So I’m back from my trip to Bentonville Arkansas–home of Walmart. While it was nice to eat out every night for 3 nights, I’m back in the cooking groove!
In a few weeks the chaos will ratchet down a notch–but for now we are still dealing with a full load of sports, after school activities and meetings. Here’s what I’m planning around this week:
1. Sports and Dance on both Monday and Wednesday Nights. Scouts on Wednesday as well and Yankee Bill has a meeting so he won’t be around to drive at all. I’ve got to be in town for appointments and such most of the day Wednesday and Thursday-which always means I don’t feel like cooking by the time I get home. So basically quick and pretty easy is the requirement all week.
2. I’ve got fresh shell beans in the fridge that I cooked last night. They were the last of the beans outside before the hard frost hit. There are turnips, carrots and chard still in the garden. I bought 7 butternut squash and we have several pumpkins hanging around for use and decoration. Also buddy came by and gave me about 50lbs of potatoes from their garden this weekend.
3. Yankee Bill is out of town Friday-Sunday, but my Mom is visiting from Friday-Monday. I guess that sort of evens things out 😉
4. As always my goal is to have one venison meal, one fish meal, one bean meal, one meatless meal and one soup meal per week.
Taking all that into account here is my game plan:
Monday: Oven Baked BBQ Pork Chops, Rice, Steamed Chard and Shell Beans
I’ve got pork chops thawing in the fridge. I’ll just cover with jarred BBQ sauce and bake. If I’m feeling fancy I’ll go ahead and brown the chops first to caramelize them a bit, otherwise I’ll just do fast and easy and toss them in unbrowned. The rice will be cooked in the rice cooker with a bit of bullion powder added for flavor. The chard & chard stems will be fresh picked from the garden (chard lasts well into the winter) and lightly sauteed in some olive oil or butter with onion, salt & pepper added. Yum. The shell beans were cooked yesterday–I’ll heat them up and add some butter, salt and pepper.
This is my pork meal for the week.
Tuesday: Baked Trout, Rice and Winter Squash Bake
I’ve got a lovely large trout our BIL gave us–it’s been in the freezer and quite honestly has been taking up room :) So I’ll just bake it simply with some lemon slices and a bit of olive oil. We’ll serve it with the leftover rice from Monday and my Winter Squash Bake recipe.
This is my fish meal for the week.
Wednesday: Potato Sausage Soup and Homemade Bread
I’ll put the Potato Sausage Soup together in the crockpot and let it go on “warm” all day while we are out running errands and hitting doctors appointments. When we get home it will be ready to go with some homemade bread that I will be baking on Tuesday during the day. If somehow the bread doesn’t get baked I can always whip up some biscuits instead.
This is my soup meal for the week.
Thursday: Cheater’s Vension Stroganoff, Crockpot Roasted Vegetables and Noodles
Thursday is another busy day. I’ll drag out two crockpots in the morning–one for the Cheater’s Venison Stroganoff recipe and another to make roasted vegetables with carrots and turnips from the garden. I’ll probably quarter up a couple of store bought onions in there as well.
This is my venison meal for the week.
Friday: Homemade Pizza
Friday is always pizza night at our house, so we’ll use my Pizza Hut Crust Clone recipe and make pizza 🙂
Saturday: Eating Out
My mom will be in town and she usually insists on buying a dinner for us all at least once when she is in town.
Sunday: Homemade Baked Beans with Boston Brown Bread
I’ll have to remember to soak the navy beans on Saturday–but after that the Baked Beans are pretty much a simple toss it together crock pot meal. I’ve never made really steamed Boston Brown Bread before-but I figure what the heck–why not try? It’s the classic accompaniment to baked beans.
This is my meatless and my bean 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” .
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