Supper Central: Meal Assembly 101

Oh my, have things been busy around here.  The Boy graduated high school!!  There was convocation, a dinner and a dance, a limo full of teenagers.... Now that graduation things are over, we had to get the Boy registered for University classes in the fall!  By the way, he earned himself an entrance scholarship!  The last of our excitement is underway as way as well:  the Boy leaves for his Me to We trip to Ecuador!  Wow!

 A while back I had the opportunity to check out Supper Central.  They had teamed up with the Manitoba Chicken Producers to sponsor a meal prep gathering. I had heard about this place but had never been. Supper central is a dinner assembly kitchen. You order your meals, set a day and time to go in, and rotate through the statio stations assembling meals. Here's the neat part: they do all the prep AND the clean up! What's not to love? At the end of the evening you leave with your meals, each one neatly packed in a big zip top bag complete with meat, grain or pasta, and veggie.

Packing your meal couldn't be easier. Rice and pasta are pre measured into baggies, meats are already portioned out into another baggie....seriously.  All you need to do is follow the recipe instructions they provide to add marinade ingredients to the meat, smoosh it up, reseal it and put it into the larger zip top bag.  Now grab your grain or pasta, toss that in, and assemble your last part.  On this meal that was the mango salsa.  In another meal, it was grabbing a Baggie of frozen green beans and adding honey and soy.

As you assemble your meals you can adjust seasonings to your family's liking, we like spicy so I added extra spices accordingly. Supper Central will also provide you with a handy prep card with instructions on how to prepare your meal.

Meals come together quickly and easily. For a busy family or couple, this is a fabulous dinner option.  The chicken and mango salsa were tasty and came together quickly with a quick grill of the chicken, boil the rice and thaw the mango salsa. Everyone in the house enjoyed it.  We got 5 chicken breast with the 'full size' meal. The pieces were quite smaller than I would normally buy when grocery shopping but if you are feeding smaller kids, they are a good size. If you are feeding a giant teen boy, there most likely want be leftovers.

The Quick and Easy:

I am in love with the concept of supper central and will most likely make use of them during busy times. They are organized, clean, and they do the work for you.  The meals are tasty and well thought out as well.

Supper Central is allergy aware with nut free stations, gluten free options and the like.  

They have plenty of single meals pre frozen to store in your freezer and which are great options for singles or people who aren't able to cook.

Supper Central offers a packing service where they will assemble your meals and all you need to do is to pick them up.

If their meals seem pricey, think about the time component. All the chopping and cleaning pins done for you. You just show up and assemble.

Definitely worth checking out.

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Please note that I assembled 2 meals at Supper Central which were generously provided to those in attendance by Manitoba Chicken Producers. Thank you for the opportunity to try out meal assembly. 

Bacon, Pasta, and Power

Tonight was one of those nights I actually got some time to myself after work. I must admit it is a bit of a strange feeling.  The Boy is at school until 6:30 for driver's ed, Hubby has a class, and there was no rehearsal for the school production due to a meeting (that I didn't have to attend)!! What to do with that time??? I thought about having a nap but didn't think I would wake up until tomorrow morning. Instead I wandered over the the IGA by my house to browse the shelves and get some ingredients for dinner.  I had a recipe in the back of my head and had a quasi-mental list...okay, I confess, I checked a recipe in my new Jamie Oliver cook book and knew what I wanted to make.

The original inspiration for tonight's dinner was "mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce". Such a long title but it was an easy peasy recipe and has bacon in it! Once I got to the store, I discovered that IGA didn't have fresh mint and things just got worse from there.  As I was at the dairy case, the power went out.  It did kind of throw me for a loop. It wasn't dark as it was actually still light out and there are windows but it still caused me to forget to grab some frozen peas and double check what I was getting as all the interact machines were down!

So I walked home from the powerless store to my powerless house and put my groceries away in my powerless fridge. With no power to cook supper, run the Internet, or heat the house I bundled up and walked over to my friend Marie's house.  We drank some beer so it wouldn't go bad....and she has three fabulous dogs that took turns sitting with me to keep me warm!!

