Here is a bit more detail on the sausage sheet pan dinner, how I prepare it, and how I serve to kids vs adults.
Recipe
I don’t use a recipe for this dinner, but if you need some inspiration and more concrete steps then I recommend this recipe from Number 2 Pencil as a good starting point.
How I cook this meal
I typically cut the potatoes into bite-size pieces, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and any other spices and seasonings I’m feeling that day (smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder are all good options). That goes in a 425º oven for about 20 minutes.
Once the potatoes are in the oven, I start on the other elements. Chop the broccoli and toss that with olive oil, salt, and pepper. The broccoli will only take 10-15 minutes, so try to add it when the potatoes have that much time left.
For the sausages, it depends whether you’re cooking raw or fully cooked sausages. For fully cooked sausages, I typically put them in with the broccoli. 10 minutes is plenty of time for them to warm up. Raw sausages need more like 20-25 minutes, so they’ll need to start with the potatoes.
Do a quick 1:1 mix of honey and dijon mustard as a dipping sauce. YUM!
The final result
Kid serving
Adult serving
Ratings and reactions
Husband: 9/10. Loves the sausage. Could do without green vegetables)
Kids: 9/10. They all demolished their sausages. I made 6 thinking we’d have plenty of leftovers, and it was all eaten. Potatoes were the next to go. Broccoli was sniffed and poked a few times, but otherwise ignored.
Leftovers: 8/10. We didn’t have any sausages left, but they always make for great leftovers. A few pieces heated up for lunch, or chopped and added to an omelet are easy options. The potatoes are yummy the next day, especially smashed and fried in oil so they get all crispy. Toss broccoli into a salad or just eat it cold.
I follow the recipe to the letter. It’s a perfect recipe. No notes!
I like to make a can of biscuits or crescent rolls alongside this. First off, they are always flakey and delicious and perfect, and who would not want to eat 1 or 2 of those with dinner? But also I think it makes the whole dinner more accessible for the boys. There is something about soup that scares them away, but biscuits bring them right back.
I always throw a few chicken nuggets on the plate with this meal, partly to offer some extra protein (though there are plenty of beans in the soup) and partly to offer one more option. Sometimes they one or the other, and sometimes both. It’s more of an insurance policy than anything else.
The final result
Kid serving
I try to serve a “chunkier” soup to kids, especially my 1 year old. That way, they can see the yummy stuff and it’s more accessible for them to pick out what they want.
Sometimes I also save elements of the soup, upon request. For example, I am often asked for a whole of plain cannelini beans when I cook this soup, which I am very happy to serve to that child instead of the soup.
For adults, I serve a bowl of soup with parmesan cheese on top, and a basket of biscuits to share (though they are always stolen by children and we have to quickly defend our servings).
Ratings and Reactions
Husband: 7/10. He was upset there weren’t any chicken nuggets on his plate, but very excited about biscuits and always enjoys this soup.
Kids: 6/10. 1 year old loved the soup, especially the carrots. 3 year old ate beans and chicken nuggets. 7 year old only ate the soup so that he could have another biscuit.
Leftovers: 10/10. Literally the best leftovers, especially on a cold day when I want something warm and cozy midday. This also freezes and reheats beautifully.
We had a busy weekend of sports and birthday parties, so I didn’t get a chance to do any meal prep over the weekend. I’m playing catch-up today, but still trying to get some things done so that the rest of the week will be a little bit smoother.
(1) Flourless muffins
My husband saw a reel describing flourless muffins, and requested that I make them. The reel that he shared didn’t have much by way of measurements or baking instructions, but I found this recipe from The Peanut Institute that helped fill in the gaps. We didn’t have blueberries so I subbed chopped up strawberries, and baked them as mini muffins because they seemed like they might be kind of dense (this was a good move). They definitely taste like healthy muffins with kind of a peanut butter and jelly vibe. My 1 year old thinks they’re amazing.
(2) Grocery shopping
The usual Whole Foods stock-up to start the week, including sausages for tomorrow.
(3) Hard boiled eggs
These were primarily for my lunch salads (see #4) but also an easy item to pull out for breakfast or a snack.
(4) Lunch salads
I tend to pick one breakfast and one lunch for the week. I will eat leftovers if we have them, and I generally know when that will be ahead of time, so I can plug in the gaps with at least a semi-prepped lunch plan.
