It’s Meal Plan time! This is where I plan out my meals for the week to make my life just a bit easier. Seriously–it does make your life far less chaotic when you know what cooking for the week–since you take into consideration your family’s schedule, what’s in the fridge, and what you have in the cupboard there are less surprises and you are less rushed! If you have never tried meal planning before, I highly recommend that you give it a try for a few weeks!
I’ve got several things to consider this week:
1. The kids are back in school–Halleluiah! Can you hear the angels singing??? After 2 snow days followed by a week of winter break–during which I had a business trip!–we were all ready to get back into a more regular schedule. Odessey of the Mind is completed, so there go 2 after school meetings a week for each child. That makes life a tad bit easier! We still have play rehearsal for Princess, Scouts for Buddy, Piano lessons and Chorus.
2. Yankee Bill only has one evening meeting this week–his pool league. I’ve got my beginning guitar class. One night I have to attend a parents meeting for the play. We’ve both got plans for the weekend that keep us busy.
3. In the fridge I have some lettuce, cooked chicken and carrots–along with other odds and ends. I’ve got far too many eggs. Of course we have frozen venison and pork in the deep freeze, along with corn on the cob and snow peas. There are plenty of other vegetables either canned or dehydrated. And there is still that big bag of potatoes from our friend that we are working through.
4. The weather, after a very few nice days, is back to cold. So warm, comforting meals are the order of the day.
5. My Mother in Law invited us over for dinner tonight, so that’s one meal I don’t have to cook!
6. 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 the Meal Plan:
Monday: Roasted Chicken at Nana’s
Who am I to refuse dinner all cooked for me by someone as excellent at cooking as my MIL? I’m going to make my winter squash bake to bring along–I keep putting it on the menu plan and then I’m not getting it made. This is the night!
Tuesday: Crockpot Jambalaya and Rice
Warm and filling, something we haven’t had recently and a dish that cooks while you are away. . . what’s not to love! I’ll put together the Crockpot Jambalaya in the morning and then it will cook while I’m out running errands. When I get home it’s just make the rice and toss in the shrimp at the last minute–dinner’s ready in a flash. That’s good, because I have somewhere to be. . .
This is my fish meal for the week.
Wednesday: Italian Sauerkraut Porkchops with Roasted Potatoes
This is another dish that was on the meal plan recently but for various reasons did not get made. I really want to make it this week not only because it is delicious and I have a hankering for it–but also I keep wanting to photograph the dish so that I can share the recipe with all of you! It’s a recipe that can be done all day in the crockpot or just cooked in the oven for an hour or two depending on what you’ve got going on. Although honestly I’d rather do it in the crockpot so that I will have the oven open for the potatoes. The sauerkraut and tomatoes in this dish are the vegetable–which is why I don’t have a separate vegetable listed.
This is my pork meal for the week.
Thursday: Swedish Meatballs, Egg Noodles and Salad
Buddy and I never did make Swedish Meatballs the other day–he had picked out the recipe, but when I went to the freezer to pull out the ground venison I realized that I only had sweet sausage–not ground meat. (note: the rest of the meat is over in my mom’s freezer, so we do have ground venison, we just didn’t have it where I could get at it quickly). I’ve now got the ground meat, so the meal is a go. Swedish meatballs are in a creamy sauce, so we’ll either use egg noodles (sort of classic) or else some leftover rice from Monday to sop up all the saucy goodness. Then for contrast we’ll have a nice green salad to get some veggies and some crunch going on.
This is my venison meal for the week.
Friday: Pizza
Of course!
Saturday: Quiche and Green Beans
Saturday’s pretty busy. I can make the quiche ahead of time and then just warm it up for dinner. We can even warm it up by the slice if we need to! If I make extra it can be used for quick lunches or breakfast next week as well.
I’ll probably just use some veggies (broccoli?) and cheese for the quiche, and homemade crust. Because just eating a hunk of quiche doesn’t seem like a full meal I’ll warm up some home canned green beans as a vegetable side dish.
This is my meatless meal for the week.
Sunday: Hungarian Goulash over Noodles
It’s been a while since I’ve made Hungarian Goulash. This soup/stew is usually served over noodles and is a one dish meal type thing.
This is my soup meal for the week.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .
Leave a Reply