Some of the people in my circle are expecting heat-advisory level heat waves this week, while others are hunkering down to face a winter storm warning. Good times.
I’m on the It’s Too Hot side of the summer weather spectrum, so my approach to dinners this week is avoid using my oven if at all possible. Even in the dead of winter, I start shedding layers and my face grows damp and tomatoey every time the oven fires up and that sounds downright unbearable when there’s no snowy porch to escape to. We have a crockpot, a grill, an air fryer, and (reluctantly) an Instant Pot, so I should be able to accomplish this.
What are your favorite no-cook meals?
Dinners for the Week of June 17-23
- Garlic Lime Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Something Green: If you dislike cilantro, look away. But if you are cool with it, this marinade/sauce is going to be your new bestie. The recipe is way more finicky than it needs to be; I think it’s fine to marinate a whole pork tenderloin (or protein of your choice) in the lime-y, garlicky liquid and then throw it on the grill.
- Teriyaki Chicken with Chopped Salad: I love this salad, and the idea of adding fresh cool things like mandarin oranges, edamame, and red bell peppers makes me very happy. I am going to buy a ginger dressing from the grocery store and use store bought teriyaki. I will probably add chopped up cashews and some crunchy chow mein noodles as well.
- Slow Cooker Salsa Verde Chicken Tacos: Would I ever turn down an excuse to make tacos? No, I would not. The only heat I like are the kinds you find in the bedroom or in a bottle of sriracha.
- Birchie’s Chickpea Salad: What’s a better no-cook idea than FINALLY jumping on the Birchie Bandwagon and trying one of the chickpea salad recipes she’s been recommending? I wonder if I can get away with serving my husband a meat-free meal? Or maybe I could supply him a store-bought chicken breast on the side?
- Street Corn Salad: Speaking of store-bought protein options, maybe I’ll snag a couple of chicken breasts and a salmon filet or two (or grilled shrimp?) and throw together this amazing street corn salad one night.
For lunches, I’m sticking with cherry smoothies and green peppers with cottage cheese.
Stay cool, or warm, out there Internet.
Today and tomorrow are a bit on the cooler side, although if I was in Calgary I’d consider the temperatures to be QUITE NICE! Ha! Perspective, it’s everything. Then it’s going to get super warm this week, which will be lovely. Now, what am I going to make for dinner? Tonight it’s just me and M, R and J are camping, so I’m making vodka penne, which is something really only he and I love. Tomorrow stir-fry, as per Tuesday tradition, then a Suzanne salad and crusty bread on Wednesday because Wednesday is grocery day and I’ll be able to pick up crusty bread. What kind of salad? It will heavily involve kale, that’s for sure, because my garden is exploding. Thursday! I think it will be rice vermicelli with spring rolls and peanuts, Friday is usual Friday with Greek salad, pita and hummus, and Saturday is R’s 40th high school reunion, so I think the boys and I will go out for dinner. Lots of yummy things on the horizon!
We are getting lots of rain in these parts unfortunately… It’s rain, rain, and then more rain. Things will shape up next week thank goodness, though!
Phil will make meal suggestions in our shared apple note (which is wonderful because it is so much mental labor) and this week I said – I can only make one meal that requires cutting things up because of this never-ending flare in my right hand. I have been limping through meal prep and cursing the pain it causes so this week I said – enough! But how was he to know I was so miserable without say that we need a meal plan w/ limited slicing/dicing? I get an injection on Friday so hopefully I am back to full strength soon. So on Saturday I made a marinara with blitzed celery, carrots and onions and let the food processor do all the work (and then lied to my child to his face about whether there were onions in the sauce – mom of the year over here, but if you can’t detect the teeny tiny onions in the sauce, are they even really there??), tomorrow I will make chicken tikka masala w/ peas & cauliflower in the IP (that is my ‘slicing/dicing meal of the week) and then we’ll have stuffed peppers from costco for another meal.
It was horribly hot and humid here yesterday and my MIL came over so we couldn’t go to a pool because that is not her scene and she would have melted. So we were indoors for much of the day besides the morning and we got take out because that is what Phil wanted and it was his special day!
I just meal planned and grocery shopped a few hours ago so it is fresh on my mind. We are doing chicken quesadillas, chicken shawarma, chicken broccoli stir fry, and pasta with sun dried tomato cream sauce. We have evening activities at least twice this week (so far anyway) so I need some easy dinners.
