Meal Plan: Easy Couscous Bowls, Your-Choice Minestrone, and I’m Making Pastrami

The Family Plan #64

Do you have a culinary bucket list—foods you want to cook at least once in your life? Mine includes things like chicken mole, hand-pulled noodles (c’mon, doesn’t that sound fun?), and tahdig. It did not include from-scratch pastrami.

And yet, for the last five days my fridge has held a five-pound brisket, lolling around in a brine made with plenty of sal…