Thursday: Playground Lunch, Shortcut Focaccia & Turkey with Homemade Gravy

Got up this morning and made fresh bacon for the kids.

We also had bagels and cereal, and then we packed up and headed out for the morning.

Normally Thursdays are our homeschool co-op days, but we’re on fall break this week.

So instead of going to co-op, we met up with a bunch of our co-op friends at a playground.

And of course, I brought food.

My Playground Lunch Strategy: Heavy Snacks

I decided not to pack a traditional lunch today.

Instead, I packed what I like to call heavy snacks.

Basically, enough food that everybody could eat throughout the morning without me having to worry about a specific lunchtime.

I brought:

• Homemade beef summer sausage
• Cut-up vegetables
• Cut-up fruit
• Squeeze yogurts
• Nuts
• A few other snacks from the pantry

And my plan was simple.

We’d stay at the playground until everybody was tired and had eaten through most of the food.

Then we’d go home.

No complicated schedule.

No rushing everybody out because we needed to be home at exactly noon for lunch.

Just a nice morning outside with friends.

And around noon, everybody was ready to head home.

Perfect.

Leftover Burgers Three Ways

When we got home, I pulled out the hamburgers I’d grilled earlier this week.

Remember those 24 burger patties?

This is why I make so many.

The kids had already eaten quite a bit at the playground, so this was more of a late lunch or a substantial afternoon snack.

And everybody wanted something slightly different.

A few of the kids wanted burger wraps.

For those, I took a tortilla, warmed it in a skillet with a little butter and cheese, and added a hamburger patty.

Let the tortilla get a little golden and crispy, and you’ve got a really easy cheeseburger wrap.

Two of the kids wanted burger salads.

I had a harvest salad with a burger on the side.

This is exactly why I like making a big batch of burgers.

You can serve them traditionally the first day, then turn them into wraps, salads or whatever else sounds good later in the week.

A Little Shortcut Focaccia Experiment

Chris has been out of town, and he was coming home today.

So I wanted to make a slightly nicer dinner.

Nothing elaborate, but something that felt a little more special than pulling random containers out of the refrigerator.

And I decided to try something I’ve been hearing people talk about with focaccia.

Normally, when I make focaccia, I mix the dough, let it rise, do my stretches and folds, and give it another rise in the pan.

But I’ve seen people say you can skip a lot of that.

Just mix the dough, put it straight into an olive-oiled pan, and let it rise.

So I thought, why not?

I made a half batch of my usual half-sheet-pan focaccia pizza dough.

Instead of going through my normal process, I put the dough directly into the oiled pan, spread it out and let it rise.

And you know what?

It worked!

Was it quite as tall and bubbly as my regular focaccia?

No.

But it was still really good.

It rose, it baked beautifully, and it was absolutely delicious with dinner.

Sometimes the longer process is worth it.

But sometimes you just need to get bread on the table.

And this was a pretty great shortcut.

I’ll include my regular focaccia dough recipe here, with a note about how I simplified the method today.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1¼ cups warm water
• 1½ tablespoons olive oil, plus additional olive oil for the pan and topping

Today’s simplified method

1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, water and olive oil until a sticky, shaggy dough forms.
2. Generously oil a parchment-lined smaller baking pan and transfer the dough directly into it.
3. Gently stretch the dough toward the edges. Cover and allow it to rise until noticeably puffy.
4. Drizzle with additional olive oil and dimple the surface with your fingertips.
5. Bake in a fully preheated 475°F oven until golden and cooked through. Check for an internal temperature around 190–195°F.

Costco Turkey Breast for the Win

For our main dish, I pulled out one of the fully cooked turkey breasts I bought at Costco.

I really think these are such a handy thing to keep in the refrigerator.

The unopened packages often have a surprisingly long refrigerated shelf life. I’ve seen dates that are roughly three months out from when I buy them, although of course you should always follow the date and storage instructions on your specific package.

Is it as good as a freshly roasted turkey?

I wouldn’t say that.

But it’s really good for what it is.

And when you want turkey without actually roasting an entire turkey, it’s a fantastic option.

All I had to do was put it into the oven, cover it and heat it according to the package directions.

That’s it.

But I wanted to make a little gravy to go with it.

And thankfully, I already had something cooking on the stove.

Yesterday’s Chicken Became Today’s Broth

Earlier in the day, I took the bones and leftover juices from the whole chicken I roasted yesterday.

I put everything into a pot, covered it with water and let it gently simmer throughout the day.

I love doing this after roasting a whole chicken.

You’ve already paid for the chicken.

You’ve already cooked it.

And there’s still so much flavor left in those bones and cooking juices.

So why not get another use out of them?

By dinnertime, I had a lovely homemade chicken broth.

And I decided to use some of it to make gravy for the turkey.

My Quick Homemade Turkey Gravy

This was about as simple as gravy gets.

I took some of the homemade chicken broth and put it into a saucepan.

Then I mixed cornstarch with cold water to make a slurry.

I stirred that into the hot broth and let it simmer until it thickened into gravy.

You can adjust the seasoning as needed, but the broth already had so much flavor from yesterday’s roasted chicken.

Then I sliced some of the warmed turkey breast and added it directly to the gravy.

I let it sit there briefly so the turkey could absorb some of that flavor and stay nice and moist.

And that was it.

Turkey and homemade gravy without spending the entire day cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

My Downton Abbey Broth Reference

Every single time I make homemade broth, I think about Downton Abbey.

There’s a scene involving a lady’s maid trying to make broth for the Dowager Countess, and it doesn’t go particularly well.

If you know the scene, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

And for some reason, I think about it every time I’m standing over a pot of chicken bones.

Apparently I’ve watched too much Downton Abbey.

Although I do think my broth today would have passed inspection.

A Really Nice Dinner Without Much Work

To go with the turkey and gravy, I made some peas.

I also pulled out the leftover rice from earlier in the week and warmed that up.

And of course, we had the fresh focaccia.

So dinner was:

• Sliced turkey breast with homemade chicken gravy
• Rice
• Peas
• Freshly baked focaccia

It felt like a really nice dinner.

Especially with Chris coming home.

But when you look at what I actually had to do, it was incredibly simple.

The turkey was already cooked.

The rice was leftover.

The broth was simmering on the stove while we went about our day.

The gravy took just a few minutes.

And even the focaccia was my shortcut version.

A nice dinner doesn’t have to mean spending hours actively cooking.

Sometimes it’s just about putting together a few good things and letting the oven do most of the work.

Tomorrow Is Officially Leftover Day

And now?

We have a refrigerator full of food.

I’ve got brat bites.

I’ve got plenty of chicken left from yesterday’s whole roasted chicken.

I’ve got turkey breast.

I’ve got a little bit of soup left.

And probably a few other things hiding in containers that I’ll discover when I start pulling everything out.