Ellie's Kitchen: One-Pan Dinners
Yesterday I was supposed to write an entertaining
and somewhat informative post about the marvelousness of one-pan dinners, but
when my husband and sons picked me up from work at 4:00 yesterday they were all
famished, so instead of going to the grocery store and then home to write my
post and make my one-pan dinner, Husband made a beeline for the Wagon Wheel in
Gill where we had an early dinner (or late lunch, depending on who you ask. If
you’re ever in the neighborhood, the Portobello Burger is awesome: loaded with
roasted red peppers, goat cheese, and garlic aioli…mmmm. The two boys are
rather fond of the Cowboy Burger, which is layered with cheddar and piled with
onion rings. Husband likes everything.)
Once Husband & Sons were fed we went grocery
shopping, and so last night’s dinner has become tonight’s dinner, and so forth.
Glad I didn’t write the dinners in on the calendar yet! Truth be told, dinner
has become somewhat of a disaster lately. I’m back to working full-time (thank
goodness, and back in HR, too!) as well as trying to keep my head above water
at school (how did I ever do this before, with two very small children? My
older two were six and four when I started studying for my Associate’s degree,
and I was a single mother. My little guy is eight, and I have probably the most
supportive spouse in the world, and I am completely floundering. …I must be
getting old…); dinner lately has been a whole lot of sandwiches and leftovers…when
there are leftovers. It’s gotten pretty bad. I say that, of course, thinking of
the way I am “supposed to” care for my family. I am currently reading Tiffany
Dufu’s book Drop the Ball: Achieving More
by Doing Less. It keeps popping up on a list of books professional women
should read, so I nabbed it at the library. I am only about 90 or so pages in,
but she, like so many other women writers and life coaches and sociologists
points out that women are conditioned to think that they need to do it all:
work, achieve, care for our home and children and be supportive for spouse and
children and somehow be active in their community as well. (This last item I am
absolutely NOT. Sometimes there is an advantage to being an introvert.)
So, is it terrible that my family was having turkey
and cheese sandwiches for dinner a couple times last week instead of turkey
cutlets with gravy? Not great, I suppose, because there wasn’t a lot of
variety, and because I know Bubbah only had turkey and cheese with mustard and
no vegetable at all on his; but they had something for dinner. And my husband
does help out and enjoys cooking as much as I do, so had he been home meals
would have been cooked. He recently received a promotion at work, so 10- and
12-hour days have been the norm lately, poor guy. In an effort to prevent this
from happening again, I strolled through my “Dinner for the Fam” board on
Pintrest and set myself a challenge: dinner this week, homemade, both easy and
nutritious. I found two one-pan dinners I am very eager to try: Baked Lemon
Chicken with Asparagus and Potatoes from Well Plated by Erin, and One Pot White
Bean Pasta with Leeks and Asparagus from Sweet Peas and Saffron. I’ve also got
some Crispy Black Bean Tacos on the menu, as well as Steak and Sweet Potato
Bowls from iowa girl eats that aren’t necessarily one-pot, but can be made up
with a minimum of fuss and don’t use every single pot in my kitchen (which
means less dishes to wash afterwards. I really wish I had a dishwasher!)
Having fairly recently discovered one-pan (or one-pot) dinners, I can say I am hooked. I love my slow-cooker, which is a similar process (usually), but the inner pot is cumbersome enough that when I'm trying to wash dishes I have to move it out of the strainer right away or I don't have room for anything else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete newbie to the one-pan dinner thing, but it is usually more like a two-pan: a pan for whatever the main dish is, and another one for one side, and since that's still only two pans used, I'm good. Mixing everything in a bowl and then dumping it out onto a baking sheet is so nice, though, and in half and hour or so we are fed. The one-pot pastas are the ones that blow my mind, really, and I love them (because who doesn't love nice carby pasta?)
So, tonight’s dinner: Baked Lemon Chicken with
Asparagus and Potatoes. I’ll post an update when I’m home cooking, and let you
know if it was a Pin Win, or a failure. In the meantime, stroll over to these
great food blogs and see what else they have to offer!
If you want to see what other dinner dreams I have
set aside for my family, check out my “Dinner for the Fam” board on Pintrest: https://www.pinterest.com/kapiseperkins/dinner-for-the-fam/
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