Week of Weeknight Meals: November 2021

Before we get too far into December, it’s time to me to share a peek into what a week of our weeknight meals looked like in November. This post is part of my monthly Week of Weeknight Meals series that documents our weeknight dinners with photos snapped in real-time — no fancy food photography allowed!

As I was putting this post together I noticed a very obvious theme to our dinners last week. Nearly every recipe was made in the Instant Pot!  Clearly the colder months have me craving warm, comforting meals and the Instant Pot makes it easy to quickly assemble meals that taste like they took all day to cook.

Hopefully one of our weeknight meals pops out at you if you’re on the lookout for dinner inspiration for the week ahead!

Week of Weeknight Meals: November 2021

Monday: Instant Pot Butternut Squash Chicken Curry

During the colder months of the year, this Instant Pot Butternut Squash Chicken Curry is one of my all-time favorite recipes. I make it on repeat because it is veggie-packed and full of flavor and tastes amazing as leftovers for lunch the next day. I made the curry in the Instant Pot (it’s also a slow cooker-friendly recipe!) and served it with brown rice and a garnish of fresh cilantro.

Tuesday: Instant Pot Carnitas

I whipped up caritas using my go-to recipe and we ate them with brown rice and black beans and parsley because we were out of cilantro. I was kicking myself a bit because we were low on groceries so I didn’t have any tomatoes or peppers and onions to sauté to include with this dish but it was still good even in its simplicity.

Wednesday: Instant Pot Chicken Soup

I didn’t follow a recipe for this soup but combined a bunch of chicken thighs, carrots, onions, celery and chicken broth in the Instant Pot before seasoning everything with dried thyme, sage, rosemary, salt and pepper. I then cooked everything on high pressure for 10 minutes before removing the chicken, shredding it and putting it back in the Instant Pot. I then stirred in a bunch of frozen corn and frozen shelled edamame and LOVED this soup so much! I know the edamame might seem like a random addition, but my mom occasionally adds edamame to her chicken soup and I’ve always loved the crunch and texture so I took a page out of her book with that one.

Thursday: Instant Pot Fajita Bowls

This dinner might look familiar to you because it was so delicious that I couldn’t resist sharing it in my Things I’m Loving Friday roundup of favorites! I made fajita bowls for our family and they came together easily thanks to the Instant Pot. I combined 2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs with 1 pound of frozen sliced bell peppers, 1 sliced onion, 1 3/4 tablespoons fajita seasoning (I used Fajita Magic) and 1 cup reduced sodium chicken broth in the Instant Pot and cooked it on high pressure for 9 minutes before shredding the chicken and dumping everything in a colander to drain off the broth. I then served the chicken over brown rice with black beans and avocado and it was so good! We often do some variation of salsa chicken in the crock pot so this was a nice way to change things up a bit!

Friday: Pizza Night

We spent our Friday night at Great Wolf Lodge so our dinner looked like pizza in our hotel room! We ordered a veggie pizza for me and Ryan and a cheese pizza for the boys (and us, too) and went to town! We also had two Greek salads on the side for some greens.

Questions of the Day

Have you noticed a theme or have you found yourself gravitating toward certain meals lately now that colder temperatures have arrived? 

What was the best thing you ate for dinner last week?