Our Week in Meals #278

Good morning, and happy Sunday! We had a rough week around here, including a trip to the hospital, a lot of time in bed, and minimal cooking. Fortunately, everyone seems to be on the mend, and we’re happy to see a sunny forecast ahead. All of the details from the past few days, along with our easy dinners, are included in today’s roundup of Our Week in Meals!

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For those of you who are new to the blog, Our Week in Meals is where I share a little bit about what we’ve been up to over the past week — as it relates to our dinners each night. This series gives you a glimpse “behind the scenes” at some highlights from our life, shows you how I balance a busy schedule with feeding my family, and offers a few new ideas for your own weekly meal plan. Now, let’s back up to last weekend…

We had a very quiet day at the house on Sunday, while Spencer continued to recover from a very nasty stomach bug. It was cloudy, but really warm, so Keith did a lot of yard work (the trees are starting to blossom!), and we took a short walk.

We had Dutch oven chicken for dinner,

along with rosemary roasted potatoes,

and a house salad.

Plus a loaf of strawberry bread for a treat on the side. The strawberries have been really sweet again at the grocery store!

With Spencer on the mend from the nasty virus that he came down with a few days before, we (incorrectly) assumed that the rest of us were in the clear. Boy, were we wrong!

Later that evening, both Gibbs and Keith got sick. We were up all night, and our Monday plans were obviously scrapped in favor of another day at the house. I spent the bulk of my hours playing nurse, cleaning up the house, and just generally taking care of the family…until Casey and I got sick that evening, too! That’s 5/5 for this horrible virus!

I was planning to serve Crock Pot Chicken Gyros for supper,

along with hummus, pita, rice, and salad. In reality, four out of five of us couldn’t keep anything down, so dinner was definitely not an option. Instead, Spencer asked for a toasted waffle (the last of the leftover homemade waffles that I had stashed in the freezer from a previous day), and the rest of us completely skipped food that night.

I have no photos at all to share from Tuesday — a day that I’d rather just forget! After a night of endless vomiting, poor Casey was still so sick on Tuesday morning that I took him to the doctor’s office. They gave him a quick exam, and then promptly put us on an ambulance to the ER so that he could receive IV fluids and anti-nausea medication.

It was very scary, but the doctors and nurses took good care of him and sent us home later that afternoon feeling a lot better. Once again, nobody in the house really had an appetite for dinner, so we made some toast and called it an early night!

Spencer went to school and Keith went to his office on Wednesday, while Casey, Gibbs, and I stayed home to continue recovering. The older boys were still unable to eat anything, but the other half of the family was ready for a meal that included something other than toast, crackers, or bananas! I made a small pan of Baked Rigatoni (perfect for a cool, rainy day), and stashed the other half of the dish in the freezer for another time. Normally I would pair this casserole with garlic bread and salad, but not this week!

I was so happy to see the sun come out again on Thursday! Gibbs and Casey were finally starting to feel a little better, and it was like a light at the end of the week-long tunnel of sickness!

Gibbs worked on some online school assignments, I finally got back to my computer to get a little bit of work done, and Teddy even got a walk for the first time in days.

Before Spencer’s basketball practice, we had roasted chicken thighs with garlic and herbs for dinner, along with rice and green beans. Sometimes simple is best!

Let’s chat books! I might not have left the house much this week, but I did manage to get some reading done, as usual. My mother-in-law loaned me her copy of Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian, which I really enjoyed. It’s a great combination of historical fiction, mystery, and thriller (three genres I love), all wrapped into one package! Here’s the summary from Amazon:

A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.

But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary—a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony—soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary’s garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows.

A twisting, tightly plotted novel of historical suspense from one of our greatest storytellers, Hour of the Witch is a timely and terrifying story of socially sanctioned brutality and the original American witch hunt.

Friday included a trip to Yoder’s country market for our regular re-stock of lunch meat, buttermilk, and other staples. I also picked up gift cards to bring to the paramedics that helped Casey on Tuesday, since the café is open for breakfast and lunch. It’s a popular spot for locals to grab a quick country ham biscuit or lunch sandwich, and I regularly see the EMT’s stopping by for a bite. Food is love!

A sunny walk with Keith and the dog…

…a stop at the school to pick up missed work, and a visit with the Madison County EMS so that Casey could drop off his thank-you notes and gift cards for the wonderful men and women who work there.

We had the easiest burritos for dinner that night,

along with corn, tortilla chips, salsa, and guacamole.

Spring floral wreaths on the front door, and a snow dusting in the grass! We went from almost 70 degrees on Friday to snow flurries on Saturday morning. Fortunately, not much stuck to the ground…

The sports activities were canceled due to the weather, so we stayed tucked inside by the fire and worked through the kids’ piles of make-up school work. I also received a fun package in the mail from my friends at Taste of Home! This is the spring edition of their seasonal Special Delivery box, which includes a variety of cool new kitchen tools, recipe cards, and a great cookbook called, 5-Ingredient Recipes.

We were all getting stir-crazy by that evening, so we headed out to dinner at the kids’ request: Chili’s! Almost a week after initially getting sick, Casey’s appetite still isn’t back to normal, and it’s been really hard to get him to eat anything. When he said that a burger sounded good, we were willing to do anything to get him one!

Chicken tortilla soup and Caesar salad sounded good to me on a snow day, burgers and chicken fingers for the boys, and endless chips and salsa for the table.

Not surprisingly, the Blue Lagoon Fizz with Swedish fish candies in it was the biggest hit of all…

And that’s where we’ll leave it for today! It’s been a stressful, exhausting week, and one that I’m looking forward to moving past. We’re expecting warmer, sunnier weather in the days ahead, I’ve got three healthy kiddos to send to school on Monday, and I can’t wait to get back to work and my own routine. I hope that you stay healthy this week, enjoy some delicious homecooked meals, and maybe even catch a glimpse of some spring daffodils. Thank you for being here!