Me and Martha

Monthly Menu, Week 2

Week 1 of March's menu plan went pretty well.  I blogged about it on my other blog, but the short answer is we mixed things up a bit and it all worked out anyway.  I am very pleased that my grocery list for this week is very short.  I will never be able to get away without going to the grocery store at least once a week, as I need to buy milk and fruit for my hungry kidlets, but I'm hoping that my planning will mean I'm just doing a quick run most weeks, and hopefully not spending too much money.

Here's week 2!

• Mon. Mar. 10: Turkey and Roasted Red Pepper Meatloaf (Real Simple, March '08) with peas and potatoes (new recipe for me, and I couldn't find it on the website)
• Tues. Mar. 11: Soy Ginger Chicken in the slow cooker, with rice and broccoli (Everyday Food recipe, easy and good)
• Wed. Mar. 12: fish sticks etc, and a frozen spicy chicken pizza for the grown ups
• Thurs. Mar. 13: Garlic Orange Pork Tenderloin, with garlic rice and green beans (from this month's Everyday Food, also a new recipe for me)
• Fri. Mar. 14: sausage pasta (cut up turkey sausage in tomato sauce with whole wheat noodles and some feta on top, one of my few no-recipe meals)
• Sat. Mar. 15: organic burgers and oven fries with salad or veggies and dip (either frozen patties or I might make the burgers myself, depends on how energetic I'm feeling)
• Sun. Mar. 16: dinner is at my parents', but I'll be making brunch, hopefully Croque Monsieur Bake from the newest Nigella cookbook (you put it all together the night before and bake the next morning, and I have to play handbells that morning, so this should work well for us)

That's my plan.  Please visit I'm an Organizing Junkie for some more yummy menus!

Menu Plan Monday: 3rd time's the charm

I can't complain so far; these plans have been working pretty well with me.  I'm rolling with it when they don't work exactly as I'd planned, and I'm definitely saving time at home and making fewer trips for ingredients.

Anyway, I planned this all out Saturday night, then realized all the stuff I'd forgotten, so here is the new and improved version.

• Monday: Oven baked chicken breasts with stir fry veggies with teriyaki sauce and brown rice
• Tuesday: Mediterranean Sausage Stew with beer bread and salad
• Wednesday: fish sticks, mac and cheese, peas
• Thursday: Cranberry Chicken (from Six O'Clock Scramble) with mashed potatoes and broccoli
• Friday: dinner at my parents'
• Saturday: work banquet thingy
• Sunday: Slow Cooker Chicken Puttanesca with steamed broccoli and whole wheat noodles

I like being able to see at a glance what I'm going to use for my sides, to make sure there's some variety in the starches and veggies I'm making.  I tend to get into ruts.  I've recently started buying pre-cut broccoli and that's been really helpful.  Everyone loves broccoli, but I hate washing and chopping it.  It's so much easier to take some out of a bag, rinse it, put it in a bowl with a little olive oil, and microwave it for four or five minutes.  If my kids will eat broccoli, I definitely want to keep them interested in it!!

Last night, while playing on the interwebs and trying not to go to bed at a decent hour, I found some neat stuff at the Family Fun magazine website.   I liked their list of arts and crafts organized by age, as I often find stuff that doesn't work for my 3 year old and 22 month old.  But, for menu planning, this Month of Meals... well, I just thought that was pretty cool.  If I'd found it earlier this week, that's what I would have used!  Easy peasy!!

Check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for other menu plans this week (I think there were about 200 participants last week!).

Menu Plan in Review: Week 2

Nothing ever goes quite according to my plans...here's what happened this week and the "picks of the litter"!

• Monday October 1: Slow-simmerer Beef Ragout with brown rice or whole wheat pasta and steamed broccoli (this was supposed to be for tonight, but I ran out of time)
  • This was pretty good.  It wasn't very exciting looking, but the gravy was really yummy.  It does contain red wine, so if that isn't to your liking you might give this a pass or find a substitute.

• Tuesday October 2: Muenster, Turkey, and Apple Quesadillas and Halloween Salad (this is from the October issue of Everyday Food, but the recipes aren't up on the website)
  • These were really good.  The apple got nice and mushy, and the quesadillas are done in the oven so you don't have to stand over a fry pan trying to crank out enough to feed everyone!

