Wednesday: Five PlanetBoxes, Adaptable Steak Stir-Fry & My First Long-Form Cooking Video

Got up this morning and kept breakfast simple with more of the oatmeal from yesterday, bacon and toast.

My kiddo with the new expander is definitely struggling more today. We’re right in that first 48-hour window, so eating is still a challenge.

For breakfast, he had one of the chocolate Orgain protein drinks from Costco. Right now I’m not terribly concerned with making every meal look like a normal meal. I just want to keep calories and protein going into him while his mouth is sore.

Then we got to work on school….but about 20 minutes later Daphne was still hungry so she made a brunch grilled cheese.

Five PlanetBoxes, Five Plates and Not Enough Counter Space

Lunch today was a little bit of everything because I was simultaneously making today’s lunch and packing tomorrow’s co-op lunches.

At one point I had five PlanetBoxes laid out, five plates for today’s lunch, my own lunch, plus all the snack containers.

I need a bigger counter.

Although let’s be serious. If I had a bigger counter, I would just fill that one too.

But this is one of my favorite ways to get ahead. If I’m already cutting fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat and all the other little lunch components, I might as well do it once and make two meals.

Working Through the Leftovers

Today’s lunch was very much a “what needs to leave this refrigerator?” situation.

We finished the last of the Teton Waters Ranch Polish sausages I cooked over the weekend.

I made another fresh batch of macaroni and cheese for my son because that has been one of the biggest successes with his expander. I purposely made it really saucy and soft so he doesn’t have to do much chewing. I also cut up some of the leftover polish sausage really small and some deli meat ham that he enjoys….it worked pretty well!

Two of the kids had grilled chicken with pasta, which helped us work through more of that big batch of chicken I grilled yesterday.

And I made myself a salad with grilled chicken and a really quick peanut dressing.

Quick Peanut Dressing

I don’t measure this one. I just mix together:

• Peanut butter
• Rice wine vinegar
• Honey
• Garlic powder
• Salt
• Pepper

Add enough vinegar to thin the peanut butter into a dressing consistency, then adjust the honey and seasonings to taste.

It’s ridiculously simple and really good with grilled chicken.

Tomorrow’s Co-op Lunches

Meanwhile, I was filling all those PlanetBoxes for tomorrow.

It’s very much a grazing-style lunch around here, so everybody’s box looks a little different. Some kids got sandwiches, plus lots of little fruits, vegetables and sides.

And then there was my expander kid.

He told me he thought he could eat cold pizza tomorrow if I cut it into really small pieces.

Perfect.

I baked one of the inexpensive frozen Costco pizzas specifically for his lunch and cut it up small enough that hopefully he can manage it without doing much chewing.

At this point, I’m leaning heavily into foods he’s motivated to figure out how to eat.

He wants the pizza.

We’re going to try the pizza.

I’ll show you all the finished PlanetBoxes tomorrow.

Turning Leftover Steak Into Dinner

Tonight I used more of the steak my mom sent home with me to make a steak stir-fry.

My 11-year-old actually did a bunch of the prep earlier in the day and chopped all the vegetables for me.

She did:

• Mushrooms
• Bell peppers
• Carrots
• Onion
• Broccoli

Which meant that when dinner rolled around, I was mostly just assembling.

I made a pot of rice and got a large pan nice and hot for the vegetables.

And this is where I think it’s really easy to turn something like stir-fry into an adaptable dinner without actually cooking two dinners.

Pull Things Out Before You Add the Sauce

I started sautéing all those vegetables.

Once they were cooked, I pulled a few plain vegetables out of the pan.

Then I scooted the remaining vegetables over and added my already-cooked steak.

Before adding anything else, I reserved some of that steak too.

I put the plain steak into a separate small pan with a little fat and quickly pan-seared it until it was hot.

So before I’ve added a drop of stir-fry sauce, I already have:

Plain rice. Plain vegetables. Plain steak.

Dinner is ready for the kids who want all their food separate.

Then I can finish the actual stir-fry for everybody else.

My Quick Stir-Fry Sauce

I used the same stir-fry sauce I’ve been making lately:

• 1/2 cup broth — I used beef broth with steak
• About 1/3 cup liquid aminos or soy sauce
• Splash of honey
• About 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• About 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• About 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• Small pinch of salt
• Cracked black pepper
• Splash of rice wine vinegar and sesame oil

Whisk it together in a glass measuring cup and pour it over the hot meat and vegetables.

Because the pan is already hot, the cornstarch thickens the sauce really quickly. Toss everything together, and dinner is basically done.

That’s the beauty of using leftover cooked protein for stir-fry.

You’re not cooking the meat. You’re reheating it and building a new meal around it.

And I didn’t make a separate “kid dinner.” I just paused at the right points and pulled out components before turning the rest into stir-fry.

Now we have enough leftover stir-fry for Chris to take for lunch tomorrow, and I’m guessing I’ll be very happy to find some waiting for me when we get home from co-op too.

Trying Something Completely New Tonight

After dinner, I started a project I’m really excited about.

I’m filming my homemade half-sheet-pan focaccia pizza as a long-form YouTube video.

I’ve shared this pizza plenty of times in short-form videos, but I’m used to trying to squeeze everything into 90 seconds or two minutes.

This time, I can actually talk.

I can explain what I’m looking for in the dough, show the process more slowly and include all those little details that get chopped out of a Reel.

The filming itself is going to be a learning curve. Getting the right camera angles while I’m actually trying to make the food is trickier than it looks.

But I started tonight.

I mixed up the focaccia dough while filming the process, and it’s sitting in my refrigerator overnight.

Tomorrow morning, before we leave for co-op, I’ll stretch it onto my half-sheet pan.

Then it can sit on the counter and do its thing all day while we’re gone.

When we get home, I’ll finish the pizza—and hopefully finish my first long-form cooking video right along with it.

We’ll see how this goes.