Menu Plan Monday

This week is full of evening activities and plans. Monday is the skating party/fundraiser for April's school, Tuesday she has tumbling, & Wednesday evening I have a meeting at church. Busy weeknights mean the menu has to be planned ahead or we end up throwing money away by having to eat fast, greasy drive thru food. So here is the plan as it stands right now:

Monday: Chicken strips w/ veggie & fruit

Tuesday: Chicken stirfry

Wednesday: frozen pizza, salad

Thursday: Spaghetti with meat sauce

Friday: not sure yet ; )

I only had enough imagination for 4 days, so Friday is going to have to wait.

Menu Plan Monday

Well, I think I finally figured out a menu. I'm not particularly thrilled with it, but it's not concrete and is definitely able to be changed if something that sounds better comes along.

Sunday - chicken enchilada soup
Monday - leftovers
Tuesday - not sure (April has tumbling, then I need to pick up prescriptions) probably salad or drive-thru :)
Wednesday - tuna & noodles
Thursday - Steaks
Friday - steak salad (with leftover steak)
Saturday - pinto beans & eggs

The chicken enchilada soup made lots of extra - so I am going to freeze individual portions to use later.

Weekly Menu

Sunday - chicken & dumplings

Monday - leftovers

Tuesday - grilled cheese & tomato soup

Wednesday - crockpot pork chops & a veggie

Thursday - multigrain mini pizzas

Friday - leftovers

Saturday - We are going out to celebrate our anniversary (10 days late) Yippee!!!

Weekly Menu Plan

Yesterday while my husband & daughter were out in the kayak I sat with a notebook and made a menu plan for the next two weeks. (Can you believe that?!?!?) When I got home I compared my menu plan with what we had on hand and this week I will only have to buy lettuce, parmesan cheese, sausage, and bread. So here is my menu plan for this week:

Sunday: lasagna, lettuce salad

Monday: hot dog salad

Tuesday: leftovers

Wednesday: crockpot chili, hoe cakes

Thursday: chili dogs

Friday: pizza

Saturday: pinto beans

When I made the lasagna I made 2 pans of it. 1 of the pans went into the freezer for a future meal. It's already cooked so all I will have to do is defrost it & heat it through. : )

Menu Plan Monday

You'll notice that this week we have a lot of corn on the cob on the menu. My Aunt Connie and Uncle Norm gave us a bunch of corn that they raised on their farm! How lucky am I to have such considerate relatives!?!? We went out their Friday night to get the corn. Afterwards we sat and visited for a while. Time passes so quickly when we are with them because they are so much fun to spend time with!




Monday - lettuce salad, leftover corn (from Sunday)

Tuesday - grilled pork chops, corn on the cob, cucumber salad

Wednesday - multigrain pasta w/ tomatoes, peppers, onion, oil & spices

Thursday - not sure what we'll have this night because we are going to be on a float for our church in a local parade

Friday - salmon patties (didn't eat them last week), corn on the cob

Saturday - ratatouille (from the Taste of Home cookbook - it's AWESOME! And the leftovers are even better!! I'll have to post the recipe later this week for you. It's so good and the veggies are in a spaghetti style sauce - even my husband, who is not a veggie fan, will eat this. And because it looks similar to lasagne kids will eat it too!)

Menu Plan Monday

Last week we had vacation bible school at our church. While it was a lot of fun I missed eating at home! Every night was either a meal at the church or a drive thru meal. Either way it we had to inhale our food. This week - while the menu may not be glamorous - it will all be made & eaten at home. With no time limit & in the comfort of my home. Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh..............

Monday - lettuce salad with steak & avocado

Tuesday - eggplant parmigiana w/multigrain noodles

Wednesday - chicken chunks, mixed veggies, multigrain bread

Thursday - salmon patties, peas

Friday - sausage & pepperoni pizza

Since my husband & I both work full-time outside the home I don't typically add lunches to the blog. So you may wonder what we eat for lunches. My goal on Sunday (though it happens less than I would like) I is to make some type of salad - egg salad, tuna salad, or green salad mixture. During the week we will use what ever salad to determine what our lunches are. I also don't blog about lunches because I like to have some sort of variety of things here that we can take. Each day is different. Sometimes we have leftovers. Sometimes we take sandwiches.

