I’m back–did you miss me? Hopefully you all barely noticed I was gone with the blog posts I had scheduled ahead! The trip was great, and I’ll tell you more about it later, but right now despite being tired I’m trying to get my week on track with a meal plan!
I’ve got several things to consider this week:
1. Princess finishes school and will be home starting Wednesday. I will spend one day in town with doctors appointments and errands, one evening I’m in my photography class and on Saturday we’ll spend all day out with the Boy Scout end of year trip. That means at least 3 nights that quick and easy should be the order of the day.
2. Some produce is starting to show up in the garden. I’ve got plenty of green onions, chard, some lettuce and the turnips and beets may or may not be ready soon. You are going to be seeing “salad” a lot on my meal plans during the summer.
3. Since Princess will be home I can get her more involved with cooking a few simple meals. She likes more complex stuff-but I want her to know a few easy basics that I can start to trust her to prepare for me while I’m out in the garden or working. We can work on the more complex ones together for fun later.
4. As always my goal is to have one venison meal, one fish meal, one pork meal, one bean meal, one meatless meal and one soup meal per week.
Taking all that into account here is my game plan:
Monday: Baked Fish with Rice and Salad
I have frozen filets downstairs. A bit of butter and herb on top and pop them in the oven. I can run the rice cooker and whip up a small green salad between the leftover veggies in the fridge and the lettuce, green onions and such out in the garden.
This is my fish meal for the week.
Tuesday: Crock Pot Pork Chops and Rice with Dilly Beans
I’ll take pork chops from my 1/2 pig (note to self-check on how much I owe Wild Acorn Farms for 2013 pig) and toss them in the crockpot with some bullion powder, onion and cream of mushroom soup (or a white sauce instead if I have enough time). I’ll serve it with the leftover rice from Monday and a jar of Dilly Beans.
This is my pork meal for the week
Wednesday: Spaghetti with Venison Meatsauce and Salad
This is a meal that I can easily teach Princess to make. We’ll sautee some onions and green garlic in with the ground venison, add jarred sauce and use that over boiled noodles. Easy, tasty, filling. The green salad will be from the garden.
This is my venison meal for the week.
Thursday: Grilled Chicken, Potato Packets and Grilled Green Onions
I’ve got some boneless skinless breasts that have been hiding in the freezer. I’ll marinate them (maybe in my NY Finger Lakes marinade?) and then grill them. Also on the grill I’ll make some sort of potato packet (actually that will probably have to start cooking first) and I’ll grill some cleaned green onions whole as a vegetable. Should be a very “grilly” meal. I’ll grill additional chicken to use on Friday.
Friday: Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad
This Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad is something I love to bring for potlucks & BBQ’s. People just love all the crunchy cabbage, the tasty chicken, the crunch of the ramen noodles. mmmm. I like it so much that I serve it as a cool, no cook salad for supper.
Saturday: Chili and Bread
We’ve got a scout trip all day, but will be home by dinner. I can get chili going in the morning and then just dish it out for supper. I’m not even going to pretend that I’ll have the gumption at that point to make cornbread-we’ll just use plain store bought bread.
This is my bean meal for the week.
Sunday: Quiche and a Salad
I’ve got plenty of eggs, so I’ll use leftover rice and make a rice crust cheese quiche and pair it with yet another green salad. Like I said-once we have lettuce and such coming in from the garden, we eat a lot of salads of different sorts.
This is my meatless meal for the week.
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Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .
Steven J Fromm says
Very nice weekly menu. I will be passing your site link to my wife to give her these ideas. Crunchy Asian Chicken Friday seems to be a very nice one. I think I liked that one the best.
Anyway, thanks for these great ideas.
Jenn @ Frugal Upstate says
So glad you enjoy them Steven! Try the Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad–it’s quite good. Folks LOVE it when I take it to potlucks and BBQ’s
Amyrlin says
My husband adores your crunchy Asian salad!! He took it for lunch many, many times (he even makes the recipe himself!!) Currently he does an adapted low carb version!