• Wednesday October 3: Wednesday Night Special 3 weeks running: fish sticks, mac and cheese, and peas
  • On my very big shopping trip on Tuesday, I forgot to buy fish sticks!  We moved breakfast for supper night up and had pancakes and  scrambled eggs, our standard Sunday brunch.

• Thursday October 4: Breakfast for Supper: probably pancakes and scrambled eggs
  • I made the Goddess Chicken planned for Friday.  It was yummy, but it was probably the most expensive meal we ate all week as it contained half a bottle of salad dressing (Annie's Naturals: delicious, by the way), five chicken breasts, a can of artichoke hearts and half a bag of sundried tomatoes.  My rule is to always make the recipe as directed the first time, then change it up after if I want.  The recipe was really easy, but something I might serve when I had my family over, rather than a weeknight kind of meal.  I did the Glazed Carrots, too: easy and good.

• Friday October 5: Chicken recipe from The Six O'Clock Scramble cookbook: either Goddess Chicken or Cranberry Chicken (Goddess Chicken is easier, just dump stuff in a pan and throw in the over, but my older daughter has just discovered cranberries so the second one might go over better)  I'd also like to try the Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots from October's Everyday Food. 
  • Got home late after a haircut and errands and didn't really want to make supper.  I threw together some pasta sauce with ground turkey, whole wheat pasta, microwaved frozen green beans, and some cheese toast (made that with pizza shells).  Easy, about 30 minutes to finish it, and as good as we would have had at a restaurant around here!

• Saturday October 6: Meatballs and Pasta with Bocconcini (I think that's the official title): we made this a couple weeks ago and it was so good!
  • I would have made this if I didn't have a huge bag of peppers taking up valuable fridge real estate.  Had roasted new potatoes with olive oil and rosemary and yellow beans from my parents' garden.  Yummy!

• Sunday October 7: Greek Style Stuffed Peppers: very very good; I'd never made stuffed peppers before but this was awesome!  I'll make some little roasted potatoes with it and maybe some green beans.
  • We'll actually be at my parents' tomorrow for our Canadian Thanksgiving supper.  I'm hoping for pumpkin cheesecake!!

• Monday October 8: Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!  We'll be at my parents', stuffing our faces with stuffing!
  • If we don't get an invite back to my parent's for leftovers, I'll be firing up the slow cooker: more on that on my next Menu Plan Monday!!

Now that I've been planning menus out for a little while, I think I'm definitely getting the hang of selecting recipes.  I think that I would make everything on this list again, but some recipes would be better for certain situations.  The quesadillas were great for any evening, as they came together really fast.  The stuffed peppers are pretty fast, but not as fast as the quesadillas.   The ragout takes some prep time in the morning, so it wouldn't work so well for us on days when we have to go to play group or music class.  The goddess chicken was delicious and fast to prepare, but a treat meal because of the cost.  Overall, I think it was a pretty good week for eatin' at our house!

Menu Plan Monday: Attempt #2!

I'm back with my next installment.  I'm learning...it takes a lot of balancing to work out when I'm grocery shopping, when to defrost stuff, what days are better for more complicated recipes.  I'm trying out a lot of new stuff, too, so that's a little weird, when you're just not sure how it's going to work.  I'm finding that a recipe must have certain information for me to try it:

1. calories, fat grams, fibre grams, and/or Weight Watchers points;
2. prep time and cooking time, and it should be written very clearly at the top of the recipe (I have been known to skim over a recipe, only to start it 2 hours too late to be ready in time for supper);
3. I also like when they tell you how big a serving is, like serving = 1 cup.

Anyway, I have some new stuff, some old stuff...here it is!

• Monday October 1: Slow-simmerer Beef Ragout with brown rice or whole wheat pasta and steamed broccoli (this was supposed to be for tonight, but I ran out of time)
• Tuesday October 2: Muenster, Turkey, and Apple Quesadillas and Halloween Salad (this is from the October issue of Everyday Food, but the recipes aren't up on the website)
• Wednesday October 3: Wednesday Night Special 3 weeks running: fish sticks, mac and cheese, and peas
• Thursday October 4: Breakfast for Supper: probably pancakes and scrambled eggs
• Friday October 5: Chicken recipe from The Six O'Clock Scramble cookbook: either Goddess Chicken or Cranberry Chicken (Goddess Chicken is easier, just dump stuff in a pan and throw in the over, but my older daughter has just discovered cranberries so the second one might go over better)  I'd also like to try the Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots from October's Everyday Food.
• Saturday October 6: Meatballs and Pasta with Bocconcini (I think that's the official title): we made this a couple weeks ago and it was so good!
• Sunday October 7: Greek Style Stuffed Peppers: very very good; I'd never made stuffed peppers before but this was awesome!  I'll make some little roasted potatoes with it and maybe some green beans.
• Monday October 8: Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!  We'll be at my parents', stuffing our faces with stuffing!

