This is a quick and easy to make dinner. The lentils cook in about 25 minutes. I started off by sautéing chopped onions, minced garlic, sliced carrots, and celery. Next came the sausage, lentils and chicken stock. With five minutes to go I added the kale. This dinner really fills you up and is very economical.
To make this dish vegetarian or vegan use vegetable stock and replace the turkey sausage with mushrooms or a non-meat link or crumbled sausage.
For dinner on Saturday we had very affordable but delicious pieces of tuna. The frozen 10 oz. pieces were on sale for $3.99! John marinated them in soy sauce, ginger and garlic powders, and Old Bay. After a short marination he rubbed on a little sesame oil and patted on white and black sesame seeds. The searing was done in a hot cast iron pan for two and a half minutes per side. Perfect.
I reheated some previously cooked rice and cooked the broccoli in a little sesame oil until it was crunchy. As a sauce I made Vietnamese nuoc cham using the following recipe and tweaking it to our taste. This was a company grade dinner.
Sarah loves to make bowls. She came up with the idea of a burrito bowl when I was trying to figure out what to do with shredded chicken other than make enchiladas. Other people make burrito bowls as seen here –
https://www.budgetbytes.com/poor-mans-burrito-bowls/
We added a few more components. From the bottom of the bowl we layered in rice, corn, black beans, chicken, cheese, cabbage, salsa, avocado, cilantro, sour cream, and tortilla chips. It was super tasty and easy to make.
When Sarah and I were talking about what she would make for dinner we decided she should try something new. She suggested she would like to make a pasta dish using the chile crisp I had recently bought. We looked through recipes and found one from NYTimes Cooking called Chile Crisp Fettucine Alfredo with spinach.
Using what we had on hand she subbed in spaghetti for the fettucine and kale for the spinach. I was concerned that it was going to be blazing spicy hot but instead it came out rather bland. We all added extra chile crisp to up the spice level. Also it needed quite a bit of salt. We were disappointed with the results and I do not know if we will make it again unless we do quite a bit of reworking the recipe.
Step one: buy a rotisserie chicken and remove one of the breasts disposing the skin
Step two: make chicken gravy and mashed potatoes from packets
Step three: warm sliced chicken breast in gravy and sauté vegetables
Step four: enjoy
Mostly we do not use “instant” ingredients but on a busy day with not a lot of time for baking a chicken or peeling, boiling, and mashing potatoes we have shortcuts to use.
Yum! We love grilled hamburgers night! Look at the cook on my hamburger. It is medium rare and has a nice crust on the outside. Yay, John, for an outstanding hamburger. It was voted by Sarah and me as best burger of 2025 (so far.)
I made a salad, ho hum.
We were supposed to be having chicken tonight but there were no rotisserie chickens available at Costco when Sarah stopped to pick one up. So we looked at our menu and decided we had all the ingredients for Afghani dal and went forward with a new dinner plan. Dal is another name for lentils and in this case we used red lentils (coral colored) which turn yellow when you cook them. They are quick cooking so are a great choice for weeknight dinners.
Here’s a link to the recipe I use.
We used tilapia to make our fish tacos but you could use any white fish. The fish cooks quickly in a sauté pan for only about 8 minutes depending on the thickness of your fish. I made a mango and tomato salsa using a drained can of Rotel and enhancing it with cut up mango, cilantro, fresh cherry tomatoes, and onion. To make the black beans and rice spicy I added jalapeño, green onions, and cilantro.
Omnivore 