This is yet another simple chicken dinner. Steve and Meagan Gottcent introduced it to us years ago, when the South Beach diet was the rage, and we’ve had it on our repertoire ever since. Recently I was Googling “Monterey Chicken” to see if over the years we’ve strayed from the traditional dish, and I saw a recipe that had bacon in it. Yum. I might have to try that next time. But for now, here’s the way we make it:

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MONTEREY CHICKEN

Ingredients:
- 3 – 4 chicken breasts, halved horizontally to form cutlets
- 2 TBSP oil (or more if necessary), one for grilling or sautéing the chicken, and one for the peppers
- 1 red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch-long thin slices
- 1 green bell pepper, cut into 1-inch-long thin slices
- 2 cloves garlic, minced or smashed
- 3 – 4 slices cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese

Instructions:
1. Salt and pepper chicken cutlets, then grill (or sauté) chicken cutlets until no longer pink in the center:

2. Meanwhile, sauté the red and green bell peppers in one TBSP of oil for about five minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for a few minutes more, until the peppers have softened and are beginning to caramelize:

3. Place slices of cheese on the hot chicken breasts:

4. Pour the sautéed peppers over the chicken and cheese:

5. Serve and enjoy. In the winter, we like black beans and rice or macaroni and cheese on the side. In the summer, we’ve served it with salad or chicken orzo salad. It’s versatile and easy.

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Last week I finally got sick of:
- Sitting down to make the usual 2-week meal plan and feeling like all the possible dinners were stale or boring, or that we had just had them
- Getting ready to do the weekly grocery shopping and having to count up how many chicken breasts, boxes of chicken broth, and potatoes I would need for that week
- Feeling like if I had a little more time to research, I could add in newer dinners and try new things

So I decided to make up a six-week meal plan, one that would actually schedule in all of the new things I wanted to try, have an exact count of ingredients I would need to buy when I shopped for the week, and one that was varied enough during the six weeks so that we wouldn’t feel like any dinner was wearisome by the time it came around.

First, I brainstormed and listed out a) every single meal that our family likes to eat, b) meals that I wanted to try out, and c) meals that included food that we should be eating more of for health’s sake but that I knew the kids didn’t like (like salmon). This list had 32 dinners. I started plugging them into a spreadsheet, and after some more cookbook-reading and website-browsing, I was able to conjure up a few more dishes to push the number a bit higher. I also ended up repeating a few of our favorite dinners, and deliberately scheduled in the use of leftovers. For example, leftover chicken from Wednesday’s Roast Chicken would get thrown into Chicken A La King on Thursday. As far as the kids not liking salmon, oh well, they’d only have to eat it once every six weeks!

Here’s a brief look at our plan. In Spain, lunches are big deals and dinners are small and simple, so for us, all of the following dinners are actually eaten at 2pm and are our main meal for the day. You may notice that we have a huge affinity to cheese, chicken, beef, and pasta. I don’t know how the kids eat like this and still are so skinny that I can see all of their ribs. Nate and I are definitely not as lucky! But the kids need their calories. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m cooking the cheesy stuff that they’ll actually eat (unlike salmon).

Week 1
Chicken Quesadillas w/ Black Beans and Rice
Beef Chow Mein
Roast Chicken w/ Carrots and Potatoes
Chicken A La King
Pasta w/ Chicken
Pizza
Chorizo Lentil Soup

Week 2
Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup
Chicken Pot Pie
Grilled Chicken Sandwiches
Albondigas Soup
Ravioli
Pork Tenderloin w/ Carrots and Potatoes
Italian Wedding Soup

Week 3
Chicken Nuggets
Salmon w/ Potatoes or Rice, and Broccoli
Monterey Chicken w/ Black Beans and Rice
Lasagna (Spanish recipe)
Tortilla Soup
Chinese Noodle Soup
Chili

Week 4
Quesadillas w/ Corn
Beef Chow Mein
Cheeseburgers
Orange Chicken w/ Broccoli
Denise’s Pasta
Pizza
Zuppa Toscana

Week 5
Chinese Noodle Soup
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Meatloaf
Pasta w/ Chicken
Monterey Chicken w/ Macaroni and Cheese
Minestrone Soup
Roast w/ Carrots and Potatoes

Week 6
Chicken Scampi
Merluza (a white Spanish fish) w/ Green Beans
Casserole (unspecified so we can try out different recipes)
Chicken and Broccoli
Pork Chops w/ Scalloped Potatoes and Peas
Lasagna or Something Fun
Adobo Chicken

If you’d like to see the original spreadsheet with the menus and the shopping lists, please click here: Six Week Menu. It’s kind of in code: Eroski and Lidl are the two stores that I shop at on a rotating basis, and I can only get certain things at each one. Triturado stands for tomato puree, of which I use a ton because it’s cheaper to make sauces from puree than to buy them. Tomate Frito is just like tomato soup. And Grano Padano is a hard cheese, much like Parmesan, that can come grated. Our week starts on Monday because that’s when I go shopping, and for weekends I plan meals that are either easy or Crock-Pot worthy, given our tight schedules due to soccer games and church. The spreadsheet can definitely be improved upon – right now if I swap meals from one week to another I need to revise the entire shopping list for those two weeks – but for now I’m going to see how it works. If you have any other questions, let me know! And if you have your own extended menu, let me know if you have any ideas on streamlining the process.

