Category Archives: Menu Planning

Monday Menu Planning

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This should be our least busy week of the fall.  But I want to continue to get and stay in a routine!  We did end up spending around an hour yesterday prepping lunch for everyone this week.  I am hoping this also becomes part of the routine.

Breakfast- Saturday- Matt cooked sausage patties, links and bacon. I added some eggs.  Sunday-breakfast casserole. This was good and I am considering make breakfast on Sundays a casserole to make things easier.  Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, sausage English muffins and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets. I am finding my own you should too!

Lunch- Saturday-Sandwiches .  Sunday La Caretas Monday-salad   Tuesday- salad    Wednesday-pasta salad Thursday –left-overs.  Friday- eat out.

Dinner- Saturday-Salads to go, pasta salad, macaroni salad, and chips and salsa. Sunday baked potatoes.  Monday-Pork Fried Rice and eggrolls. This did leave enough for several days of leftovers.  Tuesday-Hamburgers and FF. Wednesday- Chicken sausage alfredo pasta.  Thursday- Mexican rice and cheese quesadillas.    Friday- Out to eat for Zach’s birthday.

Monday Menu Planning

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The summer of flying by the seat of my pants is done!  I did learn a couple of things, first my kids are eating alot these days. I am talking 3 full meals a day. Second, my kids don’t really like sandwiches or cereal……

But I am really glad to get back into a routine and have a plan.

Breakfast- Saturday- bacon, toast and eggs Sunday-egg over grits    Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, sausage English muffins and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets. I am finding my own you should too!  This week the kids are also helping to cook!

Lunch- Saturday-Chicken Enchiladas.  Sunday Mella Mushroom. Monday-eat out  Tuesday- salad    Wednesday-pasta salad Thursday – salad   Friday- eat out.

Dinner- Saturday-Chicken nuggets Sunday Steaks and baked potatoes.  Monday-No peek pork chops, sautéed green beans and zucchini. (Kendall helped) Tuesday-Beanie Winnies (ZACH) Wednesday- Cheeseburger Pizza (Kendall)  Thursday- Pork Fried Rice and egg rolls   Friday- Grilled chicken (Matt)

Tuesday Thoughts- Groceries and Summer Goals

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When we returned home, I knew that I wanted to get busy on preparing food for the school year which is one of my summer goals.  I was very hopeful that we would return to a ton of ripe tomatoes. That did not happen but I still knew this was one of the weeks that I wanted to focus on getting things in the freezer.  Sunday morning Matt and I went to the store. I had planned to re-stock our pantry and see what deals I could find.   I was so excited to find that Food Lion had lots of good things on sale.  One item that I wanted to get in the freezer this week was at least 4 Baked ziti.   Without tomato sause I did not think that was possible. Buy 2 Get one Free made the Ragu jars $1.33 each so we purchased 12.  The ziti pasta was on sale for 54 cents along with a 25 cent digital coupon!  English muffins were BOGO and we found sausage patties on clearance. This was probably one of the high spending single trips to Food Lion in 2 years or more. I spent $201. But this should assist with 12 dinner meals and at least 3 breakfast meals.

Monday morning this summer have included a trip to the Bargain store as everything is $3.  Followed by grocery shopping with my Mom.  I had planned to grab a couple of items that are usually cheaper there.  What I did not plan to grab was chicken breast. These were on sale for $2.29 a pound. I decided to go ahead and stock up. I ended up spending $78 at Aldi with over $50 of that in Chicken breast. I came home and with help from the kids I bagged up 2 bags of Italian chicken for the grill, 1 bag of chicken teriyaki and 5 bags with 2# pounds each. We also started Pineapple Chicken in the crockpot for dinner.

Today I have spent most of the day chopping veggies. Matt and I made philly cheese steak casserole (one for dinner and one to freeze). I will also get omelet bags in the freezer this afternoon.  Tomorow the plan is to make 5 Baked Zitis. We also got 15 English muffins in the freezer yesterday!

It feels awesome to be able to work toward a goal and stay on budget!

Summer Goals

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I wanted to be able to share and remember what I spent my summer doing. I feel like the last several years have been a bust. 2022 was the Summer of being sick and Haley’s wedding. Between my car breaking down and my surgery the summer was not alot of fun!  2021- was a year of trying to catch up. Things had not returned to “normal” yet from COVID and it was just different.  2020- COVID.

I had put in my mind several goals for the summer and now that we are almost 2 full weeks in, I am going to share with you.  This are in addition to my regular monthly goals.

