January meal plan #1

Sheet-pan crispy harissa tofu and homemade pizza with our new pizza steels (!!!)

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Morning! Meredith, here. We are settling into my parents’ three-week visit. I’m very lucky to have a close relationship with my parents, and even luckier that they have the means (and the energy!) to visit us. My son is obsessed with them, as my brothers and I were with my grandparents, and they are equally enthralled with him.

There are a few things I’d like to do with them while we’re here, including a drive-through wildlife reserve, visits to the center of Sevilla, and perhaps a few other towns in the area. Mostly, though, we’ll just live our regular lives. That’s the tricky thing about having visitors when you live abroad—striking a balance between meeting your guests’ expectations of seeing the sights, while also maintaining your routine and meeting your usual obligations. Hopefully, we all end this month feeling rested and fulfilled!

Pablo’s famous salad (it really is a stunner!), Meredith’s welcome brunch for her parents, and waffles with Meredith’s new waffle maker!

This is our honest feedback on what worked (or more likely, didn’t) from last week’s meal plan.

Little victories

• Meredith: I made a batch of sourdough discard waffles to break in my new waffle maker and they were yummy! It is so much easier to make waffles now that I am not using the mini waffle maker.

• Katie: I’m working on being a less frazzled host, and I’m happy to report that when my in-laws came over for lunch on December 31, I was able to sit back, relax, eat, and drink (a few too many?!) glasses of wine. There is no avoiding the prep work and large amount of dishes involved with hosting, but I was able to chip away at everything little by little, and never felt like I left my family enjoying without me for too long. Success! Oh and the best bite, by far, for me? My husband’s salad! He used to make it a lot when we first met each other, and it really took me back to those days. Also, it was just so pretty! Also sausage rolls are not something I grew up with, but I was set on serving them. I made these, which were super easy, and they felt like gourmet pigs in a blanket. (I was practically raised on these growing up in the Midwest in the 90s!)

• Meredith: I revisited the lemony chicken orzo that I made a few times in the spring, and everybody loved it! The ragu was also pretty good, but I had to get a different cut of beef (the butcher was sold out), and it wasn’t as tender. It was phenomenal the next day in a skillet with easy-cook lasagna noodles, ricotta, and mozzarella.

• Katie: I know I put cocido on our meal plan all winter long, and I know I talk about it way too often, but it’s just too good not to. Pablo made a big batch last week, and it was the most nourishing bite amid a week of extravagant holiday eating.

Katie’s apple pie, a nourishing bowl of cocido, and Meredith’s homemade pizza!

Humbling moments

• Meredith: I accidentally dropped my kitchen scale in a pot of water while prepping sourdough this week and had to order another. Womp, womp.

• Katie: My NYE lunch menu was not stressful because I was able to do most of the prep in the days before. But my apple pie bottom crust, while cooked through fine, was not as crisp as my last one! I have a feeling that juggling assembling the pie while also putting my kids in bed the night before had something to do with it! And the lasagna, while yummy, was not as spectacular as I remembered it—I won’t be making it again.

• Meredith: All of our plans for this week were cancelled due to mucous, coughs, and cold weather. I’m glad we rested, but we are all feeling R-E-A-D-Y for a string of sunny days so we can get outside!

• Katie: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m hitting my Spanish holiday wall. We’ve done two huge Christmas meals, I hosted on NYE, and then the next day we had a giant lunch at Pablo’s cousin’s house. And now, we’re still waiting for January 6, when the Three Wisemen bring gifts. That means we’ve also got Pablo’s mom’s migas (sautéed bread crumbs with fried garlic and panceta), roscón de Reyes, and the meal we have every 6th of January—fries, fried eggs, and gulas. Please, someone, send me a salad!!!

Lola assisting with pizza prep, banana muffins, and epic sausage rolls.

This week’s game plan: In an attempt to finish out the holiday season but still feel good, I’m looking for nourishing dishes to help offset all the winter indulgences we’ve been partaking in. I am allergic to the idea of dieting, but I am all for a week of veggie- and legume-forward dishes.

