We’ve alluded to this on social media, but something saving us both right now is a rotating menu of 5-10 go-to dinners that we rely on heavily. We crave variety as much as the next person, but right now we’re in the mode of: simple, tried and true, and bonus points if it can be prepped in advance. We’ll add seasonal to that checklist too, because the farmer’s markets are popping right now and we love using local produce as much as we can!

We’re in a busy season of life right now, so even though all of these recipes have an ease and simplicity factor (some more than others), let it be known that there are many nights where we turn to our favorite takeout or (what we fondly refer to as) garbage salad*.

*Garbage salad: whatever we can find in our fridge over pre-washed, clamshell greens paired with a source of fast protein (eggs, freezer meatballs, Hilary’s veggie burgers or Bilinski’s chicken sausage).  

Other nights, we love having the below meals in our back pocket to take the guesswork out of meal planning - they’re (in our opinion) craveworthy, satisfying, easy, and for the most part, can be prepped ahead so that dinner comes together quickly in real time.

Happy cooking!

A few notes: 

• NYT cooking recipes have a paywall if you’re not a subscriber to the app. It’s an excellent app - a huge library of every recipe you could possibly want/need, but if you don’t have access, email us and we can send the recipe your way :)

• If you’re feeding toddlers and doing family meals, we included suggested variations for the little ones!

Chicken shawarma night

The Menu
- NYT oven-roasted chicken shawarma
- Sweet potato fries, 2 ways (we love the cinnamon variation with this meal)
- MELA’s greek salad (romaine, bell peppers, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, chopped fresh dill and/or mint, crumbled Simple Mills pita chips, tossed with our Lemon garlic tahini sauce) 
- Lemon garlic tahini sauce or Green goddess yogurt sauce using mint (pictured here) to use on salad and drizzle on chicken and/or sweet potatoes

Toddler plate: chicken shawarma cut into strips or cubes, sweet potato fries, and “chopped” greek salad (halved cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, bell peppers) with lemon-garlic tahini or green goddess for dipping.

Make ahead: we like marinating the chicken up to 24 hours in advance. The sweet potato fries can be made ahead of time (even the day before!) and reheated in the oven. Same with both of the sauces. If you have all this prepped, the only thing you need to do in real time is put the marinated chicken in the oven and assemble the salad!

Cook once, eat twice (or more): we love to use the tahini sauce and/or green goddess throughout the week on salads, as a dip for veggies, or drizzled on roasted veggies. We also always try to make extra sweet potatoes to have on hand. The chicken is great leftover on it’s own, or use it to make chicken salad!

Winner winner, salmon dinner

Aka two foolproof salmon recipes paired with roasted carrots and a seasonal salad.

The Menu:
- Sizzle Salmon with dill yogurt sauce OR our favorite favorite marinated salmon from the New York Times.
- MELA’s spring salad (with option to add marinated golden beets)
- Cumin-orange roasted carrots 

Toddler plate: salmon, strawberries and beets from the salad, roasted carrots. 

Make ahead: the roasted carrots and beets can be made ahead of time (even the day before!). If you’re doing the NYT marinated salmon, we like to make the marinade ahead of time too so it’s ready to go. 

Cook once, eat twice (or more): we try to make extra beets and carrots for salads and toddler meals throughout the week. Both salmon recipes are delicious leftover if you aren’t bothered by leftover fish.

Miso tofu and sweet potato salad with pickled red onions

We make this all.the.time. You’ve seen it in our dinner round ups before, but it really is that good and, as we’ve mentioned, has made converts of the most tofu skeptic clients and their partners. 

The Menu
- Miso sweet potato and tofu salad with pickled red onions 

Toddler plate: tofu with citrus miso sauce for dipping, sweet potatoes and we’ll often serve with a different veggie in places of the salad (steamed cauliflower, broccoli or green beans to dip in the miso sauce). 

Make ahead: every component of this meal can be made ahead. A big reason why it’s one of our weeknight favorites!

Cook once, eat twice (or more): it’s rare that we have leftover sweet potatoes or tofu, but if we do, we love to use it in lunch salads throughout the week. Having the citrus miso sauce on hand is such a gift for our future selves - for salads, a dip for veggies, toddler dipping sauce, etc.

2 springy/summery legume-based pastas

Menu Options
- Pesto pasta with roasted zucchini, cherry tomatoes and the best chicken sausage. No recipe here, but it’s pretty simple to pull together! We cook Tolerant Foods, Banza or Bionaturae pasta (which are higher in protein and fiber compared to your traditional wheat pasta), toss with our homemade pesto or your favorite store bought (we love Gotham Greens pesto), halved cherry tomatoes, roasted zucchini half-moons and roasted Bilinski’s chicken sausage (any flavor, but we love mild Italian with this recipe). It’s very similar to this recipe without the arugula (which you can of course include) and with the addition of the sausage (cut into coins and roast at 425 for 10-12 minutes, flipping halfway through).
- Another pasta we love this time of year: Cookie & Kate’s zucchini and cherry tomato pasta (pictured above). If you don’t tolerate dairy, we love subbing Kite Hill almond ricotta for the goat cheese. Note: you could include roasted Bilinski’s sausage here if you wanted more protein, but could also skip it to keep this a plant-based meal that’s naturally high in protein.  
- Simple side salad. we’ll usually pair these pastas with a simple side salad: arugula or mixed greens, shaved parmesan or toasted pine nuts, and a good balsamic vinegar (we love this one) and olive oil.

