Monday, May 11, 2009

Menu Planning Monday





Since we were first married, I have been planning menus. I would sit down for a couple of hours with my cookbooks, the sale papers from the grocery store, and plan out what we would eat for two weeks.
I have gone through different phases where I don't plan for awhile, and then start again. I have also adjusted the system that I use. No longer to I have a couple of hours to plan! Now I keep in mind things I would like to try, and plan based on what is available at the grocery store. I tend to have a list of meals that I will make, but I don't always assign them to certain days. I also try to only cook 3-4 times a week and use lots of left overs. That makes it easier when we have lots of homework (or anything else.)
Now that I am in the afternoon class, I don't get out of class until 4:30 or 5:00. I am trying out a couple of crockpot things so that I don't have to cook when I come in from school. Here is this week:

Sunday- Chicken cooked in the Rotisserie, Hummus, cheese, bread, fresh veggies

Monday- Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup with salad and corn bread muffins

Tuesday- left overs

Wednesday- Stephen is grilling beef. We will also have fresh bread, veggies and hummus.

Thursday- left overs

Friday- either Moroccan Chicken and Lentils (light on the chicken, heavy on the lentils) if my neighbors can join us for lunch
or Mediterranean Chicken if they can't.

Saturday- Pizza and Movie night

For more menu ideas see Organizing Junkie.

Edited to add:
The Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup was a big hit. (That means that Stephen and I liked it and the kids were all willing to eat a little bit without complaining.) Our neighbors across the hall came over with chili, and we all had chili and soup and a nice time talking together.
Stephen grilled steak on Wednesday. It was very good. We had fresh corn on the cob, veggies and hummus with it. I didn't get any bread made because I was focusing on homeschool stuff.
I forgot we had a field trip on Friday, so I pushed the dinner from Thursday to this week, and we ate leftovers. Pizza night moved to Friday night, and everything else was the same.