In for 2024: leftovers

This is a series that’s lived ephemerally on my Instagram stories for the last year, but I’ve decided to give it a permanent home on the blog. The essence of Dining In Weekly is a way of holding myself accountable to both the groceries in my fridge and my credit card account balance by ensuring my weekly provisions don’t go to waste. I’ve traditionally never been one to meal prep, however, since moving to New York to start a job in finance, I’ve been short on the time and energy required to produce Michelin star quality dinner à la maison. I’d be remiss not to mention that my tech job in San Francisco also provided complementary breakfast, lunch and dinner at the office as an employee perk, so there was never any pressure to plan my grocery expenditure. My new job does not offer the same amenities and for the first time in my adult life, I am faced with the challenge of feeding myself on a budget. Without listing a plan of action in advance, I’ve found that I have a tendency to waltz into the supermarket on Sunday with illusions of culinary grandeur, only to find myself on Friday with an extensive grocery bill but a fridge full of takeout boxes, mouldy foreign cheese and rotting organic greens.

Through trial and error in the past year, I’ve made some slight improvements to the grocery model:
1. There is nothing inherently wrong with leftovers, but I personally cannot stand having the same meal more than twice in the same week. As I live alone, it means I have to significantly adjust proportions for any recipe I make to yield no more than two servings.
2. Midweek slump is real. By Wednesday, I won’t have the strength to chop an onion after 6pm so it’s best to get all the heavy lifting done over the weekend and limit the amount of effort during the workweek to boiling pasta.
3. Consolidating elements between meals is the biggest gamechanger. Variety is the spice of life but preparing 5 different meals over the weekend eats into time that could be spent decompressing from the weekend with friends and family. Grouping recipes weekly by ingredient themes can simplify meal prepping in the long run e.g. roasting a chicken that can be eaten over rice, in a noodle soup or in a sandwich.
4. Don’t lie to yourself: you will still eat out. Unless you have monk-like mastery of self or a non-existent social calendar, it’s delusionary to pretend you will eat every single meal at home. I’m still working to force myself into reality on this front by allotting space for dining out.

With these lessons in mind, I’ve developed the operating model of grocery shopping on Saturday, meal prepping on Sunday and using the week to mentally plan the menu for the following week.

Breakfast:
Irish Spiced Oatmeal with Cream and Crunchy Sugar
I’m an oatmeal stan, there is nothing that screams Breakfast of Champions like a steaming bowl of oatmeal. The beauty of this recipe is that I can pop the oats in the oven whilst I shower and get dressed for work and it will be ready to eat by the time I’m done. I adjust to a ½ cup of dry oats for a single serving and top with fresh fruit to make it that little bit healthier. The original recipe is on NYTimes Cooking for those with a subscription (I am not a subscriber), or over here for us cheapskates.
Toast
Breakfast does not get quicker or more portable than this.

Mains
Bianca Johnson’s Crispy Chicken and Rice
There are a million reasons to love this recipe but I’ll give you three:
1. It maximises the flavour of the chicken by using every part of the wings meaning it doesn’t need a whole lot of extras to make it shine.
2. It’s easily customisable, I often substitute different kinds of greens or play with the flavours by adding miso to the stock.
3. It yields plenty of extra stock to use in future recipes
This has become my favourite recipe in the last year and I can guarantee you that it will feature in future editions of Dining In Weekly.
Recipe can be found on Gourmet Traveller.

Baked Rosemary Chicken Meatballs with Tomato Orzo
Meatballs optional in this recipe, I chose to sub the spinach with kale and double the amount used in the orzo recipe for an extra boost of greens. The stock from the crispy chicken recipe proved useful here where the orzo is cooked in the same manner as risotto, with stock added continuously as the orzo cooks. As a gift to my future self, I froze half of the meatballs to use at a later date and opted to leave the leftovers as a meatless work lunch.

Roasted Vegetable Ravioli
The ultimate midweek lazy meal. I recently discovered a small Italian store by my apartment that sells fresh ravioli and this week I opted for the roasted vegetable filling. Ready in less than 6 minutes, I tossed the ready ravioli with olive oil and topped with salt, pepper, chilli flaked and parmesan.

Bonus: Lamb dumplings
Having arrived in New York from South Africa on Friday, I was suffering from jetlag and unable to stay awake past 6pm. Last Sunday, I folded just over 2 dozen of these Lamb Meatballs in a bid to fight the sleepies and make it to 9pm. Another gift to future me, these lamb meatballs are delightful in chicken stock and are an excellent winter warmer
Recipe can be found here.

Secrets spilled, let me know if you have any other tips for prepping work lunches or winter dinners! Happy meal prepping, friends!