Yet another meal plan with semi-homemade recipes that you can make with just one stove-top and Instant Pot. Here is my meal planner for this upcoming Pongal festival week with mostly no-onion no-garlic recipes.
Pongal Festival-
The Indian harvest festival is just around the corner, and with my makeover kitchen, it isn’t very easy for me to make elaborate meals. So I am opting for quick and straightforward options. I am not skipping both savory pongal and sweet pongal. Planning to make them in Instant Pot and stove-top pressure cooker.
Kitchen Updates-
This weekend we started our cabinet installation. Once we get those installed, then comes the counter-top installation, and that’s going to take ten days. So as I mentioned last week, I will get my kitchen only by this month’s end.
Like last week, I am going to rely on one-pot meals and leftovers for the coming weeks also. I have two Instant Pots, and that helps me a lot. With that in mind, I have created my meal plan.
Usually, I use my portable induction stove-top for making curry/stir-fry, and I use my cast iron on the induction and so far, no issues. I even posted a video of making dosai in my cast iron pan on the induction stove-top on my Instagram.
Weekly Meal Prepping:
- I bought a store-bought idli and dosa batter. As the installation of the cabinets was going on, I couldn’t make the batter at home.
- I bought chopped ivy gourd and snake gourd directly from the store this week. Luckily, I can find cut vegetables here in the store most of the time. The only vegetable that I need to chop is brinjal, and that’s not difficult like ivy gourd. :-)
- Like last week, I outsourced rotis from a home-based caterer.
Semi-Homemade Meal Planner in Detail:
Monday:
- I am starting with the humble idli and sambar for both breakfast and lunch.
- I am planning to reuse the same sambar for dinner, but I will be serving it along with ivy gourd curry and rice.
Tuesday:
It’s the pongal festival day, and I am making both the Pongal (savory and sweet) :-)
- For breakfast, I am going with ven pongal and coconut chutney.
- And for lunch, it is the same venpongal with chutney along with the sweet pongal / sakkarai pongal.
- For dinner, I am opting for pressure cooker bisibelebath and brinjal curry. (I am not planning to make fresh spice powder for my brinjal curry. Instead, I am going to use rasam powder)
Wednesday:
Usually, on festival days, we don’t use leftovers, but with the given situation, I am planning to use leftover rice.
- For breakfast, it is simple oatmeal.
- For lunch, I am planning to make lemon rice and pack it along with store-bought chips.
- Dinner is a simple fare with yogurt rice and pickle. As long as there is mango or lemon pickle, kiddo will relish the yogurt rice without any complaint.
Thursday:
- As always, I am keeping my Thursday onion and garlic free. So starting the day with sattu porridge for ourselves and cheese dosai for the kiddo.
- As I already made venpongal on Tuesday, I am opting for roti with dal.
- For dinner, it is the same dal, but I will serve it along with rice and snake gourd curry.
Friday:
- For breakfast, I am opting for overnight oats for us and oatmeal for the kiddo.
- For lunch, it is the humble Instant Pot moong dal khichdi with cilantro raita.
I hope this menu planner helps, and you all can draw some inspiration. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. I will share the daily updates on my Instagram and my FB group. So stay connected!
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