Toddler plate: same as you! Either of the pastas = complete meal. We cut the sausage into half moons for our boys 

Cook once, eat twice (or more): we usually have a little leftover pasta with both of these recipes and they’re great the next day for lunch or repeat dinner. 

Ground turkey or beef taco salad with a side of sweet potato fries

The Menu
- Ground beef (or turkey) taco salad. A year round, all-time favorite recipe - use whichever protein you prefer. So good considering how easy it is to make.
- Sweet potato fries, 2 ways 

Toddler plate: ground turkey or beef from the taco bowls (option to serve with plain tortilla or quesadilla for wrapping), sweet potato fries, cherry tomatoes and bell peppers. 

Make ahead: everything can be made ahead - dressing, turkey or beef, pickled red onions, sweet potato fries.

Burger night!

The Menu
- Ground beef burgers (beef, kosher salt, pepper) OR turkey burgers with all the fixings: sliced tomato, sliced or pickled red onions, special sauce, iceberg lettuce (for wrapping) or buns
- Roasted new potatoes
- Caesar salad (chilled romaine and this dressing)
- Optional addition: grilled or roasted asparagus seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and finished with a squeeze of lemon

Toddler plate: burgers, potatoes, tomatoes and often another veg.

Make ahead: Caesar dressing, roasted potatoes. The burgers can also be made ahead of time! 

Cook once, eat twice (or more): leftover burgers are always good to have on hand for a quick source of protein. The potatoes are good the next day too, and the dressing should last for up to a week.

A few more things

Where we share all the things we’re loving, reading, listening to, cooking, discussing and purchasing as of late.

1. Our latest 10/10 book reccs. [Lauren] Kristen Hannah is the queen of historical fiction and can do no wrong in my book. Her latest book, The Women, follows 20-year-old nursing student Frankie McGrath’s journey upon enlisting as a volunteer military nurse in the Vietnam war. The many challenges she faces, both at war and more so, upon her return back home, highlights the important and forgotten stories of the women who sacrificed their lives and much more to serve our country during the Vietnam war. The power of female friendships is a potent theme, and the one that stayed with me the most. Heartbreaking, yet uplifting, powerful and moving - the kind of book that you can’t put down and stays with you long after it’s done. I love Hannah’s books, but this might be my favorite yet!

2. [Merrill]: A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m a fantasy newbie (and previous skeptic) but was finally convinced to read 4th Wing (highly recommend) and let’s just say I’m a convert. I’m now deep into book 4 of this series and I get the hype (a note: it's RACY!).

3. The Anxious Generation.  Another book recc - admittedly less fun than above, but feels like one of the most important parenting book for our generation. Social psychologist Jon Haidt’s latest book argues that the increasing rates of mental illness amongst children and teens can be primarily attributed to the advent of smart phones and social media. He highlights the problematic shift in recent years from a play-based childhood to a “phone-based” childhood. He leaves us with a hopeful, pragmatic 4-pronged solution as to how we can correct this for the next generation of children (which genuinely feels doable and possible!). If you want to learn more but aren’t ready to dive into the book, we highly recommend this interview with Barry Weiss, this Atlantic Article, and this hot (evidence-based) take from our favorite tech and parenting resource, Technosapiens. 

4. Magpie by Jen Shoop. We are longtime fans of Jen’s blog (she is also the best follow on instagram). She writes the most beautiful, resonant essays on everything from motherhood, relationships, grief, and literature, peppered with lighter content on topics like life hacks, productivity, fashion, style and kid finds. Her message always seems to resonate so deeply, and her style of writing is thoughtful, moving and always manages to capture how we feel perfectly. A few of our favorite essays (motherhood): on the saltings of motherhood, motherhood is a surfeit, to the new mom feeding her baby at 3am, adventures in nursing part 1 and part 2; (lifestyle and relationships): what does happiness look like?, how to stop time, on remaining interesting to our partners; a personal code; (productivity and helpful reframes): on moving the dirt, tomorrow's business, six helpful reframes.  

5. A few food lifesavers in our current rotation:

   *For all your summer travel or moments on the go - these have been our recent go-tos in the grab and go snack department - Chomps (we love the turkey pepperoni and turkey jalapeno flavors) and IQ bars (favorite is the chocolate sea salt flavor). Both are high in protein and made with high quality ingredients - an easy fix for healthy snacking on the go. 

   *For a fast high protein breakfast, obsessed with these turkey sausages from Applegate. We love them with scrambled eggs (or on their own) paired with some fruit. 

   *For the kiddos: always love having our Happy Wolf bars on hand. The ingredients and taste are 10/10. For 20% off use code: MELA20. Pouches are another savior when on the go. We like to mix it up, but some favorite brands include: Siggis, Serenity Kids, CocoJune, Once Upon a Farm. We also love the Whole Foods organic apple sauce pouches.

   *For everyone - the pack-it lunch box. A reshare worth a mention as we gear up for summer road trips. We use this thing to death year round, but especially when we’re traveling more in the summer. A freezable lunch box to hold travel snacks for everyone.

6. Another reshare we had to include since we live in these all summer - Ibkuhl half zips (more $$$) and Amazon sun shirts (great lower price point find). As we continue to take sun protection more seriously, we’ve found that sun shirt = far superior to a daily full body sunscreen routine (on beach days, we don’t skimp, but for daytime activities especially with the kiddos, these check so many boxes - lightweight, easy way to cover up, cute colors). We like to size up 1 size from our true size in both for a slightly oversized fit.