This week I’ve got a basic salad with the Miso Ginger Dressing from 100 Days of Real Food. I love this dressing recipe! I make it 90% as-written, with a couple of tweaks:
I add the juice of 1 lime for some citrusy freshness
I learned a few years ago to keep ginger in the freezer. It lasts basically forever as far as I’m concerned, and is easy to grate. I don’t bother peeling it, which already saves me some time, and grated ginger is so much easier to incorporate into dressings than anything chopped.
I only put some of the ingredients into the tupperwares at the beginning of the week – basically lettuce and chopped veggies – to avoid any sogginess. This week I’ve got little gem lettuce, chopped cucumber, chopped apple, and shredded carrots.
The bowl at the bottom of the below photo is my fully prepped lunch for today, which also includes quinoa, a hardboiled egg, some peanuts and some crispy fried onions. I’ve got more quinoa and dressing in the fridge, plus the eggs that I hardboiled, so I can easily toss everything together for lunch each day. It doesn’t completely remove prep time but it cuts it down significantly.
(5) Egg cups
These are a quick and easy breakfast for anyone, and a good way to use up veggies or proteins from your fridge. I make them in a WELL-GREASED muffin tin with bacon, zucchini, bell pepper, and grated cheddar cheese.
Here is what I did today to prepare for the week ahead, in order to make things just a little bit easier.
(1) Grocery shopping
I did a big run at Whole Foods, including our household staples, shelf-stable ingredients for the week, and some salmon and ground pork sausage for Monday and Tuesday meals (Wednesday is take-out this week).
(2) Made blueberry muffins with my son
These are an easy breakfast or snack, and made for a fun activity with my 3 year old this afternoon. I love this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, though I ALWAYS forget to soften the butter ahead of time. I chop it into small pieces on a cutting board while I prep the rest of the ingredients, and usually it’s soft enough in time for that step.
(3) Roasted veggies for breakfast
I love a quick veggie scramble in the morning, but don’t want to spend time chopping and sautéing veggies in the morning while we’re racing to get everyone ready and out the door. I roasted 2 zucchinis, 1 red bell pepper, and 1 yellow onion with some olive oil and salt at 425º for 20 minutes, and will store in the fridge for the week. I’ll put a scoop of roasted veggies into a small pan with 2 scrambled eggs for a 5 minute breakfast that includes a full serving of vegetables.
(4) Made a pack of bacon
Some people keep a bottle of champagne in their fridge at all times. I keep cooked bacon. Warm up a few slices in the air fryer to go alongside breakfast, or toss it in a breakfast burrito. Add some to a sandwich when you really need that salty savory kick. Hell, eat it straight out of the fridge as a snack! Bacon always makes things great and it’s far better when you don’t have to cook it every time.
A suggestion: bake your bacon. 425º for 15-20 minutes (I check it at 15 and then decide whether it needs to be crispier. It usually does). It doesn’t destroy your stove top, and if you lay it out on a sheet of parchment, then half your clean up is taken care of once the grease cools.
Here is a deep dive on the current rotation. In this post, I detail the current dinner rotation, recipes I’m using, prep notes, and why these meals made the cut.
The New Rotation
Week 1
Week 2
Monday
Sausage and pesto pasta with peas
Pasta e fagioli soup + rolls
Tuesday
Glazed salmon + fried rice
Sheet pan sausages + roasted potatoes and broccoli
Here is a deep dive on the current rotation. In this post, I detail the current dinner rotation, recipes I’m using, prep notes, and why these meals made the cut.
The NYT Cooking recipe above is perhaps the best chili that I’ve ever made. Don’t let the long list of ingredients intimidate you. I promise you have 80% of them in your pantry already, and the other 20% will bring you great joy.
I usually serve this with canned biscuits, crescent rolls, etc. Whatever is available where you do your shopping.
Leave 1-2 servings of chili in the fridge for lunches, and then freeze the rest in Souper Cubes to reuse in 2 weeks.
The salmon recipe above links to a specific teriyaki sauce. My kids and I prefer Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce. Use what your family likes.
If you think of it, pour the teriyaki sauce over the salmon in a bowl sometime in the afternoon and store it in the fridge until you’re ready to cook. Your salmon will be MUCH more flavorful if it can marinade for a few hours before you cook it.
I did not include a recipe for rice – I serve this meal with plain jasmine rice. I usually make some extra rice and then freeze the leftovers to repurpose later.
This dinner couldn’t be easier! Pick up a package of ravioli that look good to you – cheese, spinach, veg, meat….whatever! Cook according to the instructions on the package while your broccoli roasts. You could boost the flavor with a sauce, but we serve them plain to kids and drizzle with balsamic glaze, some olive oil, and parmesan for adults.
