Menu Plan Monday – April 29

It’s Monday again, and the best part of this day is the menu planning and sharing over at OrgJunkie!  You should go visit over there and see the VERY long list of folks that play along with this Menu Plan Monday and snoop on their menu board. It is a great way to get a ton of new ideas for your own supper!

I have been doing a pretty good job of using up the freezer meals that I made last month, and I am hoping to do another freezer cooking day soon. However, I do have to share about a freezer cooking FAILURE that we had yesterday. We were invited to supper at the in-laws house so I decided to make the Rosemary Chicken and Potatoes (from the McCormick Seasoning card) for lunch.

I had it all defrosted to make that evening, so no biggie. However, when I dumped it out onto the baking sheet, all of the potatoes were BLACK. It was gross!!! I didn’t want to throw out the chicken, because that was still good, and it’s not like they were rotten from exposure, so I moved the chicken to a bowl, cut up some new potatoes and tossed it with the seasoning and oil still left on the chicken. It was very dry though, so I’m not sure how I will deal with the other bag of it in the freezer.

So, moral of the story… don’t freeze potatoes. And this is strange, though, because the potatoes in the beef stew that I made last week were fine. Kooky.

Moving on. Here is my menu for the week!

Monday: Chicken N Biscuits – based on Melissa D’Arabian’s recipe and it is awesome! I have made it at least a dozen times, and everyone loves it.

Tuesday: Tacos – this will be made by Jake (my 11 yr old)

Wednesday: My 14th anniversary!! I will be making steak and potatoes because that is my hubby’s favorite. This is a GREAT Steak 101! Funny too, but potty mouthed words.

Thursday: Pork Chops. Not sure if it will be my usual Cream of Mushroom gravy and rice, or if I’ll poke around Pinterest for something new.

Friday: Honey Lime Chicken from the freezer. I got it from here, though. After the disappointing show from Cilantro Lime Chicken, I am very hopeful though!

Saturday: FFYS – fend for yourself / leftovers / something from the freezer. We have a birthday party at 2 to go to, so I’m not sure if/when we will do dinner.

Sunday: Pork BBQ Ribs from the freezer. I have to remember to pick up some more ribs though – it makes a ton of sauce, but not enough ribs for everyone. They are crazy good though!

That’s it for me. What will you make?

One Little Thing… Weekly Menu Plan

One of the things that I must each week is plan my menu for the next week. I have gone through a few different ways, all of which really work for me, to make and post the menu.

I have a weekly tear off on my Mommy calendar hanging on the fridge that combines both traditional calendar with by-person planner, with an extra line for my menu for the week. It is really how I started with the menu planning, because it let me see what is going on each day as I decide what to make. For instance, on my 10 hour hospital clinical day, I can choose leftovers or Jake cooking something, because I am wiped afterwards. If it is a day that one of the boys is spending the night elsewhere I can plan something that they don’t like, but the rest of us do so everyone is happy. The downside is that it’s big and a little unwieldy, so I have slacked on using it. I still jot down stuff in the top bit of real calendar because it’s easy to get to and easy to remember since it’s on the fridge. It it comes to a time where each person has a lot of things to remember for themselves, I will go back to it.

A calendar like this with a line for each person (and an extra for Menu in my home) is a great way to see what’s gong on if everyone has different schedules, or schedules that change.

Another way I choose what we are eating, and always post the menu, is my dry erase board. I love this for a few reasons. First, you can see it from the table and anywhere else in the kitchen so I (mostly) don’t get asked THAT question anymore. I also love that it has my freezer inventory list attached to it so I can see what I have when making the menu, which helps save time and money. Better to use whatcha got instead of buying stuff you don’t got. I try to buy big when sales are good, so shopping my freezer helps me get the best price for my meals.

This is a way that everyone can see what we are having and I can see what we need!

