On Fourth Trimester Meal Prepping + Cookbook Favorites
Sharing the eight recipes that kept me nourished these last three months. Plus, my go-to cookbooks.
The Recipes of My Fourth Trimester Meal Prep
At the end of my pregnancy, my form of nesting was to borderline obsessively meal prep and stock my freezer, with the goal of minimizing cooking during the last weeks of my pregnancy and once baby arrived. My mom had to stage an intervention, cautioning that my freezer couldn’t take any more (she was right) and I needed to get off my feet (rip my ankles). Some people organize and decorate. I made double batches of eight recipes - savory and sweet - then froze everything in portioned containers. And it was incredibly worthwhile.
Celine is three months old now, and I still have a deep bench of prepped portions of my favorite meals in the freezer. I simply pull a meal from the freezer a day before I want to eat it. Easy.
It occurred to me that you might enjoy these recipes as well. They’re not postpartum-specific. These are just delicious meals (and cookies) that freeze well.
Turkey Sweet Potato Chili from goop / There is something magical in how the onions reduce down in the tablespoons of spices that creates a homey, flavorful base to this chili. This recipe was originally part of one of goop’s New Year’s detoxes, but I don’t make this because it’s “healthy”; I make this chili because it’s freaking delicious. It’s so good, it doesn’t need cheese, which is not a statement I make lightly.
My Recipe Tweak / I add half a can of pumpkin to thicken the chili a touch.
Mediterranean Lentil Soup from Downshiftology / As you will soon see, I love soup. This is my favorite one. The immersion blender step gets you just the right consistency and takes this from what could be a boiled mess of lumps to a dreamily thick, robust soup. And the hit of lemon is genius. Definitely top with parmesan!
My Recipe Tweak / I add sausage! Specifically Al Fresco Sweet Apple Chicken Sausage, browned, because I like the sweetness.
Lasagna Soup from Tastes Better From Scratch / As you were reading those first two recipes, I bet you didn’t believe me when I said this wasn’t a postpartum meal prep. Now you will. Lasagna soup is epically good. I like to coarsely chop the spinach so it incorporates better into the soup and you’re not left with an unappetizing glop on your spoon.
My Recipe Tweak / The recipe author suggests leaving the cheese off before freezing. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Rather than using the cheese as a topping, my recommendation is to put all the cheese in the soup and call it a day. Why not?
Zuppa Toscana With Gnocchi from Goop / Gnocchi in soup! I had never made this soup before this prep, and it is now a new favorite. I went a little too heavy with the red chili flake, but goodness this really hit the spot.
My Recipe Tweak / For reasons I cannot really recall or defend (health? ease?), I substituted the bacon for ground turkey. >shrug<
Harissa Meatballs With Tomatoes and Chickpeas / This is one of my signature recipes. Harissa is not scary. I can’t really say it tastes like anything, which doesn’t sound like an endorsement, but I swear it’s good. This meal reheats like it just came out of the oven. DO NOT skip the feta in brine and just get feta crumbles. You will regret it.
My Recipe Tweaks / Bear with me, I’ve made this recipe a lot. First, I increase the tomatoes, chickpeas and their harissa/olive oil by 2.5x. It’s aggressive, but trust me, you’ll want it. Because your sheet pans will be crowded, bake the tomatoes and chickpeas for 10 minutes before you add the meatballs, then cook as directed. Second, add lemon zest to the meatballs, and if you’re bougie (I’m not but I dream about it), also add pine nuts.
White Chicken Chili from @djthoma / I love a white chicken chili, and this couple really sold it in their video. I had never made this one before, and I was nervous about all the cheese and the cream cheese - it felt overboard - so I planned to halve the quantities. But I made a mistake as I was building the soup, and it was coming out way too hot. I thought it was the canned jalapeños, but why would it be? Ultimately, I decided I had been too confident with the cayenne. I ended up adding all the cheese to counter the heat, and it was still a little too hot for me. This is all to say, my execution of this chili was poor, so can I really recommend this recipe? Yes?
Fluffernutter Cookies from Broma Bakery / Yes, I meal prepped homemade cookies (fully baked, not the dough). This is a solid recipe. Not a favorite but still good. Sharing this for the accuracy of what I actually baked during this time.
My Recipe Tweak / I added way more fluff than the recipe called for. And it could have used more.
