Add to Your Favorites Recipes
Weekday lunch, or maybe Friday night dinner
On Sundays, I have a dilemma…. Should I make a meat meal, or should I go for something easier? From my point of view, I could do without meat on a Sunday. But my kids won’t give it up so quickly – they love meat! The minute they finish at school for the day, their first phone call is to me and their first question is “what have you made for lunch?” My answer is “nothing!” – not nice of me to joke with hungry children (they already know me better than that!), but I can’t resist the temptation to laugh a little. Don’t worry – I make up for it by giving them a good meal when they get home.
Ingredients:
What did I make?
Chicken with olives – tasty and goes great with white rice, which absorbs the sauce.
Rice bolognaise – every mum has her go-to recipe. I improvised this and it turned out really well.
White rice – I explain below how this came about.
Vegetables and pasta – I could end with the options above, but I’m a mother and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get my children to eat more vegetables! Besides, this recipe gives me the chance to use the sentence “who wants to eat snakes?” Sometimes it works!
Green salad with cherry tomatoes and vinaigrette. You can’t have a meal without salad!
Preparation:
Getting organized
First of all I want to say that this lunch menu can be used for a Friday night dinner.
There’s enough choice here to put together a good spread, and if you want to upgrade it, just add a beef dish.
Chicken with olives let me say upfront, yes you must pre-cook the olives. Don’t skip this stage – you’ll thank me when you taste the dish!
One of my favorite cooked dishes is chicken in sauce with olives. The olives perfectly absorb the sauce and they’re so soft… as I write this, I want to go straight to my kitchen and prepare it 🙂 It’s no problem to prepare this a day in advance and heat it up on the stove, and it freezes well.
I improvised this recipe a few years ago – I had leftover rice, I had ground beef and that’s how I arrived at rice bolognaise. I make this on the day it’s to be served. You might ask why I’m including 2 rice recipes in the menu. The reason is that Aviv and Ido, my two little ones, love rice and prefer it plain with nothing on it. So, when I make the rice I mix part of it with the bolognaise for my big kids, and leave the rest plain for the younger ones. That way everyone is happy!
Who wants pasta with vegetables? I believe in offering a range of side dishes, especially those that have vegetables in them. 15 minutes, and this recipe is ready for serving, without any hassle – that’s the beauty of it! It can be prepared in advance. Just heat it through for a few minutes in a pan with a little oil, while tossing and stirring it.
Green is green, right ? But what a great vinaigrette!
