One of my goals with this blog is to include what we are eating at home. As I mentioned on my about page, I’m fascinated with what people eat and how they plan their meals. When I lived alone, if I ate at home, I would eat things like cheese and crackers or maybe a frozen something for dinner. Well, I’ve come a long way from those days. Our move into focusing on cleaner eating has been great and was actually easier than expected. The big challenge for us is not wasting food; to avoid this planning is required.

Our general routine is to plan and shop on Sunday morning three to four meals for the work week (not to include weekends). This gives us the flexibility to go out to dinner one night or to pick something up one night because we don’t feel like cooking. The weekends we leave open and just figure them out as we go. P and I do all of our planning, shopping, and cooking together (well I may do a bit more planning and P may do a bit more cooking).

Pinterest has been a great resource for planning and finding new recipes. We will repeat some recipes but try to do at least one new recipe a week. I have a secret board labeled “Meals this Week” that we use for planning purposes. This makes finding recipes when it is time to cook so much easier. I try to write a comment on the original pin of any changes made or notes for next time. If a recipe is particularly good then I will copy it into the Menu Planner app (so if a blog disappears we still have the recipe).

Here is one of the meals we enjoyed this week:

Veggie Soba Bowl

Adapted from Epicurious "Spicy Soba Noodles with Shiitakes and Cabbage"~Maggie Ruggiero

For sauce

• 1/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1 to 2 teaspoons roasted red chili paste
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 2 tablespoon packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon sriracha or to taste

For noodles

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (I use sunflower seed oil)
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped peeled ginger
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
• 10 oz fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced
• 2 cups broccoli florets (about 2 broccoli heads)
• 8 cups (@1 1/4 pound) Napa cabbage, thinly sliced
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced
• 8 to 9 ounces soba (buckwheat noodles)
• Toasted sesame seeds (optional as topping)

Preparation

Whisk together all sauce ingredients until brown sugar and paste is dissolved, then set aside.

Prepare pot of salted water for soba noodles (2 tablespoons salt for 6 quarts water). Heat oil in wok or large skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers, then sauté ginger and garlic, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add shiitakes and sauté, stirring frequently, until tender and starting to brown, about 6 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, add broccoli and sauté for about 3 minutes. Start noodles-see below. Then add cabbage and most of scallions (reserve about a tablespoon for garnish) and cook, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is crisp-tender, about 6 minutes. Add sauce and simmer 2 minutes (a bit longer is ok if you are still waiting on the noodles).

While cabbage is cooking, cook soba in a pasta pot of boiling salted water (2 tablespoons salt for 6 quarts water) until noodles are just tender, about 6 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse under cool water to stop cooking and remove excess starch, then drain well again. Transfer to the pan with the vegetable mixture or combine both in a large bowl. Serve sprinkled with reserved scallions and if using sesame seeds.

Serves Four: this was enough to have 5 bowls and two potions left over for lunch the next day.

Notes 

• This would also work really well over rice.
• The mushrooms may stick a bit while cooking
• This does end with quite a bit of liquid sauce at the end, it does not really thicken up.

I created a Pinterest page for Food, Booze, & Baggage. My goal for each week is to share our “Meals this Week” pins there…so head on over and see what other dishes we enjoyed this past week.