In a typical day this is what is in my lunch bag: an apple, a container of yogurt, a green salad with some kind of meat, a cheese stick, a couple deli slices of turkey, a water bottle (reusable), a diet coke (gotta have caffeine of some sort by lunch!), & any other fruits/veggies that we have on hand & maybe a hard-boiled egg. It sounds like a lot of food, but it really isn't that much. And since I'm still trying to lose the last 10 pounds I try to eat a little something every couple hours.

Menu Plan Monday

This week I wanted to try to break out of the normal monetonous menus. :)

Sunday - homemade shrimp egg rolls, sauteed snails

Monday - grilled brats, grilled cactus, edamame

Tuesday - tofu stir fry, edamame (again)

Wednesday - greek burger kabobs w/ greek yogurt

Thursday - leftovers

Friday - ?

Saturday - steak, veggies

I admit, the sauteed snails & cactus were impulse buys after watching "Anthony Bourdain's: No Reservations" on the Travel Channel. I was feeling adventuresome and pretty brave. The snails were sauteed in butter and seasoned with Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning. The were nothing great to be honest. April probably liked them best out of the 3 of us. Weird.

The cactus we made tonight was really good. We peeled the 'green' off of the cactus leaf (not sure what to call it other than a leaf), rubbed with olive oil and seasoned it. We put it on the grill with the brats. The taste reminded me of asparagus. I had picked it up at the local Asian market and paid about $0.40 for the "leaf" (which was about the length of an encylopedia - yeah, I know I'm "on it" tonight with the descriptions). : )

The tofu for the stir fry on Tuesday night is marinading as we speak in a mixture of hoisin, soy sauce, & cock sauce. (Yes, that is what the bottle says.... "cock sauce". I swear I couldn't even make that up. I can tell you though that each of my sisters-in-law will probably be getting a bottle for Christmas.....just because it's funny.) The stir fry will also have some rice noodles (which are not on the diet, but I'm sure I'll live) and leftover veggies from the egg rolls on Sunday.

Wednesday's Greek burger kabobs are partially a made-up idea from my husband and an idea out of a magazine. We saw a recipe this weekend in a magazine that suggested making a meatloaf and wrapping the raw meatloaf mixture on a skewer and grilling it. My husband said that he thought it would be good if you added Greek seasoning (instead of ketchup) to the mixture and then topped with the Greek Gyro yogurt stuff. (Not sure of the technical name, but you get what I'm saying."

Thursday we will need to eat up any leftovers that have acquired over the week to avoid any spoilage or tossing out of food. And Friday I'm just not sure yet. I'm holding out in case we decide to camp out or in case my husband should want to take his gorgeous wife (that would be me) out for supper. I will not hold my breath for either of those - so it may be something out of a can. : )

I originally considered the steaks for Friday but decided that Saturday would be best. Then we can use the leftovers for salads the next evening. Which I guess really would work for Friday also, but again I'm holding out for food that I don't have to make that night. Something tells me not to get my hopes up though......

Weekly Menu

I know it’s Tuesday, but this is what this weeks menu is looking like:

Monday – breakfast for supper
Tuesday – Mexican roll-ups
Wednesday – shrimp scampi
Thursday – taco saladFriday – steak, cauliflower salad

Menu Monday

Monday – hot dogs, pineapple & mandarin oranges
Tuesday – hamburgers, corn
Wednesday – spaghetti & meatballs
Thursday – Quesadillas, refried beans
Friday – cookout at my in-laws

I realize that most of these foods don't look particularly nutritious, but it's the portion control & little changes that make them "not so bad" for a person. Such as not eating buns with the dogs & burgers, =using multi-grain pasta, & whole wheat tortillas.

On a side note, everything in the summer is subject to change. Mostly because there are days here that are so hot & humid that a person seriously may not want to really eat anything. So this is our “tentative” meal plan. : )

Holy Smokes How Did That Happen???

