Meal Plan... Thursday?

The first step on my journey to get back to me, I think, should be starting to cook again. There has been way too much takeout happening here in the past year, and let's just say that my husband's cooking skills have really been put to the test as well.  I cook maybe once or twice a month now, which seeing as how I am a stay at home mom and this is sort of part of the job description, is SHAMEFUL.  I suck.

I keep telling myself that I need to start cooking again, but what I'm realizing is that I have failed to make a plan for this.  I'm going to the grocery store and buying staples like bread and milk and bananas, then maybe stuff to throw together a simple meal or two.  There's no plan.  We end up eating the stuff for those thrown together meals and then there's nothing in the house again so we go grab burgers or something.

It's terrible.

So, I got off my behind, went into my Evernote recipe file(on my phone - so handy!), and found some old favorites that we haven't had in a while that weren't too labor intensive.  I don't want to overdo it and get burned out right out of the gate!  

Here's what I came up with:

 (yes, that is a hippo butt magnet and it's AWESOME)

My week starts on Friday but I was too lazy to Photoshop this super cute (dare I say - kawaii???) menu planner page to reflect that.  (Free printable can be found here) Here's the plan, with links to recipes where available:

Friday - Grilled chicken (will send husband to grill because I don't play with propane, despite lusting after a gas stove) with Lemon Orzo and steamed broccoli.

Saturday - Crispy Shrimp Pasta

Sunday - Italian Meatball Soup

Monday - Slow Cooker Beef Stew (I can't remember where I found this!  I'll post it later)

Tuesday - Chicken Noodle Soup

Wednesday - Leftovers (Pizza if there aren't any)

Thursday - Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff

As you can probably guess, I'm really really really ready for it to be fall already.  If you've read my blog, or tweets, however, you know that I don't get that privilege until the end of October at least.  This is the time of year where I start drinking the haterade when reading other people's blog posts about how they're buying mums for their front porch (they'd fry in the sun here within days) or going apple picking (apples were ready back in July in my area) or see photos on Facebook and Instagram talking about boots (still living in flip flops!) and scarves. It stinks.

I plan to crank the AC, buy a pumpkin scented candle (or three), and make soup.  Living in denial is okay some of the time, right?

Anyway, after I made my menu plan, I got to work on a proper grocery list.

This is another free printable from Hello Cuteness. I may tweak the categories later after I use it for a few weeks and see where I need the most space.

I added all my staples, stuff for lunches and breakfasts, and all the stuff I need to make dinner for the next week.  I only buy a week of groceries at a time because the idea of "old" food grosses me out, especially produce.  Besides, the produce rarely lasts more than a week anyway, which means I have to go back anyway.  Might as well get "fresh" food!

(I know it's not always truly fresh or even fresher.  But this is how my mind works and it makes me feel better so let's just go with it.  This is also why I can't hang with the diet meal pre-planning.  Leftovers for a week?  NO THANK YOU.)

Tomorrow when I go to run my errands, I'm going to be prepared!  No wandering aimlessly around target just grabbing what looks good at the time.  No looking in the fridge and pantry wondering what we can make out of old celery and rice noodles, only to give up and get a pizza once again.  I have a plan!

Now, let's see if I can stick to it.  That's always the tricky part, isn't it?

Meal Plan Monday - September 25

I was looking at my weekly planner pages for this week and I'm in total shock that it's pretty much October. I mean, I knew it was coming, and I've been decorating, but DANG. September flew by! I haven't even picked out a Halloween costume for the boy yet!!! Yikes!

Here's this week's meal plan:

Monday - Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas.

Yes, they're on the menu AGAIN. I was going to make them on Friday, and even was responsible and took the roast out of the freezer on Wednesday to allow it enough time to thaw. It's only a three pound roast so I figured two days would be enough time, but I figured wrong. That sucker was solid as a rock when I went to put it in the crock pot on Friday! Dang.

So anyway, now it's thawed finally and I need to cook that bad boy, so into the crock pot it goes!

Tuesday - French Chicken Broccoli Supreme

This is making it's appearance here again for pretty much the same reason as the carnitas; it was planned, but I didn't follow through. This time I hope to be more successful!

Wednesday - Pork Chops, Quinoa with Corn and Scallions

The quinoa recipe is from Pinterest. The pork chops I'll just pan fry, nothing fancy.