(Edited to add: I wanted to get the logo on so anyone not participating in Menu Plan Monday would know what this is all about and where to find info; I fought it, then forgot it, so instead here is the link to the main page with all the other participants!)

Meal Plan: Review #1

We got through the week!  Yay!  Here's how it all worked out at our house:

• Monday: leftovers (Chunky Autumn Chili or pot roast
  • This went just as planned.  The Chili was from the previous Friday, and it was pretty good, but I don't think the amount of work it took matched the end product. 

• Tuesday: Pork Chops with Apple Sage Sauce and slow cooker rice pilaf
  • The pilaf was a new slow cooker recipe.  I started it in the morning, and it was okay.  Seemed pretty bland, so if I try it again, I will probably add something; it called for a can of mushroom soup, maybe I'd add two.  (Sorry, I can't find the link to this recipe!)  I thought I was going to make the pork chops, but I forgot to buy the...pork chops!!  I made a switch and did the Nacho Chicken I had planned for Thursday.  The chicken recipe was pretty easy to put together, the crunchy cheese and nacho chip topping was really yummy, but the chicken was pretty flavourless, like it needed to marinate in salsa or some lime juice or something first.

• Wednesday: fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and peas (I have two little kids; this meal is for them!!)
  • No surprises: we all like this!

• Thursday: Nacho Chicken Bake with rice (I'm trying rice in the slow cooker for the first time), avocado, tomatoes, corn
  • I did the slow cooker thing with the rice and it did not work for me at all.  It came out burnt on one side of the slow cooker and mushy and gross on the other side.  I think if you really know your slow cooker well, you would know exactly how long to cook it, and it might work out better.  The whole recipe was a cup of rice, a cup of water, some salt and a tablespoon of butter, cook on low 6-8 hours.  The pilaf from Tuesday worked way better in terms of cooking evenly, but I don't really know why.  On to the main course: I made the pork chops I was supposed to make earlier in the week.  The best part was the apples: you saute them in butter, then finish them in the pan with the pork chops.  Totally unhealthy, but yummy!

• Friday: I'm not sure yet, it depends on what I find at the grocery store today; choices are salmon, halibut
  • Surprise!  I bought some organic ground beef and made, as I call it, slop in a pot, one of those ground beef/noodle/tomato/cheese things you can pull off at the last minute. 

• Saturday: supper at my parents', no cooking!
  • Surprise!  My parents were out of town, so I made curried chicken with pear, apple, and cranberries (this was one of my back up recipes for the week).  Not the best curry I've ever made, but it was mild enough that the girls would eat it.

• Sunday: if we're not sick of chicken, it's chicken in the slow cooker; otherwise, beef in the slow cooker
  • Surprise!  It was breaded oven "fried" fish with oven fries and broccoli.  I made my own bread crumbs from organic sprouted grain bread, and that didn't work so well, so I'll buy some bread crumbs, or maybe panko, if I do this again.  Given enough ketchup, my girls would eat the fish too, so score a point for that!

I sketched out my plan for this week last night and I've already made changes to that!  I'll be posting the new Meal Plan ASAP...stay tuned!

Not boding well

After all the work I did planning out my menu, I forgot the pork chops that I was supposed to buy for tonight's supper.  I'm trying not to panic.

Okay, I already have slow cooker rice pilaf going.  I have chicken breasts in the fridge for Thursday's supper.  I'm not sure what to do.   These are the ideas I have:
A.  the nacho chicken I had planned for Thursday,
B.  the curry chicken I had as a back up for Friday,
C.  fish sticks, or
D.  get someone to pick up pork chops on his way home from work.

I don't know if the pilaf will really work with either of the chicken things, and I kinda had my heart set on pork chops tonight.

It's just the kind of day it's been for us...I got into a lot (and I mean A LOT) more detail on my other blog, Mama Sutra. I'll try to post again tomorrow to tell you what we went with for supper and if it worked or not!