water.
Chicken Tacos with Pineapple Salsa
- Other great taco options: best ground turkey tacos, Korean beef BBQ tacos, or slow cooker chicken tacos
- You can marinate the chicken ahead of time and store in the refrigerator or make the chicken right away.
- Mango salsa is a great alternative to pineapple salsa if you don’t have the right ingredients
- Cook the chicken in a skillet or on the grill
- You can use chicken breasts or chicken thighs
- Use corn or flour tortillas
- You can use green onions instead of cilantro
- Cutting chicken into strips helps it cook faster
The Easiest Banana Bread Muffins
- They also freeze well, so they make a great on-the-go snack and a great make-ahead snack for the freezer!
- Great kids snack or breakfast
5 Ingredient Chicken Salad Recipe
- Great for meal prep
- Use rotisserie chicken as a shortcut
- You can put it on bread and make a sandwich or even top a bed of lettuce with the chicken salad, for the low carb version of lunch.
Grilled Pineapple Chicken Burgers
- To keep these burgers juicy and add a ton of flavor, teriyaki sauce plays an important role. Not only does it act as a binder, but gives the burger the perfect flavor.
- Coconut oil gives these burgers an extra bit of island flavors, but you can use any other oil if you’d prefer.
Eggless Chocolate Chip Waffles with Strawberry Cream Cheese Sauce
- When making the waffles, you can either use buttermilk or make your own! To make your own, you simply combine milk and lemon juice and let it sit for 5 minutes.
- The recipe calls for using frozen strawberries. The water content in the frozen berries will help the sauce be more liquid. If you want to use fresh strawberries, the sauce will just be thicker.
- The strawberry cream cheese sauce was originally inspired by one that Ben picked out of the Let’s Cook: Elmo Cookbook (a cute kids’ cookbook). It was a recipe for strawberry cream cheese stuffed French toast, but we didn’t have 1/2 the ingredients, so we made a sauce and waffles instead.
Easy Beef Brisket
- This dish is really good reheated, so even if you’re a small family, I’d recommend making this and then having leftovers throughout the week.
- Ask for a “point” brisket at the butcher– it’s the second cut with typically a little more fat. This is not necessary though, any cut will work – just leave the fat on (as the meat slow roasts, it will melt).
- This is a really great make-ahead dish, so if you want to do all the steps the day ahead and then serve it the next day, rewarmed, it’s just as good!
- Browning the brisket before you roast it in the oven really brings out flavor (then you deglaze the pan with either red wine or beef broth.) You could skip this step and just roast everything, but I’d recommend taking the extra step.
- I always like adding extra carrots. My kids love the soft carrots that have been roasted in the tomato sauce with this dish, so I add extra. Also – since this dish is cooking low and slow, you don’t want the carrots to completely disintegrate, so I’d recommend cutting them in large chunks (or if they’re smaller carrots, you could leave them whole.)
- Serve this brisket over mashed potatoes.
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