The original recipe can be found on page 52 of Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Food Revolution and calls for:

• 10 slices smoked bacon
• a small bunch of mint
• salt and pepper
• 1 lb mini shell pasta
• olive oil
• a pat of butter
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 2 tbsp creme fraiche or heavy cream
• 1 lemon
• 6 ounces Parmesan cheese

As some of you may know, I have issues following rules recipes so many times the recipe I start with is very different from what I actually cook.  I do like to use the recipes as a base idea and then add my own flair. The pasta dish I served up tonight included:
Printable recipe

• 1/2 lb bacon, cut into small pieces
• basil
• salt and pepper
• rotini pasta
• 1 cup frozen peas (dug in the freezer and found some)
• 2 tbsp half and half
• 1/2 lemon
• 2 cloves garlic (because hey, it's garlic)
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes in juice (I had some left over from the other day. I blitzed them with a hand blender first)
• sauteed mushrooms and asparagus (these were left over from last night's dinner. They had been sauteed in garlic and were fan-freaking-tastic)
• Parmesan cheese (I actually had some leftover from making the chicken fingers last week! It was about 1/2 a cup)

Put a pot of water on to boil, heat a skillet, and chop the bacon.

Saute the bacon until it is crisp. Drain the fat (or at least some of it).  Add the peas, mushrooms, and asparagus.  Also grate on a micro plane or use a press to add in the 2 cloves of garlic.  This is also a great place to add in a couple grinds of pepper.

To the pot of boiling water, add a hefty pinch of salt and plunk in the pasta.  Cook according to package directions.
Pour the tomatoes into the skillet along with some pinches of basil.  Let this boil down until the pasta is half cooked.

Add 2 tbsp of half and half to the skillet and stir.

Remove the pasta from the water and add it to the skillet.  Mix it all together and add the squeezings of half a lemon and the Parmesan cheese.

Serve with salad or veggies.

This dish received fabulous reviews from the boys and heated up nicely for Hubby when he got back from his class tonight.

 


Devour!

FYI, the power did go back on just before 6pm, after 2 hours.  Apparently the hydro company had to shut off the power so they could fix a hydro pole fire issue. 

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Dreaming of sunny weather and blue waters...

You're Going Where?

It has been such an exciting week in the Little Kitchen! There is news to be told!! While baseball is still officially the Boy's first love, in the wake of his injury, he has been exploring other options.  He came upon an exciting endeavour being offered by his school through EFtours. After much thought and discussion, we have decided that this opportunity now in front of him to just too good to pass up. I am so excited, I can barely contain myself....The Boy is going......to......KENYA!!!! He will be participating in a voluntour with Free the Children and the Me to We people!!!!!!!!!! What a fantastic opportunity for young people! The itinerary looks amazing! He also gets to go to WE day this week as well!

How can I as a parent not do everything to help make this opportunity happen for my child? I wish I could go!! Of course to help celebrate this event, I have been researching some recipes for Kenyan foods!  The one we decided to try first is for a very simple flat bread called Chapati that we found on the internet here.  There some other recipes on this page that we hope to try out over the next few months before the Boy leaves on his trip.

Chapati

1 cup flour
1cup whole wheat flour
2 tbsp oil
3/4 to 1 cup water
salt to taste (1 used 1/2 tsp)

Mix the flours, salt and oil in a bowl.

Slowly add the water, mixing and kneading as you go. You will know you've added enough water when it comes together to form a slightly sticky but kneadable dough.

Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it becomes smooth and stiff.

Wrap the dough ball in plastic wrap and set aside to rest for at least 30 minutes (or longer).

Heat a fry pan or griddle to medium/high.  Split the dough into 6 equal size pieces and dust with flour.  Roll each piece out to a thin roundish shape.

Brush the pan or griddle lightly with oil and lay one piece of dough in the pan. Let it cook for about 1 minute on the first side then flip and cook for another minute.  Each side should have some browning starting on each side.  As you cook the rest of the the Chapati, keep the cooked ones warm.

We find these easy to make flat breads quite tasty and are perfect with hummus and we are looking forward to trying them with other meals.
We are just so excited to be able to help the Boy have this opportunity to travel to Kenya and will keep looking from some regional foods we can make right here in our Little Kitchen.

Until next time, stay warm and eat well!