  1. Get 100 dinner meals and an assortment of other food items prepared for simple cook and eat meals. This is not a new concept for me as I usually have lots of items in my freezer to use but I want something easy and really non-thinking.
    I am proud to say that I am making steady progress on this goal. I have 4 Taco rice casseroles, and 3 pizza crust in the freezer. I also canned 22 pints  of green beans and 16 pints of black beans.  I purchased meat on sale and have 3 meals of pork chops and 2 meals of grilled chicken as well.   This morning I put 6 “boxes” of brownie mix in the pantry for easy desserts as well.  I honestly under-estimated the time it would take me to work on this goal. First, each new recipe has to be tested.  This adds at least one extra day to the process and second my family is picky. They like what they like and to find something that all 5 agree to is getting harder and harder.  I am starting to think the hardest part about this goal is finding 20 recipes that we all agree on!
  2. Organize the office and shred any paperwork that is no longer current and relevant.
    We are making progress toward this goal as well.  I have actually cleaned and shredded two hanging file folders in addition to shredding church paperwork from 2017-2019.  An added benefit is that we are using the shredded paper to line our chicken coop. The paper adds an extra layer which is allowing the chickens not to walk in mud continually.  In the fall, my plan is to remove the layer and place in our garden beds as free fertilizer.
  3. Redo our master spreadsheet.   No progress
  4. Organize and delete pictures from my phone in order to free up space. I must make sure that I have the pictures on my Ipad first.  I would also like to order several additional photo books once I get the pictures organized.
    Slow progress as I am working to delete first pictures that are not sentimental such as garden pictures and other documents. The next step is to actually compare and delete pictures.
  5. Earn a $50 gift card from Fetch. This basically means I need to scan each of my receipts all summer long one every 24 hours.
    I currently have 22,000 out of 53,000 I need.

Tuesday Thoughts

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  • The weather this year has been all out strange. We had none, zero, nada weather delays or cancellations during the school year, The first time in at least five years if not more. The spring was cool, we had only 1 80 degree day in May. And now this week, is expected to be rainy and 70 for the entire week!  I am really disappointed since this is my first week off work but I am working on things inside so hopefully I can spend more time outside very soon!
  • My biggest goal for the summer was to get at least 100 dinner meals in the freezer, I have made a start with 4 taco pastas and 3  pizza crust from yesterday.
  • Today, I went to the local Food Lion to find meat on sale because the sale ad changes tomorrow.  I am happy to say that I succeeded!  I was able to purchase the meat for at least 14 meals for $63 or $4.5 each!  This is huge when you are feeding 6 people.
  • I picked up a free 8×10 at CVS today!
  • I have been working on getting some financial things in order for Lily’s college and I am happy to say that the hardest part is done!
  • Yesterday, I booked our Disney trip for Spring 2024 and took advantage of a no interest offer for six months from the credit card.
  • The next thing to tackle is Lily graduation pictures. Hopefully I will get some posted tomorrow as well!
  • Dinner tonight is “beer can chicken in the insta pot” with modifications.

Menu Planning Monday

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8 days of work is all I have left. This will be my last menu plan for the summer.  Next week, Kendall and Zach are headed to church camp. Lily, Matt and I will be eating for ourselves. This summer, I am planning to stock the freezer and eat not on a schedule. I am going to be a little freer with what I cook each day and include lots of pasta salads, regular salad and veggies hopefully from the garden.   I may share a couple of ideas along with what I am cooking but I am not planning.

Breakfast- Saturday- Pancakes and bacon. Sunday-left-overs   Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, sausage English muffins and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets.

Lunch- Saturday-Sliders.  Sunday East Coast Wings, Monday-pasta salad  Tuesday- salad    Wednesday-pasta salad Thursday – salad   Friday- eat out.

Dinner- Saturday-Dominos Pizza, Sunday-left-overs Monday-sloppy joe sliders  Tuesday-Fish Tacos Wednesday- Peanut Chicken Thursday- spaghetti   Friday- Cheese Quesadillas and Mexican Rice

Menu Planning Monday

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12 days are all that I have left in this school year!  I am excited and ready for a break. Today was just a taste of how I want my summer to be. This week brings another change for us. We are starting swim team.  I think that all school related activities except for graduation are complete!  We are going to be on a different schedule for the next several weeks with dinner time moving between 4:30 and 5:30 in addition to a eat as you can method as well.  Today, Memorial Day, we spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen preparing for the week. We were able to get all meals for tomorrow ready and most of the meals for the week will be minimal preparation.

Breakfast- Saturday- Sausage cream cheese crescent rolls. Sunday-French toast leftovers.   Monday- Breakfast bowls with fresh sausage, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal, omelets cereal and milk, waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, sausage English muffins and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets.