Thursday - Shiitake Chicken with Steamed Rice

I got this recipe from the now gone Tranquility's Kitchen blog. Wendy used to post the most awesome authentic Chinese recipes there, and I miss her blog. :( I wish I had written more of them down.

Friday - Leftovers!

Saturday - WW Chicken Linguini

If I keep planning and not following through, these posts are going to get very boring. *sigh*

Last week's progress:

The only thing I made all week that was on my plan was the Beef and Potato Salad. It was tasty, I'll admit. The flavors were a bit different to my palate, but I enjoyed it. It was weird though, even though it was mainly beef and potatoes, I still felt hungry after I ate! My husband said the same thing. It should have felt more filling but it did not. Strange.

Meal Plan Monday - September 19

Man. I stink at this! I only made three out of seven planned meals. That's terrible! In fact, I was able to plug NINE meals that I had planned into the meal plan for the next two weeks. Ugh. I suppose that is 50% more than I did last week though, right?

Here is this week's plan:

Monday - Lemon Garlic Spaghetti with Grilled Chicken

Recipe from Pinterest

I've made this before. While the recipe is intended to be meatless, that many carbs on their own just make me feel bloated and leave me feeling unsatisfied. I can eat less pasta and feel better after the meal if I add a little grilled chicken. Last time I made it, I used chopped walnuts instead of pine nuts because that's what I had, and doubled the garlic because that's how I roll. I will probably keep using walnuts because they taste good, I almost always have them on hand, and pine nuts are flipping expensive.

Tuesday - Turkey Burgers with "Fried" Zucchini Rounds and Corn on the Cob

Recipe from Pinterest

I can tell summer is winding down because the price of zucchini is going back up, and the size is going down. Seriously, some of those specimens they had on the shelf at my grocery store could have used another day or two on the plants. I will make this with ground turkey because it was buy one, get one free for the extra lean Jennie-O that I like so I bought a bunch. :)

Wednesday - Beef and Potato Salad

Recipe from Pinterest

Thursday - Leftovers!!! Either that or something that I was supposed to make but skipped.

Friday - Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas with Mexican Tomato Rice and Tortillas

Recipe for Pork Carnitas from Pinterest, Tomato rice from my blog, Tortillas from my blog

I just finally got around to locating the adobo seasoning (yay Penzey's!) for this a few days ago! I'll serve the pork on the tortillas with chopped onion and fresh cilantro. YUM.

Saturday - Lemon Brown Sugar Chicken and Pasta with Vegetables

Chicken recipe from Pinterest, Pasta my own creation

I've made this chicken before and it's really good! For the pasta I just cook 1/3 lb of small pasta (I like the Barilla Piccolini Farfalle or teeny stars) in salted water (no oil), toss in a half bag of frozen mixed vegetables (I like the SteamFresh ones with the carrots, corn, and asparagus tips) when there's a minute left to cook , drain them together, then toss with butter, grated parmigiano reggiano, salt, and pepper. So tasty and easy!

Last week's meal report:

Curry Spiced Shrimp and Rice - this was really good and plenty easy to make. It was a bit spicy for my taste, however. My husband thought it was great so I think I'll try it again with only a teaspoon and a half of curry powder instead of two.

Italian Sausage and Marinara over Orecchiette - Holy YUM. We both loved this and I even called dibs on the leftovers for lunch! Luckily I ate this on the days that I had a lot of activity becacuse this was not a low calorie meal. I thought I doubled the recipe, but I didn't really do the math on the ounce difference between cans of tomatoes from the store and the jars I canned myself. As a result, I doubled everything BUT the tomatoes. This just means my sauce has extra veggies! HA! I did end up with six 2-cup bags of sauce to freeze after we were done with this meal. Not too shabby!

Crockpot Jambalaya - I should have known this would be a bad idea. It was super bland. Also, after I added the rice the directions said to cook it for another 30 minutes. Well, I did, but the rice was still crunchy. I left it on so that the rice could cook some more but then started trying to balance my freaking checkbook like an idiot while I waited. Have I ever mentioned that I have trouble adding?

Yeah. That rice totally overcooked into mush. So it was bland mush. Lame.

Hopefully this week goes better, and the sandwiches we had for dinner instead of what I was supposed to make aren't an indicator of what is to come!

