The week of Martha’s pre-prepped dinners has come to a close at last. If you read my posts from the last 5 days, you’ll see that in the Sept issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, the “Sunday Strategy” article details how to shop and prep in advance for 5 weekday meals. It sounded like a fun experiment.

Last night was the final meal and let me tell you I am a little tired of these pre-prepped ingredients at this point! Dinner was Pizza 2 Ways. You buy 2 pizza dough balls (I bought whole wheat) and on your prep day, you press them into rectangular baking sheets and freeze them. Let me tell you, It was a huge pain having those two baking sheets in the freezer all week. It was also a huge pain having those two baking sheets in use all week.

On cooking night, you spread olive oil on the crusts. On one pizza you spread some chopped up roasted tomatoes (pre-prepped) then plop some ricotta cheese around, sprinkle with Parmesan and salt and pepper. On the other pizza you’re supposed to thinly slice your pre-prepped potatoes and spread them. Sprinkle with rosemary and salt and pepper.

I cheated and took one pizza crust made a regular cheese pizza so that the family would not complain. On the other, I made half with the tomato/ricotta, 1/4 with the potato and 1/4 with some fresh tomatoes, broccoli and mozzarella just to have some veggies. I also cooked up tri-colored Swiss chard I bought at the farmer’s market and served that with a little butter and balsamic vinegar to have some more veggies.

Both of Martha’s pizzas got a thumbs down. Let’s start with the potato one. It’s just pizza dough, oil, potato, rosemary and salt and pepper. Blech. That’s not a pizza. In my opinion, potato does NOT belong on pizza. It was just yucky. The tomato/ricotta one was also not good. There just wasn’t enough topping. Ricotta has very little flavor, so this was just bland. The veggie pizza I made was ok – at least it had cheese. If I had added some garlic it would have been great. The plain cheese pizza was good, so at least there was no revolt.

I would say overall, I did not find this week to be a success. Only one night was a stand out winner – the salmon. The spaghetti night was pretty good too. The other nights are not worth bothering with. By the time this last dinner rolled around I was so sick of roasted tomatoes and baby red potatoes that I may never want to see them again! While pre-prepping does save some time, I would rather take the extra 15 minutes each night so that I can make what want fresh. I’m glad I tried the experiment, but I have to say that’s definitely not something Martha herself would ever do.

The week of Martha’s pre-prepped dinners has come to a close at last. If you read my posts from the last 5 days, you’ll see that in the Sept issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, the “Sunday Strategy” article details how to shop and prep in advance for 5 weekday meals. It sounded like a … Read more →

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m following the “Sunday Strategy” in Martha Stewart Everyday Food where you shop and prep for a week of cooking and then have quick meals to make each night.

Last night was Seared Fish with Crispy Potatoes and Green Sauce (and a side of tomatoes). This meal had a lot of prep done in advance. I roasted the tomatoes, made the green sauce, and boiled the potatoes in advance. All I had to do to make dinner was cook my fish and stick the potatoes in the oven to crisp. I was a little confused with the “green sauce”. First of all, it’s not really a sauce, more of a pesto, since it is thick and not liquid at all. The recipe did not say to warm it, so I served it room temp.

I grilled my fish (instead of pan frying) and mine was skinless, which is fine with me since I don’t like fish skin very much. This dinner was simple and easy. The potatoes crisped nicely in the oven and were delicious. The salmon tasted terrific with the green sauce – it really gave it some zing. The previously roasted tomatoes were to be served room temp. I wasn’t wild about these, but they were ok. I also steamed some broccoli to go with this meal. It was very satisfying and I enjoyed having the sauce for the fish (it’s made of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, basil and mint, ground up in the Cuisinart). This felt like a full meal to me (unlike the dinner from the night before).

Boiling the potatoes in advance made crisping them very easy to do – I’ll remember this trick and use it again. And I’ll definitely be making the green sauce, or a version thereof again in the future. Points for this one – a quick and tasty meal.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m following the “Sunday Strategy” in Martha Stewart Everyday Food where you shop and prep for a week of cooking and then have quick meals to make each night. Last night was Seared Fish with Crispy Potatoes and Green Sauce (and a side of tomatoes). This meal had a lot of … Read more →

In the September issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, there’s an interesting section called Sunday Strategy. The idea is you shop for the whole week, do some cooking prep work on Sunday and then you can make quick and easy dinners every week night through the week based on the prep. I’ve seen this concept elsewhere – there are entire books about this for people interested.

I decided to dive in and give it a try – and what better week than the first week of school when things are nuts in general and some fast meals are just the ticket. I’m a little off schedule though. You’re supposed to prep on Sunday and make the first meal on Monday. With the Labor Day weekend, everything got pushed back a day, so I prepped on Monday and cooked the first meal on Tuesday.

My grocery bill for the entire week was $38.77 – however I had many things in my pantry/freezer (and from my dad’s garden) already: chicken breasts, spaghetti, salmon, lettuce, some tomatoes, onions, garlic, oil, sugar, cumin, vinegar, Parmesan cheese, and bacon – these are the pricey items, so I think you can add another $25 for that at least, so we’re looking at about $65 for the week, or a little over $11 per night. Keep in mind that you’re making really only one dish per night with this, and for my family, that doesn’t cut it, so I’ve got to add extra veggies or bread to go along with it most nights.

The first dinner was Marinated Chicken with Cucumber-Mint Salad. You marinate the chicken (tenders) on your prep day in olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, garlic and salt and pepper. On your cooking day, you mix sliced cucumber with Greek yogurt, lemon juice, salt, pepper and fresh mint. You heat pitas in the toaster oven (first time I’ve seen Martha reference a toaster oven!). You cook some onion in oil then add in the chicken pieces and cook those.

This was very easy to pull together. It didn’t feel like much of a meal to us though. We ate it with the chicken and cucumber salad in the pita, so it was

basically just a pita for dinner. I supplemented with some honey dill carrots and watermelon.

The chicken did have a nice flavor. That is one of the big benefits of this weekly meal plan – things have time to marinate and really soak up flavors. If I’m rushing around at 5:30 on a weekday there isn’t time for something to marinate properly. The chicken was tender and the cumin added some nice flavor. I loved the cucumber/yogurt/mint salad, which gave a nice fresh taste. I used whole wheat pitas and it all tasted good together.

In the September issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food, there’s an interesting section called Sunday Strategy. The idea is you shop for the whole week, do some cooking prep work on Sunday and then you can make quick and easy dinners every week night through the week based on the prep. I’ve seen this concept … Read more →