Meal Plan Monday - October 3

It's that time of the week again!

This week my goal was to use as much stuff from the freezer as possible.

Monday - Roast Pork Tenderloin, Mashed Potatoes, Mixed Veggies.

This is pretty simple. I got a great deal on the tenderloins a couple weeks ago and found that I had two in my freezer still. I dump a jar of my homemade chipotle plum jam on it and roast it until it reaches 160 degrees. Some simple mashed potatoes (I haven't had those in ages!) and some frozen mixed vegetables will round out the meal nicely!

Tuesday - Italian Sausage & Spinach over Orecchiette

I made this a few weeks ago. I had another package of sausage in the freezer as well as a bunch of the leftover marinara, so this will be a cinch! Tuesday's are boot camp days too, so I can get away with a meal this heavy.

Wednesday - Chicken tacos, corn, tomato rice

I have some thighs in the freezer, so I'll dump them in the crock pot with some of my homemade salsa. Half the meat I'll use for this meal, and the other half is earmarked for dinner next week. Gotta love killing two birds with one stone, right?

Thursday - Italian Meatball Soup

The high for this day is supposed to be a full TWENTY degrees cooler than the high for Monday. 75 degrees may not sound like soup weather to some people, but around these parts it's down right chilly! Add to that it's supposed to rain? Yup. Soup weather. I haven't made this soup in a long time, so I may blog it. I'm going to double the recipe for the meatballs and freeze half of them to use later.

Friday - Leftovers

Saturday - Farfalle with Mushrooms, Spinach, and Grilled Chicken

This is a recipe I found on Pinterest. It doesn't call for the chicken, but I know me. If I eat a pasta based meal with no meat in it, I'm going to want to eat three times as much and I still won't feel satisfied. Best to throw a little grilled chicken on there!

How did I do this past week?

Four of the five of the planned meals were made... sorta. I started the Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas too late on Monday, so we had to eat something else. I forgot what we had though! I figured we'd just bump everything over a day. Well, my husband said he'd put them in the fridge that night before he went to bed. That's where I screwed up, because I believed him even though I know that he ends up passing out on the couch most nights. I woke up at 5 in the morning to go to the bathroom, and sure enough, the meat was still on the counter, all nice and room temperature and probably teeming with bacteria.

Three pounds of lovely pork that had been carefully studded with garlic, seared, and slow cooked for eight hours went straight into the trash. Let's just say I was not very happy about that.

The French Chicken Broccoli Casserole was good, but it was way unhealthy. I would probably skip making it again just for that reason. It was awesome comfort food - so awesome I had two helpings. I don't need that sort of temptation!!!

The pork chops were made, but we ended up having pasta with butter, parmesan and mixed vegetables instead of the quinoa with corn and scallions because I was A) out of scallions and B) lazy.

The Shiitake Chicken with steamed rice was excellent, as usual.

The only one we skipped was the Chicken Linguine, because I wasn't in the mood for pasta. That makes this the most successful meal planning week so far! Yay!