"Is this a meat night or a Lent night?" Wyatt asked on the Sunday before last, standing at the stove with a fork in his hand, which is how he greets most dinners now. He's ten, he has baseball practice two weeknights plus Saturday mornings, and he eats like the plate owes him money.
Usually only Fridays go meatless during Lent at our house, a habit from my Catholic childhood that Matt goes along with. But for the first full week of Lent, I wanted to see whether I could cook a whole week of meatless dinners that kept a growing ballplayer full without him raiding the pantry at 8:30 at night. Matt agreed to hang up his tongs for a week on one condition: nobody calls anything "plant-based" in front of him. Here's the week, what kept Wyatt full, the night it didn't work, and the receipt.
The week
- Sunday: black bean enchiladas. Corn tortillas filled with two cans of black beans mashed with cumin and a little onion, red enchilada sauce, a lot of cheddar. Mexican rice on the side. Eli got a plain cheese quesadilla folded next to his rice, not touching it.
- Monday: loaded baked potato bar. Ten russets baked in the oven, with chili beans, steamed broccoli, cheese, sour cream and salsa to pile on. Wyatt ate two and a half potatoes. Nothing fills a kid per dollar like a potato.
- Tuesday: migas for dinner. My birthday, my pick, and an office day, so I wanted fast. Eggs, crispy tortilla strips, onion, peppers and cheese in about 20 minutes. Twelve eggs went into that skillet, and nobody left hungry.
- Wednesday: baked ziti with ricotta and spinach. A pound and a half of pasta, with plain buttered noodles held back for Eli, as always.
- Thursday: Crock-Pot sweet potato and black bean chili, with cornbread. Started at 7:45 before work. This is the night that didn't quite land.
- Friday: homemade cheese pizza. Two sheet pans, one of them half-veggie for the grown-ups.
- Saturday: egg fried rice. Rice cooked Friday morning and chilled, frozen peas and carrots, six eggs, soy sauce and green onion. Matt made it in my cast-iron skillet instead of firing up the grill, and it was better than mine, which I will deny if asked.
What kept a ten-year-old full
I've fed a lot of hungry people, including catering crews at the end of a fourteen-hour wedding, and the rule hasn't changed: plenty of protein, plenty of starch, and enough of both that seconds are possible. Without meat, here's what carried the week:
- Beans, eggs or cheese at every dinner. We went through three dozen eggs, a dozen more than usual, and about two pounds of shredded cheddar.
- A big starch on every plate, and more of it than I'd normally make: rice, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, cornbread.
- A planned after-practice snack. Peanut butter toast or a cheese quesadilla at 8 p.m. on practice nights, instead of pretending he wouldn't be hungry.
- No skimping on the good stuff. Butter on the cornbread, sour cream on the potatoes, real cheese on the pizza.
I'm a cook, not a nutritionist. If a kid has specific needs, that's a question for the pediatrician, not me. This is just what kept our particular ten-year-old from eating the cabinet doors.
The night it didn't work
Thursday's chili was thin. I used too much broth, and the sweet potatoes cooked down into the liquid instead of holding their shape, so it tasted fine but ate like soup. Wyatt had two bowls and two squares of cornbread and was back in the pantry an hour later. Matt said, "This is good. What's the main course?"
Next time I'll cut the broth in half, add the sweet potatoes for only the last two hours, and serve it over rice so it has something to stand on. The leftovers became a decent lunch once I simmered them down on the stove with a second can of beans, which tells me the flavor was right and the ratio was wrong.
The rest of the week held up better than I expected. The potato bar and the migas were the clear winners, and the enchiladas tied the fried rice for second. Eli ate something from every dinner, which isn't always true in a week with meat.
Receipt check: $238 for the week's groceries, $27 under our $265 budget. Beans, eggs, rice and pasta are cheap; the cheese was the biggest single line at about $13.
Would we do a full meatless week again? Probably once more before Easter. Wyatt has requested the potato bar again, "with a little bacon on the side, for flavor." I told him the bacon could come back on Sunday.