And finally, the new way I have been planning, has been with sticky notes on my Day-Timer ruler thing, I started using the little tabs a couple weeks ago, and kept them as the week passed. Then, while I was waiting for a store to open, I filled out a bunch more with meals that my family likes. Now what I have been doing is emptying the old week, putting those tabs on the Day-Timer folder they live on, and picking new meals for the next week. Once I got home, I put the meals on the dry erase so everyone can see it, and also making sure I have all the meat that I need for the week, and if there is any other items that I need for the meals. In this case it was potatoes and French bread for the sloppy Joe boats.

I use the ruler in my Day-Timer so I can see what we are having when I’m not at home.

The beauty of this is many-fold. I don’t waste tabs because I reuse the ones I have, it is easy to weed out stuff my family doesn’t like or add new things to try, and its portable.

Using and reusing tabs makes quick work of figuring out a menu plan for the week.

Do you plan a menu? How do you do it?

MPM, FTB, EGGs

It’s Monday, kids, time for this week’s menu plan! Normally I do this post while we’re watching Sunday night tv, but I was distracted by yarn. It’s a good thing, since it gave me the opportunity to try out Muffin Tin Omelets and Sunny Side Up Eggs. They’re still in the oven right now, but I’m sure that by the time this gets finished, I’ll have done pics!

One of the drop off points for Feed The Bay.

First of all, I wanted to give an update on last weeks Feed The Bay. Together we were able to collect and distribute 160,050 pounds of food to local nearly 20 food banks and soup kitchens. This is enough to stock their shelves for 4-6 months! This is a whole lot of good after a week of a whole lot of bad. Even though the FTB event was before the Boston Marathon tragedy, hearing the total and seeing first hand what people can do to help one another was heart lifting. Lots of folks donate food to food banks through churches, schools, work, and event food drives at Thanksgiving time. FTB stocks them for nearly the rest of the year.

Secondly, the eggs are done and being eaten as I type. The omelet ones came out nice and fluffy, and apparently tasted good. (I don’t eat eggs, I get nauseated, usually, at the smell of cooking eggs!) Here is my recipe, and my notes on how to change it!

3 eggs + 2 Tbsp shredded cheese + 1 slice diced deli turkey = 4 mini omelets.
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Omelet eggs (makes 4)

3 eggs

1 slice deli turkey diced/cut/sliced

2 T shredded cheese

Whisk up the eggs with a fork. add in turkey and cheese. Spoon out into 4 muffin tins.

Bake 350 for 20 minutes.

NOTES: my oldest said there was too much cheese in the omelets (I didn’t know that was possible!), but the little one loved them!

By using a big spoon, it was so much easier to get the egg mixture into the muffin cups. Pouring would have been very messy!
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The omelets were the perfect size. If I had done 4 eggs instead of 3, they would’ve poofed up above the tin and been very messy!
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Sunny Side Up Eggs

Spray muffin tin with Pam.

Crack 1 egg into 1 muffin cup.

Bake 350 for 20 minutes.

NOTES: They were a little hard, with the yolk pretty but cooked through. My oldest liked them, but said that he prefers the yolks a little runny. Next time I would bake for less time, maybe 15 minutes, and see if they still jiggled a bit.

Muffin tin omelets and sunny side up.
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And Finally, my menu plan for this week!

Monday: Cheesy Baked Chicken – Kraft Fresh Take (I’ve had this on the plan for 3 weeks and haven’t been able to make it yet!! Today is the day!)

Tuesday: Crock Pot Beef Stew

Wednesday: Leftovers

Thursday: Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup (Jake’s night to cook)

Friday: Rosemary Chicken & Potatoes

Saturday: Sloppy Joe Boats. I got the idea from a pin of this post, and I am going to use that as my idea to do my own thing.

Sunday: Pork Roast, Mashed Potatoes.

Planning my meals each week helps so much in the shopping, dining out, and “what’s for dinner Mama?” that I don’t know if I’ll ever not have one again!! You can play along too by creating your own Menu Plan and sharing it at OrgJunkie.com. See what others are up to this week: Menu Plan Monday 4/22. In the next couple days I will share my meal planning strategy. It’s easy, and a great way to weed out the meals that everyone doesn’t like.

