Week of Weeknight Meals: March 2021

Pull up a chair at our kitchen island, my friends, because I’m coming at you today with a peek into last week’s weeknight meals. In keeping with my monthly series, this post gives you a glimpse into our weeknight dinners with pictures snapped right before we dug in — no fancy schmancy food styling allowed!

Our evening meals last week looked like a lot of simple dishes, an Instant Pot recipe and seafood in the form of salmon, too! Hopefully one of the meals below will give you some dinner ideas this week if you’re in a bit of a meal planning rut!

Week of Weeknight Meals 2021

Monday: Instant Pot Butternut Squash Chicken Curry

Gotta love a good Instant Pot meal on a dreary day! This Instant Pot butternut squash chicken curry recipe is a favorite in our house thanks to the velvety, creamy texture from the mashed butternut squash and I love how the various spices give it such a comforting flavor profile. I intentionally made this one on Monday so we could have leftovers on hand for lunch since this is the kind of recipe that tastes fantastic as leftovers, since the flavors have additional time to develop.

Tuesday: Paleo Marinated Chicken Thighs with Sweet Potatoes, Black Beans, Grains and Guacamole

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… my Paleo chicken thigh marinade is probably the blog recipe we make most often in our house. It’s just so darn easy to whip up and since I have it memorized, it’s a go-to we enjoy quite often. I paired the baked chicken thighs with a side of mashed sweet potatoes and a mix of black beans and grains (from ALDI’s Simply Nature 90 second grains pouch) topped with guacamole. It was an easy dinner and a tasty one, too!

Wednesday: Salmon with Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Leeks and Mixed Grains

(Don’t mind my same pajama sweatshirt two nights in a row.) 

Salmon is one of my absolute favorite foods (I am a seafood lover through and through!) and I kept Wednesday night’s salmon nice and simple by rubbing it with a bit of olive oil and sprinkling it with garlic salt and pepper before baking it until it flaked with a fork. On the side, we had roasted Brussels sprouts and leeks and more of ALDI’s Simply Nature 90-second grains. Clearly I didn’t take the time to prep grains at all this week so I was all about convenience and those 90-second pouches save us in a pinch!

Thursday: Easy Orange Juice Marinated Chicken Thighs with Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans

I was kicking myself on Thursday night for not marinating more chicken on Tuesday since we had another packet of chicken thighs in the fridge but thankfully chicken marinades are easy enough to whip up so I made a batch of my orange juice marinated chicken thighs to served with mashed sweet potato and steamed green beans. This dinner actually spurred on a conversation about our family’s favorite vegetables and I said that in their purest form (aka not all doctored up in some way), mine are green beans. So simple and so tasty! Ryan and Chase voted for carrots and Ryder said bell peppers which technically are a fruit but we’ll give that to him! Rhett is currently loving butternut squash (another fruit, I know, but it tastes like a veggie to me)!

Friday: Turkey Vegetable Meatloaf with Wild Rice Salad

When I shared this turkey vegetable meatloaf recipe on the blog earlier this month, I told you guys it’s one we’re making on repeat lately and that continues to hold true! I love it so much because it’s such a flexible recipe and tastes great with ground turkey, chicken or beef and you can use almost any veggies you have on hand. On Friday, Ryder was my little kitchen helper and we swapped out the zucchini in the original recipe for some cherry tomatoes we had on hand that were on their last leg. So good! I also whipped up modified version of Cookie and Kate’s wild rice salad and it was the perfect bright and zesty side dish.

Question of the Day 

Did anything particularly delicious pop up on your dinner menu last week?

Any good recipes to share?