06/15/09 HY VEE 1610 $30.79

06/15/09 HY VEE 1610 $40.36

06/12/09 HY VEE 1610 $50.99

06/12/09 HY VEE 1610 $60.79

I checked our bank statement online last night and saw the above purchases totaling $182.93 and about passed out. I don’t remember us ever spending that hardly in an entire month, let alone in a matter of 3 days!!

I attribute it to not having a menu made out. It’s hard to make a menu when nothing sounds good. So last week we made a lot of spontaneous recipes which required trips to the store. Of course if I didn’t have a list to follow either, so I’d up things that looked good. And in all fairness I did get $20 cash back on 2 of the transactions.
After seeing that I told Layne that we HAVE to make up menus together to avoid having this happen again. Tonight we are making Vietnamese Pork Rolls - mainly because we have all the ingredients & the recipe looks pretty easy.

I talk a lot about menu planning & I really do have good intentions. I guess I need inspiration & ideas. I don't know if any of you read Miriam's comment last week on Menu Planning. But she gave a great website to check out. It's www.supercook.com. I have dabbled in it a little bit & think it could be very useful if a person kept it updated with the ingredients they have on hand. I'm going to put my info in this weekend and use it to plan my menu for next week.

Menu planning

This weekend I felt like all I did was eat. I didn’t eat large amounts of any certain thing, and didn’t really eat any “banned” foods – except maybe a bite to try something. So now that I haven’t been able to make up a menu plan for week because nothing sounds remotely good!

Of course when I walk in the door from work the first words I hear are “what’s for supper?” And any suggestions I give are met with “that doesn’t even sound good”. What’s a girl to do??? Part of me wants to tell him that the evenings he gets home before me he should make supper. But then I know I’ll be eating something gross like “Chicken A La King” from a can. YUCK!

I think that I need a new routine for planning menus. I have been trying to make menus using what I have on hand, which is fine. But it seems that we always have the same meats, etc on hand so our menu gets very routine.

What I am going to try to do is plan my menu, and then shop or see what I have on hand to fit the menu instead of planning the menu to fit what I have already.
I need some inspiration!!! How do you go about planning your menu???

Menu Plan Monday

We are salad-lovers at our house, so I can get away with all the salads in this weeks menu!

Monday - hot dogs, beans

Tuesday - lettuce salad with chicken

Wednesday - chicken & mixed veggie salad on top of tostadas

Thursday - pizza (April picked this meal to celebrate the last day of school)

Friday - steak, not sure what for a side

Saturday - lettuce salad with steak

Sunday - Chicago dog salad

Weekly Menu

This week my plan is to use as much food out of the freezer for our meals as I possibly can. We have so much food stuffed in there that we can’t even fit anything else in there!

Monday – steak, peas
Tuesday – turkey polish sausage with kraut
Wednesday – turkey patties, corn
Thursday – hamburgers, frozen veggies of some form
Friday - ???

I know it’s not a great looking menu – and of course it is subject to change. I really need to do an inventory of our freezer so I really know what I’m working with!! I think a good goal for tonight is to do just that - and then I'll post my inventory and see if you have any suggestions for upcoming meals!

Weekly Menu

Last week was so hectic for us. We had April’s party with her friends on Thursday, which I had to make a cake for. And of course she wanted to take treats on Friday for her class. So I had to make cupcakes for that. Then we had family from out of town over the weekend. So this week I am taking it easy – and I’m out of creativity. : )

Monday – chili dogs (no bun for me though), side salad
Tuesday – baked chicken breasts, peas
Wednesday – tuna salad on 12-grain bread, cottage cheese
Thursday – leftovers

Friday – pork chops, salad

Weekly Menu

Sunday - green chile pork

Monday - bbq pork (with leftover pork from Sunday), coleslaw

Tuesday - Steaks, leftover coleslaw

Wednesday - Spinach salad (with leftover steak)

Thursday - Parmesan chicken with multi-grain pasta,

Friday - Homemade pizza

Saturday - not sure

Weekly Menu

After taking a week off from menu planning to get used to the new diet the doctor has recommended I have decided it's time to get back into planning mode. I feel like I have a little bit more of an idea of the things I can eat and the things I should stay away from - which should make menu planning easier.