And a word about grocery lists. Here’s what I’ve found to work the best for our family: Faith Grocery List. It’s a list of everything we buy regularly, and when we need something, we just circle it. It’s organized by store aisle. I print out a bunch at a time, double-sided, and then just cut them in half. One sheet of paper yields 4 of these grocery lists. We love them!

I picked this up when we were in Switzerland. I was intrigued by the label of “Summer Edition” (I’d love to see their “Winter Edition”) and by the fact that I never get to have passion fruit in anything, ever. It tasted exactly as advertised – there was chocolate, there was panna cotta flavor, and there were teeny tiny tangy passion fruit pieces. After eating a piece of it every day for two weeks, I can say that it was quite good, but really a bit bizarre. It made me feel like I had summer in my mouth, covered with chocolate. And, for some inexplicable reason, it made me miss Jelly Bellys. The end.

For Nate and me, dinner is a low-key, throw-stuff-together affair, mainly because we've already had our main meal at lunchtime and because we've just put the kids down to bed after a long day. Strawberries are just coming into season in northwest Spain, and I love what they bring to a thrown-together dinner. These days, I've been making this easy salad for myself – Nate won't touch walnuts – almost every day, and then scarfing it down while Nate and I sit down and watch soccer (is it ever not on here??). The flavors complement each other well, and I can feel proud that I ended the day on a healthy note, instead of just eating crackers for an hour because I'm too tired to make something. Special thanks go to Tricia Volling, who introduced us to her honey-vinaigrette dressing when she visited us a couple months ago!

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Strawberry Orange Walnut Salad
Serves 1

For the salad, toss together:
- 4 leaves green-leaf lettuce, rinsed, patted dry with paper towels, and torn into bite-sized pieces
- 4 – 5 strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and sliced
- 1 mandarin orange, peeled and diced
- Handful of walnut halves, coarsely chopped

For the honey vinaigrette, whisk together:
- 3 parts extra-virgin olive oil (for example, 6 oz.)
- 1 part vinegar or balsamic vinegar (for example, 2 oz.)
- 1 part honey (for example, 2 oz.)
- 1 garlic clove, minced or pressed through a garlic press

We like to make a lot of vinaigrette at one time – the amounts you see in the above parentheses – and store it on the counter for a few weeks.
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 Oh, how I miss those dinosaur chicken nuggets from Costco. We used to eat those all the time, and when I say "we" I mean the kids and Nate and me. Here in Spain, they do have chicken nuggets, but the ones from Carrefour have gray chicken meat inside (anyway you slice it, nuggets shouldn't be gray), and the ones from other brands need to be deep-fried. So…we make our own nuggets quite frequently, since, again, it's one of the only things that all of our kids with teeth will eat well. They're super easy and a great source of protein.

Pour some breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan or Grana Padano, salt, pepper, and a pinch of grated Cayenne pepper into a shallow dish and mix together.

In another shallow dish, beat together one egg and a splash of milk.

Cut up chicken breasts into pieces. I usually put a hand on the top of each chicken breast and make one slice horizontally so that the pieces aren't too thick, and then cut them up crosswise. Dip each piece into the egg mixture, then coat with the crumb mixture, and put it on a cookie sheet. Drizzle or brush the pieces with olive oil.

Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes, until the bottoms of the pieces are golden brown. Flip the pieces and rotate the cookie sheet from front to back, then bake for about 10 more minutes until the pieces are golden brown on top and bottom.

Serve on cute plates for the kids:

Nate likes to dip his nuggets in barbecue sauce and honey:

 Sometimes we like these with a salad, sometimes with macaroni and cheese, and sometimes with spaghetti. The possibilities are many.

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EASY BAKED CHICKEN NUGGETS

This is a very flexible recipe – usually for the coating I throw stuff into shallow dishes without measuring. If I find that I need more breadcrumbs or grated cheese, I just pour some more in.

Ingredients:
- 3 chicken breasts

- About 1 cup breadcrumbs, more if needed
- About 1 cup grated Parmesan or Grana Padano, more if needed
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- Pinch cayenne pepper
- Dried ground oregano, basil, paprika (all optional – be creative!)

- 1 egg
- Splash of milk (about 1/4 cup)

- 2 – 3 TBSP of canola, vegetable, or olive oil

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 400º F (200º C)

2. For easy clean-up, line cookie sheet(s) with foil, then with a layer of parchment paper

3. In a shallow bowl, mix together the breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan or Grana Padano, salt, pepper, and spices.

4. In another shallow bowl, beat together the egg and milk.

5. Cut up the chicken breasts horizontally, then cut into pieces. The pieces should be fairly uniform so that they cook evenly. Dip each piece into the egg mixture, then into the breadcrumb mixture, and lay it on the lined cookie sheet. Continue with all remaining chicken pieces.

6. Pour 2 – 3 TBSP oil into a small bowl. With a pastry brush or a spoon, brush or drizzle the oil onto the tops of the chicken pieces. You don't need to worry about the bottoms.

7. Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes, or until the bottoms of the pieces are a light golden brown. Flip over each piece, then rotate cookie sheet from front to back. Bake for about 10 more minutes, until nuggets are deep golden brown all over. Remove from the oven and, for maximum juiciness, let rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

8. Serve with ketchup, barbecue sauce, honey, Ranch dressing…whatever makes you happy!

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