There are some items that I finish within a week, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, spinach, yogurt … and then there are the items that I purchase in packages that last longer, such as the frozen salmon, cod, sea bass, tuna.
After a while, I have bits and pieces left over from previous recipies. My choices are to (1) purchase enough for 2 weeks to make one week’s meals OR (2) use up the items I have in the fridge. Thus the theme of this week — cleaning out the fridge. Ok, so there is a benefit here — variety. When I tell some folks that I basically mix/match 2 meats and 2 veggies all week long they say YUCK — BORING. For the most part, I’m ok with that, but every once in a while, I get bored too.
Therefore, this week we are using up the left overs in the fridge and adding variety!
How does one do that you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked. It’s a concept that has gained a lot of populatrity on the internet — en papilote meaning cooked in a pouch. I first learned about cooking in a pouch from Alton Brown’s Good Eats show. I highly recommend that you watch Season 7 Episode 8 — The Pouch Principle. You can find it on Amazon Prime or the Food Network.
Therfore as you read, the next section
1. I am not a trained chef or nutritionist.
2. I am not a medical professional.
3. I am not a professional photographer.
What’s the plan, stan?
I looked in my fridge and saw I had 2 salmon fillets, 2 cod fillets, 2 sea bass fillets, and 2 tuna fillets for a total of 8 meals. That’s 7 dinners and 1 lunch! Instead of buying a lot of one vegetable, I decided to wander through the grocery and look for stuff that looked good. I was looking for 4 combos of 3 veggies. As you can see from the intro picture, I came home with a pile of colorful veggies. Plus, I had red onions and garlic already in the fridge.
When I started cooking, the first thing I did was pull out all the veggies and asked myself — What would be good with what? I ended up with the following vegetable pairings
- Zucchini, grape tomatoes, basil, shallot, lemon juice, garlic
- Broccolette, carrots, red bell pepper, lime juice, garlic
- Yellow squash, green onions, tomato, red onion, dill, lemon juice, garlic
- Bell pepper medley (red, orange, yellow), red onion, orange juice, garlic.
Next I asked myself, which veggie paring goes with which fish? I matched the zucchini veggies with the salmon, the broccolette veggies with the sea bass, the yellow squash veggies with the cod, and the bell peppers with the tuna.
And there we have it — 4 new recipies based on the pouch principle from Alton Brown! I’ll write up the how to later this week.
Is this week’s menu healthy?
I would ask how can it not be healthy with all those veggies? But then, I have also seen veggie recipies that are so full of fat and salt that any benefit from eating the veggie has been lost.
After I finished assembling the pouches, I found I had enough veggies left over for 1 more pouch. So I make a pouch of veggies only and will have that with chicken breast. All together, the meal prep for this week took me a little under 3 hours and I have 9 meals in the fridge: 7 dinners and 2 lunches. Add that to the 4 lunches I normally get with my spinach chicken salad, I started the week strong.
Side note: when I cook 2 meats and 2 veggies, it can take a few more hours. But then I’m also doing a lot of other stuff between each recipe and really don’t notice the time. This was get it all done in one fell swoop — an added bonus.
Along with the pouch, I cooked enough rice to have 1/2 cup of wild rice blend with each meal. The average meal is 453 calories with 10g fat, 53g carbohydrates and 40g protien for a macronutrient split of 19%/46%/35%.
I’m not a nutritionist, but I think the numbers are telling me this is going to be a healthy eating week.
