Meal Planning S2: Adjusting Meals

I never know exactly what I’ll get when I begin to implement my meal plan.  For instance, this time I went shopping I couldn’t find green onions and had to use shallots.  Welcome to the fun! This is why learning to adjust meals in a meal plan is so important.

Lunch Adjustments:

Shopping day lunch was chicken and rice.  I purchased the chicken already cooked and deboned it in Shop and Cook Meat.  This gave me some chicken to go with the rice and more to prepare chicken and spinach lasagna together.

Supper Adjustments:

The day I went shopping I made beef and noodles again for supper.  However, I tried to add as much liquid, ideally broth, as the noodle recipe calls for.  This was far too much fluid.  In addition, I had purchased bone broth, not beef broth which is much more bitter.

So below are the seasonings used to recover this recipe and it did turn out quite nice.

Using Previous Prepared Meals:

For starters, the frozen lemon Tilapia from two series ago, I paired with a Rice’a’roni Rice Pilaf.  The Tilapia took longer than expected to cook from frozen.  The fish fell apart as expected but the coating fell off just as easily.

I can’t say that the butter, parmesan, and spices being frozen on the fish worked out too well. 

First Attempt at Pan-searing Steak:

I utilized a recipe book to get the temperatures and times.  In a previous post, I had salted and peppered the flat iron steak to freeze.  After thawing it overnight, it was ready by super time to cook.

I pan-seared both sides per America’s Test Kitchen instructions and pulled out and thawed frozen rice pilaf.  I’d say it turned out nearly perfect.  It could have used more salt and perhaps more time for the salt and pepper to take effect before freezing.  I also threw in some old frozen broccoli and stirred it up in the pan.

The broccoli was not a winner.  I’m leaning toward baking it in the oven next time. This frozen broccoli package was getting old and I needed to use it up.

I’ll be redoing this series in a few weeks and show you further improvements and additional meals added to the plan.