Maple Pecan Crumble Cookies from Broma Bakery / Yes, I meal prepped a second double batch of cookies. Considering how much sugar is in these cookies, they were remarkably not that sweet, giving more of an oatmeal feel. Which, as I’m writing this, makes me wonder if I added oatmeal to the dough… Can you tell I’m quite comfortable adjusting recipes to my own tastes? As I don’t recall the specifics of what I did, I can’t recommend adding oatmeal, but sending you all the bold, recipe-altering vibes.
And now you see why my freezer was full to bursting. Enjoy these recipes, and let me know if you try some!
My Go-To Cookbooks
I am aware that recipe content is rather random for a short-story newsletter, but I was feeling inspired! What finally sold it for me as relevant for you is when I decided to tie it back to reading and books by sharing my favorite cookbooks.
The Clean Plate by Gwyneth Paltrow / I don’t turn to this for detox reasons. I like the recipes! For example, there’s a miso sweet potato kale salad that is divine.
Fresh, Happy, Tasty by Jane Coxwell / Jane is Diane von Furstenberg’s private chef - on the fashion designer’s yacht. That hooked me, but the content and the recipes kept me. This is the first cookbook I actually read. I learned a lot about how to add flavor with herbs, spices, citrus and nuts, which has helped me personalize recipes to my tastes.
A few more favs:
The Southerner’s Cookbook from the editors of Garden & Gun / also a great gift
Healthy Meal Prep by Lisa Bryan of Downshiftology / creator of the lentil soup recipe above
Sweet Tooth by Sarah Fennel of Broma Bakery / creator of the two cookie recipes above
Meanwhile, have you heard of the concept of a “cookbook club”? I love this idea and want to make it happen. In short, everyone in your book club makes a recipe from the same cookbook, and you all gather for dinner. Yum.
The Story Behind The Story: How Do You Knit a Miracle?
Whoever said writing a children’s book was easy (me), they were wrong. Super wrong. Given, I had a concept and a smattering of words and phrases in a note on my phone, I thought writing a first draft of my children’s picture book would take an hour, tops. Not only that, but I would also complete two additional newsletters in my allotted childcare time, and I would get ahead! Wrong, wrong, wrong. WRONG. So humbling.
The good news is, though, that I enjoyed writing the draft, and it made me want to write more. Which happens almost every time I sit down now. I could keep writing. In fact, I opened this laptop again to add that line – the words are still flowing. As mentioned before, I don’t do poems or rhyme. Fine, I thought when drafting this story, it doesn’t have to rhyme, just write down the words. But then I realized I wasn’t sure what actually happened in the story, even though I had a “concept.” There are so few words to be used, I felt boxed in. So I went back to my advice: just write down the words. That still felt tough, so I revised again: just write. And then it came.
As I was writing, I was nervous my words were too big, my verbal images too complex. From reading to my daughter, I have learned that vocabulary in books doesn’t need to be age-appropriate. At three months old, she understands the meaning of little, perhaps nothing, so it doesn’t matter if I’m using the word “dog” or “vacillate.” She wants to hear me reading to her, she wants to feel the soft rumble in my chest as I enunciate, she wants to stare at flashes of color and darkness and negative space and she wants to notice beauty, then invite it to an intense staring contest.
Still though, I should at least check that I was vaguely fulfilling the needs of a children’s picture book, so I dove into this Jane Friedman article for a quick gut check.
Ann Patchett once wrote that writing a story was akin to observing a beautiful butterfly in your mind, capturing it, killing it and then taxidermizing it. It’s impossible to fully, accurately convey the idea in your mind’s eye. The act of communicating it, running it through the filter of your own humanity, renders it a pale version of what was. I will likely talk about this lesson a lot; it’s a profoundly accurate description of writing.
Similarly, Howard Roark, architect in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, likens working on a design to the untying of a knot. You work and work and work at it, when suddenly it breaks free and smooths out. Writing is exactly the same. A sentence will feel awkward and then a solution will push forward, and the knot is resolved.
In drafting How Do You Knit a Miracle?, I absolutely taxidermized - perhaps mummified - the idea in my head, and the knot has unraveled a little, but it’s still there, snarled and begging for release.
Interestingly, since publishing that first draft, I have a new angle on the same story, and I want to rewrite it entirely. Emphasis on “I want to.” It’s flowing.
Parting Shot
sharing some of my photography from over the years
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