Happy Earth Day.

Menu Plan Monday and Feed The Bay

It was a long week full of wait and see, ending with some great news, but more wait and see. I am so grateful that God is good.

Sunday was Feed The Bay. This annual event, started by our church 7 years ago has raised a million pounds of food to support our local food banks and soup kitchens. We have gained 40 other churches to help out over 25 different organizations fill their shelves for up to 6 months at a time. It is a wonderful way to help out the organizations that help the needy in our area. I am excited to see what we were able to do this year. Our slogan has been Together We Can Do More, and that really is the truth. It’s great that people donate a few cans during the holidays, or maybe a gift card to help during a tragedy, but by banding together with a list of what is needed most, we are able to do the most amount of good at one time.

As for food in my own home, here’s what we’ve got cookin.

Monday: Cube Steak and rice – this is my second time making this recipe – the whole fam loved it!!

Tuesday: Leftovers

Wednesday: Kraft Fresh Take Italian (or cheddar bacon, not sure yet) chicken and (baked) fries

Thursday: my oldest is cooking his favorite “recipe” of hot dogs mixed with corn and Mac n cheese. We’ll also make beans so we can have it that way too. It’s actually better than you would think!

Friday: Pork chops & rice

Saturday: Shephards pie

Sunday: Pesto Chicken Alfredo

Find other great bloggers with their Monday Menus at OrgJunkie.com! I’ve gotten some great ideas from them, and started stalking I mean following some pretty cool folks.

Menu Plan Monday, and a binder peek!

Binder Peek!

I have been busily working to get my new binder into something resembling organized. I have many cute pen colors, highlighters, sticky notes… but I keep using the pink pen in the side loop. Kinda defeats the multi-pen purpose. Hrm.

My easy way to see what’s for dinner!
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First I wanted to show off my ruler/page finder thing. I used the idea from Living The Good Life that I found on Pinterest to add my weekly menu on that ruler thing. BRILLIANT! When I was at Joann the other day, I found the $1 end cap in the scrapbook area and these adorable rub off letters and thought that would be perfect for my ruler to delineate the Days.

As a quick aside… I may be considered a crafty person, and some crafty things I am pretty good at. However, these had no instructions, so I had to wing it. I sucked at it, lost both of my Ts when I was trying to put the M on, so Tuesday is a U and Thursday is a R (which is what I usually use anyway). Sigh.

Next, I wanted to point out my chore tabs. These are from the Martha Stewart line at Staples. They are re-stick-able so when a chore is done for the week, I move it to the next week. That way I don’t have to write it over and over and it is really easy to see what I still have to do. For example, I have not yet cleaned either bathroom, scrubbed the kitchen counters, or mopped. (Moving on!)

As I get it more together, I will show it off more. I love it, it’s pretty, and I think it may be working. However, it is HUGE and heavy, and somewhat daunting. We’ll see how it goes.

Menu Plan Monday

Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com

Org Junkie is a site that I find myself pinning from quite frequently. I have many aspirations that started there… and since I think it’s a good idea to have SOME accountability, (and also… I’m a follower), I thought I’d join in the fun. Each Monday, she hosts Menu Plan Monday, a list of bloggers that are showing off what they plan to make that week for supper, often with links to the recipes. It is a great way to stalk see what others are making to give you ideas to steal make, too!

Here is my menu plan for this week (you can see it in my binder ^ up there!)

Monday: Cheesy Potato Beef Bake

Tuesday: Tuna Noodle Casserole – this was hubby’s request!

Wednesday: Crock Pot Cilantro Lime Chicken (from the cook day!)

Thursday: Chili – I use the Chili Magic brand with petit diced tomatoes. My 11 yr old is making this.

Friday: Steak and Twice Baked Potatoes

Saturday: Crock Pot Freezer BBQ Ribs (from cook day!) and Hash Brown Casserole

Sunday: Sunday Chicken

If you’d like to see the rest of those participating in today’s fun, visit Menu Plan Monday!