Sheet Pan Recipes to the Rescue

As the primary cook at House Icarus, my job is feeding the family.  It's not easy because Boris is very picky and really only eats a handful of things.  Currently, that list is:

• Hot Dogs*
• Chicken Nuggets
• Pasta
• Fish Sticks* 
• Scrambled Eggs
• Bacon.  all the bacon.
• PBJ*
• Popcorn (don't judge)

Between his dairy allergy (which he has finally grown out of) and his textual issues, it's hard to come up with things to feed him.  To his credit, the other day he did try a piece of broccoli.  He didn't like it but I'm proud that he tried it.

* he's currently bored with these but I'm hoping to eventually get them back in the rotation.

Luckily, I subscribe to several recipe blogs that have given me some great options.  My favorite is The Food Charlatan.  I found her years ago when I was trying to figure out the best way to cook some different types of steaks my FIL had in his freezer.  This was before we moved down here and were visiting for Christmas.  

What I like about her blog/email is she offers alternative options.  Like if you don't have *this specific item* you can use *plain old this item*.

Her last meal had several Sheet Pan recipes that coincidentally had a lot of overlapping ingredients.  As it turns out, I had most of them in stock and didn't need to run to the grocery store for anything if I didn't want to.  I opted too because I needed to hit the store anyway for my salmon cream cheese spread which I can only find at the Walmart in neighboring South Haven.  

So this week we have had or will have:

Sheet Pan Rosemary Lime Chicken

Not only does Natasha eat it, she helped prepare it

Sheet Pan Asian Salmon with Broccoli, Carrots and Rice Noodles​

Sheet Pan Chicken Fried Rice

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Sheet Pan Gnocchi with Cherry Tomatoes

We have 4th graders

School starts early down here, August 1st to be precise. I don't know why since it doesn't seem like we get out of school significantly before other regions, nor do we have more days off.  But to be honest, I still need to do the maths to be certain.

Now I'm back to having my days free from 8:15 to 3:15 pm.  By free I mean I can work on things that weren't easy to do while also taking care of two/three kids all summer.

When we started First Grade, I used to go wait in the car pickup line at 2:30 pm.  They release the kids at 3:15 so there I sat listening to podcasts, or talking to the recruiter who would ghost me the next week.  With my last contract gig keeping me busy and not respecting my calendar -- I negotiated that my lunch would be 2:30 - 3:30 so i could pick up my kids.  I discovered that getting in the queue at 3:15 is better because it only takes 15-30 minutes at most to get to the front of the line.  So it's better all round while we get home closer to dinner.

This elementary school is from kindergarten to 5th grade.  That gives us roughly two years to figure out our next move.  Housing prices are skyrocketing and returning to Chicago doesn't not seem to be on the table.