Simmer sauce with peas and paneer or chicken
Recipe inspiration
Chop your protein of choice – paneer (Indian cheese) or chicken – into bite size pieces and saute in a pan until cooked (the paneer doesn’t really have to cook, just brown it). Pour half a bag of peas into the pan, and then dump in a jar of simmer sauce.
Notes:
Have you discovered simmer sauces yet? They’ll change your life. I like the Maya Kaimal brand (we usually buy tikka masala or butter masala, which are not spicy and very flavorful), but there are many different brands and flavors. Try a few and see what you like.
Make the soup in the crockpot, but cook the tortellini on the stove just before you’re ready to serve. If you’re going to store leftovers, keep them separate. The tortellini get bloated and soggy sitting in the soup.
Marinating salmon in yogurt and then baking it freaked me out at first, but it is one of the best ways that I’ve found to bake salmon. It comes out so tender and delicious, with very little extra effort.
If you have a few minutes in the afternoon, get the marinade for the salmon going and let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours before cooking.
I started making my own pizza dough a few years ago, and it has been hard to go back. It takes less than 15 minutes to mix and knead it, plus a couple hours of rise time, and then you have delicious and fresh pizza dough to roll out and load up with toppings. My kids love to help roll it out and decorate mini pizzas, or you can do 2 big pizzas and choose the toppings yourself.
Top the pizzas with whatever you want! We start with a jar of pizza sauce, some mozzarella, and then clean out the fridge and freezer to top it. Sauteed or roasted veggies are great (zucchini, onion, bell pepper, mushrooms are some of my favorites), plus any proteins you’ve got lying around like leftover chicken breast, sausage crumbles, pepperoni.
Melissa eats her pizza salad IN her slice of pizza, but I like to have it as a side with fresh pizza. Do you!
These 2 recipes have different spins on stir fry, but you can do literally whatever you want and it will be delicious. I love to add some chopped pineapple at the end for some sweet bites, and sometimes add in shrimp as well. Anything goes.
Double the number of meatballs that you need for dinner, and store the extras in the freezer. In 2 weeks when you cook this again, you can pull them straight out of the freezer and just warm them up (I like to use the air fryer for this)
Both of the caesar salad recipes above include ingredients and instructions to make your own dressing, which of course is optional. If you want to make the dressing yourself, it will keep for about 2 weeks, so you could easily use it twice for dinners, or just use it for lunch salads in the meantime.
Why These Meals?
The fall is generally a very busy time of year for us, with a lot of new routines and activities. With that in mind, I made this menu to be very simple and straightforward so that I can put my time and thought into getting everyone where they need to be, rather than making a complicated dinner every night.
On the first cool day of fall, I am always eager to break out my crockpot and start making chili and soup, so my top priority was getting multiple of those recipes in here. We’ve got a busy evening of activities on Mondays, so that was a logical night to do a crockpot meal this fall. You could easily swap this to another day when you’ve got lots of activities to drive to, or when everyone is eating dinner at different times.
Our house is cleaned every other Wednesday afternoon, and I hate ruining it immediately by cooking, so we always do take out that day.
On weekends, when it is decent outside (above about 50º F), my husband wants to grill, so I leave the weekends for him to do that. He’ll usually grill burgers, brats, or chicken breasts one night over the weekend and we get take out or go out to eat the other night. Because of that, I left the weekends off this meal plan entirely.
Grocery Shopping and Prep
Having a meal plan for the week is a great first step, but it falls apart if you don’t follow through. Here’s how I structure my week to make sure I have everything that I need to cook the meals in my 2-week rotation.
(1) Keep your recipes in one place. Pick out the recipes that you want to make and put them in a note in your phone. This keeps everything accessible in the grocery store, in the kitchen, or when your family asks what’s for dinner.
(2) Build your master ingredient list. Copy-paste the list of ingredients from each recipe into the same note. Yes this is a bit tedious, but I promise it is worth the time and effort now. Future-you will be grateful!
(3) Do one main grocery run on Sunday or Monday. I buy everything on my ingredient list that is shelf stable, plus proteins for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday dinners.
(4) Do a quick midweek grocery refresh. I go back to the grocery store midweek for proteins and any other super perishable items for Thursday, Friday, and weekend dinners. This is a quick and targeted grocery run.
(5) Use your freezer strategically. I keep a number of proteins on hand in the freezer so I don’t have to constantly buy those. Costco ground beef and frozen chicken breasts are MVPs in this house! Set a recurring calendar reminder to thaw what you need the day before you’re cooking so they’ll be ready when you are.
The Meal Plan That Stuck 