Meal Plan Monday - September 12

Last week went great as far as planning goes, but as for following through? Eh. Not so much. Hey man, you have to learn to admit your shortcomings before you can begin to overcome them, right? I got sick last week with a bad cold so we ate out a couple of times. We were hardly home all weekend too, and that didn't help matters much. As a result, many of last weeks dinners didn't get made and will be made this week.

Here's the plan for this week:

Monday - Curry-Spiced Shrimp and Rice

This is on the stove as I type and it smells FANTASTIC. If it tastes only half as good as it smells it will be a winner! Recipe here, from Woman's Day.

***UPDATE***

This was good, but holy heck it was SPICY!!! I was on the fence about whether to include it in the recipe binder, but my husband (who can eat stuff like salsa, unlike your's truly) loved it. I think I'll make it again, but reduce the curry powder to 1 1/2 tsp and see how that works.

Tuesday - Italian Sausage and Spinach Marinara over Orecchiette

Another Woman's Day recipe. Find it here.

Wednesday - Chicken Linguine

Yup, pasta two days in a row. This is what happens when you have a plan, and then you totally screw up your plan. Dang. Good thing I like pasta! Recipe here.

Thursday - Pork Chops with Quinoa, Corn, & Scallions

I'm just going to pan fry the pork chops, nothing fancy there. I found the recipe for the quinoa on Pinterest.

Friday - French Chicken Broccoli Supreme

I'm usually not a big casserole eater for the simple reason that it's nearly impossible to find one that both sounds good AND doesn't contain Cream of Something soup. Those things are so bad for you! This one, however, doesn't have any of that nonsense, so I'm going to give it a chance despite it's stupid name. I found it on Pinterest (of course). I can already tell you that I'm leaving out the poppy seeds and using Panko instead of the Ritz crackers for the topping.

Saturday - Crockpot Jambalaya

This should be interesting. It sounds pretty easy, anyway. Recipe from Pinterest.

Sunday - Leftovers if we have a ton, Beef and Potato Salad if we don't

I am not good at factoring Leftovers into my meal plans. I don't like leftovers, so I generally try to avoid making so much that we have them. However, when you're making a new recipe you never can tell if you're going to have them. I'll have my "just-in-case" recipe ready to go if we don't have enough to make a meal.

Last weeks meals -

The chicken tacos were excellent. The rice - not so much. I quit buying canned tomatoes, including tomato sauce. I just will puree a jar of my home canned tomatoes to use in recipes that call for it. Well, organic tomatoes that you can yourself are apparently a bit more flavorful than regular ones, so my one cup of pureed tomatoes tasted WAY more tomato-ey than a can of tomato sauce did. It was just too much tomato flavor for me.

The beef, green bean and mushroom stir fry had good flavor, but just not enough of it. By adding the rice noodles, which pretty much have no flavor of their own, it became bland, bland, bland. Maybe if there had been more sauce, or the flavor had been more concentrated this would have been okay. As it was, it will not be making it into the binder as a keeper.

And um, yeah... that's all I really did before I got sick. So lame.

Meal Plan Monday!

I know you've seen it on other parts of the Interwebs - blog posts written on Monday that have a list (usually with links to recipes if you're lucky!) detailing what the blogger is feeding their family for the week. Generally, I'm not that organized. HOWEVER, I did just make myself that schnazzy Household Organization Notebook, and it does have a nice tab for menu planning. Therefore, I can now do Meal Plan Monday post because the pages I printed start on Monday. This means I have to have my plan done before then so I should be able to blog about it. Before, I just sort of started my week whenever I decided to get around to meal planning, and that was if I even did it.

You all know how much I like to fall back on "winging it," right?

Will this be a regular thing? I dunno. Nothing ever is around here for long. One thing about having been blogging for as long as I have, it's easy to go back and see how my interests have shifted and changed in the past six years. I do love this about journaling!

Here's the plan for this week:

Monday - Chicken Soft Tacos with Mexican Rice

I found some pre-cooked shredded chicken in the freezer when I was cleaning it out in preparation for meal planning/grocery shopping, so I decided to use it up! I will heat this with a little chicken stock, some seasonings (I have homemade taco seasoning in the pantry and it's GOOD), maybe a little onion and cilantro... mmm. I'm going to make a whole mess of tortillas in the early part of the day. Some will get frozen for later use and some will be made into tacos for dinner.