Lunch- Saturday-Roasterie chicken from Costco and AU Grant potatoes.  Sunday Christos, Monday-left-overs or milk shakes Tuesday- salad    Wednesday-pasta salad Thursday – salad   Friday- eat out.

Dinner- Saturday-loose meat philly sandwiches, Sunday-Chicken and rice Monday-hamburgers and French fries   Tuesday- Stuffed green peppers (just need to be heated) Wednesday- gyros Thursday- fish tacos   Friday- Grilled chicken salad.

Only one more week of meal planning!

Saving On Saturday

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The weather in North Carolina is rainy and chilly.  I am so glad that we are caught up with outside tasks.  Even better is the rain barrel that we put together last week (see the details) is currently filling and we can dump to make sure all the window cleaner is out of it before we use any water on the garden.

Today was spent trying to save money around food.  If you read even 3 or 4 post on this blog, you probably know that groceries are our third highest expense behind the mortgage and Tahoe payment.  I have been working on using up excess food for most of this year. One of the things I wanted to be able to do was condense our freezer food down.  This morning we were able to move around some meat and turn off our oldest freezer.  This will give the old freezer a chance to defrost and also save a small amount on our electric cost at least for the next month until I will restart it to store items from the garden and stock with easy to prepare meals for next school year!  While rearranging we found 4 packs of bacon, a unopened bag of frozen biscuits, an unopened bag of meatball as well as a coconut cake which was desert at dinner.    I spent some extra time this morning checking and making a Costco list. I am going to call it a success as spent $465 at Costco which included 2 prepared meals and a snack for Matt and Kendall.  We enjoyed the rotisserie chicken for lunch, I pulled enough meal off the bones for a chicken and rice soup for tomorrow’s dinner along with a couple of sandwiches as well. The crockpot is going with chicken broth that I will tomorrow.

I was also able to move some food around and now have all but the cereal in the kitchn area instead of spread all over the house!

I also already have a plan for both dinners and lunches next week with two days to continue preparing so that will make tomorrow much easier all the way around!

 

Monday Menu Plan

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I have seen where some people are comparing the month of May to December regarding things that need to be done. I absolutely agree. This week we have a baseball tournament, chorus concert, talent show and athletic banquet.  I am very proud of myself because I was very close to running to the store on Sunday to buy a couple of items to make meal prep easier for the week. I had even justified the expense because we are running under budget and I have a $5 credit. But I decided to try and stick it out and use the item we already had!  I have been changing things around the last couple of weeks but I am hoping this weeks plan works out!

Breakfast- Saturday- pancakes with strawberries and whip cream with bacon,
Sunday-biscuits   Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal,
omelets cereal and milk,waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets. We currently have an abundance of eggs so that should make most breakfast a no brainer!

Lunch- Saturday-Sandwiches  Sunday Local Pizza place  Monday- salad  Tuesday-left-overs  Wednesday- salad  Thursday-  leftovers   Friday- eat out..

Dinner- Saturday-Bacon Cheddar Burgers     Sunday-left-overs    Monday-CornDogs and French fries   Tuesday-KFC bowls using already prepared mashed potatoes.  Wednesday- broiled fish and green beans  Thursday-  Baked Ziti.  Friday-Chicken Cheesy Pasta.

Three weeks until the kids are out of school.  Which means less menu planning and more meal preparations!

Monday Menu Planning

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Summer is so close I can taste it!  We even survived what should be our busiest week of the school year last week!  We did not stick to the plan but we did manage to only eat out once!  I am continuing to work on clearing out space in our freezer, using things that are over a year old and preparing to fill the freezer over the summer.

Breakfast- Saturday- French toast with strawberries and whip cream with bacon,
Sunday-omelets   Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Friday- find it oatmeal,
omelets cereal and milk, waffles, French toast sticks, bagels, and I also have breakfast burritos, breakfast hot pockets. We currently have an abundance of eggs so that should make most breakfast a no brainer!

Lunch- Saturday-French toast uncrustables  or ham and turkey sliders. Sunday hamburgers and a bag of chips, Monday-left-overs Tuesday-eat out   Wednesday- – leftovers   Friday- eat out.

Dinner- Saturday-Grilled chicken salad    Sunday-local Seafood place     Monday-Arby’s   Tuesday- Chicken casserole (new recipe) Wednesday- egg rolls and potstickers Thursday- Spaghetti and meatballs.  Friday- taco pasta using last frozen bag of taco meat and left-over queso.