Monday - frozen pizza, salad
Tuesday - chicken breasts, leftover sweet potato, salad
Wednesday - omelets
Thursday - pork chops, lentils
Friday - steaks, salad

I've been eating a lot of salad. I like salad and can put meat into it to get my protein. I don't mind meat so much if it's put into salad.

Weekly Menu

The last couple weeks I have had no creativity when it comes to menu planning. I am planning on going through some cookbooks this week to get my creative juices flowing. Here is my weekly menu for now, most of which came from Hillbilly Housewife. (But it is definitely subject to change!)

Monday - Steak (leftover) & eggs

Tuesday - Hillbilly Goulash

Wednesday - Chicken breasts, rice, & corn

Thursday - Lentil pottage

Friday - leftovers

Saturday - Alfredo Lasagna - maybe.....

Weekly menu

It's hard to make up a menu when nothing really sounds good. The only foods I'm craving right now are fresh fruits. So here is a rough draft of our menu for the week.

Monday - seafood alfredo

Tuesday - Swedish pancakes, bacon

Wednesday - grilled cheese, tomato soup

Thursday - manicotti with marinara sauce

Friday - steak, veggies, salad

Saturday - homemade pizza

This weeks menu plan

I have only been planning my menus for a few weeks, and only posting them for a couple weeks but honestly I can already see the benefits.

1. We always know what we are having so we no longer have the "What sounds good to you?" "I don't know, what sounds good to you?" conversation.

2. Since we know what we are having we can have meat defrosted or whatever preps done prior to cooking that are necessary.

3. Less waste. Since we know what we are having and know which meals typically yield leftovers we can plan accordingly.

4. Huge money savings. We can make fewer trips to the stores. Which means less chances of being tempted to buy things we don't need.

With that said here is the plan for this week.

Sunday: chili & homemade cinnamon rolls (Which didn't turn out that great. What did I do with the awesome recipe I made 2 months ago?!?!?

Monday: French Toast & fruit

Tuesday: Leftover chili

Wednesday: Not sure. Depends on when we get home from my appt at UNMC.

Thursday: Chicken fajitas (from last weeks menu - ended up eating leftovers the night we were to eat these)

Friday: ribeye steaks, pan fried potatoes & onion, corn or peas

Saturday: Sushi night!!! My brothers & their spouses are coming over & we are going to make sushi & play guitar hero. How fun is that going to be?!?!

Tip for today: I've been seeing a lot of information about Tea Tree Oil lately and what a great product it is. Here is a link I came across when googling Tea Tree Oil. It says it is great for acne. I mixed several drops in with my witch hazel astringent. I will keep you posted on how well it works. I've only used it a couple days now and don't really want to recommend it for acne till I've used it for a lot longer. : )

Weekly Menu

This weeks menu was worked out last night while I was actually cooking Monday's supper. This weeks menu is very easy and I threw it together in about 5 minutes - after looking in the freezer. Pretty much everything on the menu - except for the lettuce and the buns were items we already had on hand - most of it taking up room in our freezer. : )

Monday - chicken chunks & homemade sweet potato chips
Tuesday - chicken patty on a bun, peas, lettuce salad
Wednesday - hamburgers on a bun, corn, lettuce salad
Thursday - cod nuggets, green beans, lettuce salad
Friday - chicken fajitas, tortilla chips & salsa
Saturday - Asian chicken salads

I did have to dip into the remainder of our budget to pick up the buns ($0.88 on sale) and lettuce ($0.59 on sale and with a coupon). I also splurged on my favorite dressing to make the Asian chicken salads - it's on the shelf and is made by Marzetti's, it's called Oriental Sesame and it is AWESOME! The dressing was $2.19. So my remaining balance for this month is $15.32. Woohoo! I've still got many left and only 3-4 days together.