I think I’m going to try the recipe you linked and make chicken tacos tomorrow night. I have some chicken thighs in the freezer that will be perfect in it. I don’t have any kind of slow cooker, so I’m going to have to figure that out. I wonder if I can somehow make the chicken in the toaster oven? It’s pretty big and might hold a small casserole dish. Hmmm. I hate to think of all of the gas I would use if I cooked it in the oven or on the stove top.
Some of my favorite hot weather meals are a salad bar, and I cook some chicken breasts in the toaster oven to go on top. Another is tuna melts, which again, toaster oven. I have a great recipe that uses capers. It’s not going to be hot here this week, but I might make it anyway. My ultimate no cook recipe for hot days is a white bean and tuna salad, with arugula, cherry tomatoes, red onions, capers, and a bit of basil. It’s really easy, and pretty healthy. If any of these sound good to you, I have recipes on my blog, just do a search for ‘tuna’. 🙂
I love chickpeas so I’ll have to check out those salads. Also, tacos are so customizable that they can be different each time. We’re currently in Junuary but are headed into the low 80s later this week. For me it’s perfect although people are grumbling about the cool temperatures and the occasional rain storm. Do they really want triple digits?
It’s so hot and I planned badly and need to make granola tonight, which means the oven will be on for hours. I need to learn to adult better, clearly. Solidarity with not wanting to turn on an oven.
Heat in the bedroom made me laugh out loud!! Haha, that’s always a good thing!
The garlic lime marinade looks delicious. This week my pickiest eater is away at camp so I intentionally planned some of her least favourite meals: tacos, chicken tikka masala, and teriyaki salmon. Also chicken francese (delicious breaded chicken with lemon sauce!), and pasta alla norcina (penne with ground sausage in a cream sauce). They’re all made on the stovetop except the salmon which only bakes for 20 minutes so we’ll survive!
That street corn salad looks AMAZING.
It is so hot here. I don’t even want to go out to get the mail. 🤣
it very humid and warm here but not really hot. And it is raining a lot with heavy thunderstorms.
I want to come to your house for dinner please. It all sounds really yummy.
Today I had arugula salad with trout filet, eggs and capers. It was good.
The heat is on! I really need to make the chickpea salad again – would you believe that I only made it once? I’m sure that you could swap the chickpeas out for chicken if you wanted to go that route.
Oooh, yes, green peppers with cottage cheese. I think that will be lunch today! It has been really stupid hot here, also, but last night we had a reprieve — and good thing, because we had Braves baseball tickets! It was so pleasant, actually!
Suzanne, I also hate turning on my oven! I’m already over the summer heat. I love me some cilantro; the more the merrier! The chopped salad is right up my alley and tacos are great every day!
It’s hot here, too hot for this time of year, so I’m saving the Street Corn Salad which looks like a perfect side, or whole meal, for us. Thanks for the link.
Heat advisory here. At least we had a crapton of rain last week so unlike last year we’re not on fire. We have air conditioning, but I am seriously worried about everyone who doesn’t. Matt says inviting them all over is unfeasible.
I bought a supermarket chicken on Monday and the three of us are surviving on that with salad so far this week. I bought ingredients to make your fabulous summer salad tomorrow but my brain is feeling a bit too cooked to make sense of it right now, so I’m a bit apprehensive (not really).
I always make some kind of grilled corn salad for parties several times in the summer – I switched it up to a street corn salad after someone made street corn for a group dinner while camping, and it’s a huge hit.
It’s been hot, but normal-level hot, here for a few days. The heat dome isn’t supposed to arrive until the weekend.
I didn’t really plan meals with the heat in mind. I made a tomato-dill soup on Monday and Beth said it would have been good chilled, so I guess that’s an idea for later. (She is a fan of gazpacho.) We had vegetarian tuna melts on Tuesday, which are technically cooked, but they’re only in the toaster oven for 5 minutes to toast the bread and then another 5 to melt the cheese so there’s no extended heating.
Definitely hot/summer here… and we’re doing a lot of salads! And in the next couple of weeks, I am going to Costco to buy cherries so I can make those cherry smoothies!
Definitely hot/summer here… and we’re doing a lot of salads! And in the next couple of weeks, I am going to Costco to buy cherries so I can make those cherry smoothies!
We are in the heat is so oppressive it is hard to leave the house part of the country. I cooked a shit-ton of pasta for Reg’s grad party on Saturday, so gloriously I don’t have to cook much for dinner this week. They can all eat leftover pasta and Italian beef and like it. damn it.