simple meals

As much as I'm enjoying the hunt for new recipes - and I'm pleased with the success we've had at finding new meals that we like - I'm starting to miss the very simple three-part meals that we typically eat.  The classic is "meat, starch, veg" but we've adapted it recently to be "meat, veg, _____" with the third item being more veg, more meat, or some sort of protein booster like cottage cheese, or beans, or eggs.

This morning I'm going through my meal planner and creating single ingredient meals, like "green beans" or "cottage cheese" so that I can easily create a meal by dragging and dropping my three items.  I think next week I'll do chicken, steamed broccoli, and pinto beans - maybe add a little string cheese in there.  The advantage to adding it in the meal planner is that I can drag'n'drop onto my chosen day, but also, it auto-populates the ingredients into my shopping list.  For my pinto beans I will need beans, red pepper flakes, garlic salt, and onion.

Sometimes the simpler the meal, the more we savor the individual ingredients.  I know it makes prep easier and cheaper.  I also find simple meals easier to adapt to our schedule, since I can often pre-prep meals and then we're ready to go within a few minutes if I know Tim isn't sure when he'll wrap work up that evening, or if I have an errand to run right before dinner.