Salad: 1950s Style

"Welcome home, honey, we're having salad for dinner."

I'm fairly certain that in their 50+ years of marriage my grandmom never once said that to my grandad. Salads were side dishes only. But back then grandmom also kept a tin can full of bacon grease on her stove.

There's a restaurant in midtown NYC called Penelope that serves a warm meatball salad. Oxi-moron? Maybe. Delicious? Definitely. Manly? You betcha. Filling? Absolutely.

These are turkey meatballs loosely based on this Giada recipe.

But I like to add rosemary because it's yummy and in my front yard.

Every salad I make turns out like a Greek salad

but you can put them over any kind you like.

PS. This dish also passes my "I have a 5-month old and can't spend more than 30 minutes making dinner" test.

PPS. Making a lot of meatballs and freezing them seems smart to me. Then I could make spaghetti, subs, and more meatball salads!!

I will cook dinner. I will cook dinner. I will...

Ok, so I prefer the NYC/London/Paris way of shopping where you stop by the tiny, overpriced grocery store on your walk home from the subway and just buy the ingredients for that night's dinner. Sure, it costs a lot and it's time consuming, but you look so cute walking home with a baguette sticking out of your tiny shopping bag.

However, when I shopped like that I had one less 10-week old baby and one more job. So here's my first stab at meal planning (i.e. making the most meals with the least hassle).

It all started with a whopping 15 chicken and veggie kabobs....

(Marinated in a combo of tex-mex chix marinade, olive oil, & beer and served with roasted rosemary sweet potatoes.)

The next day I pulled my chicken and veggies off the skewers and made chicken fajita tacos for lunch. I even tossed in the leftover sweet potatoes which is probably wrong but it tasted very, very right.

And last but according to Brian not at all least...Taco Salad!

(I did buy a fresh ear of corn, cut it off the cob, and saute it in butter before adding my chicken and veggies to the pan which made it feel less like leftovers.)

I really channelled my Grandmom this week. (She's the one who taught me how to cook. We literally had lessons one summer.) She told me she wore a dress and full make up everyday when she was a stay-at-home mom. Amazing, huh? Yesterday, I changed out of my PJs at 6:50pm and put on a dress 10 minutes before Brian got home. Don't tell Grandmom...