The rice is easy - Soften a half cup of onions with a tablespoon olive oil in a heavy pot. Toss in a cup of long grain white rice and cook until toasted, stirring constantly. Puree a can (or jar, in my case) of tomatoes in a blender. Add water or chicken broth to make 2 1/2 cups. Pour into rice, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until liquid is absorbed. Ta da!

A little rice, some chicken in a tortilla with a little lettuce and cheese, and there is dinner.

Tuesday - Beef, Mushroom, & Green Bean Stir-Fry over Rice Noodles.

This recipe was clipped from a magazine. I'll let you know how it is!

Wednesday - Chicken Linguine

I found this recipe on Pinterest. It says it's a Weight Watchers recipe, and since I'm trying to get the skinnies, as Mrs. Monologues says, I figured what the heck.

Thursday - Curry-Spiced Shrimp and Rice

This was also clipped from a magazine. Can I just get a WOO HOO for free magazine subscriptions???

Friday - Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas with Tortillas and Mexican Rice

Confession: Monday's meal was actually supposed to me Sunday's, which would have fallen on last week's meal plan. Unfortunately, Sunday saw us up early for a birthday party, after which no one had any energy and long naps may or may not have been taken. Making of tortillas, which is an important component of tacos, may have been forgotten because of those factors.

This means that Monday's tortilla-less dinner (Grilled Chicken with Asparagus Risotto, from here, made by my sweet husband while I slept) may have had to be eaten on Sunday. Sunday's dinner had to get pushed to Monday which means that I had two "rice and tortilla" dinners scheduled in the same week. ACK.

I'd never make it as a Taco Tuesday, Fish Friday, Meatloaf Monday kind of person, obviously. I need some variety!!! That being said though, I was thinking I should try to have Fridays be Slow Cooker days since I have knitting club at 6pm those days and I hate feeling rushed. I found this pork carnitas recipe on Pinterest (sounding like a broken record here) and it sounded like a winner. This won't be as tasty as real pork carnitas, I'm sure, but it should be okay for tacos.

Saturday - Italian Sausage and Spinach Marinara over Orecchiette

The only reason I'm using orecchiette for this is because when I served it to the boy last week he ate a TON of it. I guess he liked the shape. He kept calling them "pasta chips." If it gets him to eat, I'll take it!

The marinara sauce recipe was clipped from a magazine. It had a basic marinara recipe and then a bunch of stuff you could add to it for five different meals. True; the one I picked did happen to be served over orecchiette, but I feel like most pasta is interchangeable.

Sunday - Chipotle Plum Glazed Pork Tenderloin with quinoa and broccoli

A few months ago I found plums on sale really cheap so I bought a bunch of them to make jam. I ended up with a Chipotle Plum jam that was smoky and reminiscent of the chili-covered Mexican candies we used to eat when I was a kid. I don't know if I'm down with putting this on toast, but it's FANTASTIC on a pork roast. I just dump the little 4 oz jar onto my tenderloin, smoosh it around with a silicone basting brush, and pop it into the oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees.

I'll serve this with a side of quinoa and some steamed broccoli. That rounds out the week!

I want to make some bread to stick in the freezer in addition to the tortillas I want to stash in there. I keep thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches for some reason lately, and for that I need bread! I read that I can just bake them until they're mostly done, then freeze them so I won't have to worry about the yeast not wanting to work like I would if I froze unbaked dough. Then, when I want a fresh loaf all I have to do is pull one out and pop it into the oven to brown.

I've been making bread using the Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes a Day method for a couple of years now, but I think I'm getting a little tired of the slightly sourdough taste. Don't get me wrong - it's really good bread, but I am ready for something new. There's a recipe for a honey white bread by Ina Garten I want to try, as well as a whole wheat one that Jaimee Rose posted. Good stuff!

I also have plans to make up a bunch of Whole Wheat Waffles this week. They freeze beautifully, and since my waffle iron makes little square waffles, it's super easy to pull them out as I need them and just pop them into the toaster for breakfast. Take that, Eggo!

Needless to say, getting back on the bandwagon for healthy eating with drastically reduced commercially processed food is going to mean more time in the kitchen this week.