Hey hey everyone! Wow, it was a gorgeous summer evening in the ‘burbs today! And as luck would have it, once the afternoon run-around was over, everyone was going to be home for most of the evening. Perfect opportunity for a relaxed dinner prep and al fresco dining. On a weeknight no less. Important to be prepared for such an opportunity, which brings me back to the title…Summer Meal Planning.
Because actually I don’t really want to spend much time meal planning, even only dinner planning, in the summer. Do you? Much better to be prepared with a stocked freezer and pantry and only routine grocery shopping required. Then you can just check through your kitchen and say Oh I Think We’ll Have This Tonight and it’s already half done. So if you’ve ever been to a place like Supperworks you will understand what I’m saying here. If not, you should really try it out. Keep your eyes open and learn a lot, and transfer the system to your home kitchen.
So on this day I was doing three different recipes of marinated chicken thighs for the BBQ. I had bought organic chicken thighs in bulk from a farm on this trip. And the recipe takes maybe an hour from start to finish. The recipe for the teriyaki we ate today is below.
First you find as many containers as you need that will hold a large freezer ziploc bag. Anything will do…measuring cups, salad spinners, the crock that holds your utensils.
Next you take out all your ingredients and just start measuring them into each bag. Easy. Now as I’m pretending to be so organized and efficient we might all be wondering why I have three bottles of soy sauce on the go in my kitchen. Hmmm.
Anyways, once every bag contains all the ingredients, you zip them closed, mush them around, flatten them down and freeze them.
That way they take up hardly any space in the freezer. And defrost a lot faster when you remember to take them out later rather than sooner. And then you can pour yourself a lovely beverage and crank up some Imagine Dragons on iTunes.
A bit of your favourite rice and some chopped up veg or salad, gourmet chicken on the grill. Oh let’s eat out on the patio, shall we? Quite spectacular for a summer weeknight.
Of course, tomorrow night we’ll be back to late arrivals home from the day then everyone off in different directions with a bit of delivery pizza in between. All the more reason to do it well while you can. Bon appetit.