Monday: Brothy beans with spinach (No recipe, really, just going to riff on Justine’s recipe, and let the beans do their thing with some onion, garlic, olive oil, and spices)
Tuesday: Annual Reyes meal—my mother-in-law fries eggs, potatoes, and gulas! It sounds weird, but it’s delicious. (In case you’re curious, according to Google AI, “gulas are a popular Spanish food product made from surimi (processed fish paste), designed to imitate the appearance and texture of expensive angulas (baby eels), which are a rare delicacy. They are typically white, worm-like strips with a dark stripe, mimicking real elvers, and are commonly prepared by frying with garlic, olive oil, and chili.”)
Wednesday: Chicken parm burgers (via Bare Minimum Dinners)
Thursday: Sheet-pan crispy harissa tofu, chickpeas, and broccolini (via Sonya Sanford)
Friday: Homemade pizza, using my new pizza steel!
Other: For the first time ever, I’m attempting my own roscón de reyes! (This recipe gives you a good idea of what it is, except in Spain we put a tiny king figurine, a fun figurine, and a dried fava bean inside the roscón! I’ll be using the recipe from this cookbook, which does an incredible job at showcasing all of Spain’s varied regional food.)

This week’s game plan: We are supposed to have a big family lunch in the countryside on Sunday, but I think it’ll be cancelled due to rain. If that’s the case, I’d like to make the Bo Ssam I mentioned our kitchen resolutions list! And I’m hoping it will yield enough leftovers to cobble something together on Monday after we get home from the big parade. The rest of the week, I’ll try to keep things relatively easy as we slowly make our way back into our work and school routine.

Monday: Tacos with the leftovers from Sunday and pickled red onions
Tuesday: Star bread to snack on while opening gifts from the Three Wisemen, lunch out with friends
Wednesday: Roast chicken with maple butter and rosemary (via NYT Cooking) with whatever veggies are in the drawer
Thursday: Warm roasted veggie salad (via Kale Junkie, but whatever greens I can find, since kale is not very popular here) for lunch, and a big pot of broth
Friday: More salad for lunch, pizza for dinner with MY new pizza steel (I copied Katie) and a recipe from Pizza Night!
Other: Some blueberry muffins and maybe another batch of banana muffins because they’re just so good! I’m also curious to try out making my own breakfast sausage.

• Katie: I’m coming off what's been one of the longest, most restful vacations I’ve had since becoming a mom. The past two weeks, I’ve had time to enjoy my kids, bake and cook my heart out, and rest. It’s been restorative, and I’d like to keep that energy going, even though I go back to work and the daily grind soon. This article—Your Pocket Guide to Romanticising January—is just the inspiration I needed. Here’s to a gentle welcome to the new year, warm bowls of soup (or even better, noodles!), leaning into the cold winter days, and—above all else—taking care of ourselves this month.

• Meredith: I know people talk about the terrible twos and threenagers, but no one warned me for the emotional year we’d have between 4 and 5. We have mostly good days, but when a bad one strikes, we are all exhausted by the end of it. Side note: this week I noticed that he no longer says “pampakes” and now calls them pancakes 🥺. Motherhood, man.

• Katie: How gorgeous are these handmade cookie tins? I need and I want.

• Meredith: If you haven’t read Tatiana Schlossberg’s piece in The New Yorker, I highly recommend that you do. It’s devastating and beautifully written, and made me hug my kids a bit tighter.

• Katie: Jenna’s comment on this post prompted me to open up my copy of Pizza Night again, and I’m feeling inspired by Ali’s winter salads! I am slightly embarrassed to say that I usually forget about salad until summer rolls around, but I’m feeling particularly invigorated to try these—specifically the escarole salad with apples and walnuts, the winter wedge with roasted cabbage, the salt-roasted beet salad with walnuts, goat cheese, and chives, and the orange and avocado salad with citrus-shallot vinaigrette.