As I mentioned before, I really struggled with getting back into the menu plan groove this week. I have a few days every week that get a little tricky. We have one day that the kids eat at the dance school, so the evening meal must be portable. We’re not sandwich fans, so it needs to be something that can be reheated in the microwave without suffering for it. Then we have two days where I need to prepare supper before we go to dance. One of those days, Zander and I leave Abigail there and we come home and eat together- so something that I can just get together and reassemble when we get back is good. The other day is almost always a crock-pot affair, because we’re all gone for several hours.
But I think I managed with this week, so here it is:
Monday: Taco Bites for kids, Quesadillas for adults
Tuesday: Classic Lentil Soup, fresh homemade bread with peanut butter and/or jam
Wednesday: Meatball Curry with Jasmine rice, Naan, and veggies with Raita and Pear Salsa
Thursday: Southwestern Chicken and Bean Stew, Pumpkin Cornbread Muffins
Friday: Crispy Chicken Legs, Potato Wedges and Veggies
Saturday: Linguini Alfredo with Broccoli and Bacon, Focaccia
Sunday: Pancakes with fresh fruit and sausage links
Breakfasts: Cold Cereal, Toast, Zucchini Bread, Oatmeal
Lunches: Quesadillas, Mac-n-Cheese, Tuna or PB&J Sandwiches on homemade bread. Veggies with dip, fresh fruit and yogurt to accompany
Our beverage choices with each meal remains pretty consistent. With breakfast and lunch the kids get a small cup of juice or milk. Generally if they have juice for breakfast, it’s milk for lunch, and vice versa. The juice is reconstituted frozen juice which I dilute further than it calls for. The cans we use call for three cans of water to one of juice, and I find the juice too intense at that strength, so we add a fourth can of water, which makes the juice perfect- and stretches it a bit further. Milk is whole, white milk almost all the time. About once a week we’ll have a treat and add either chocolate or strawberry syrup, but mostly it’s plain milk. In between meals the kids drink water, but also take a small juice bottle to dance to help them stay hydrated. Andy and I drink water pretty much all day, and then fill in with hot coffee and hot tea as we desire.
You will almost always see a breakfast-for-dinner night in my weekly menus. They are a very affordable meal, regardless of what it is, and quite honestly, if we didn’t eat these foods for dinner, they would never get eaten, because we don’t take the time for a big hot breakfast every day. Our actual breakfasts are small, as none of us are big breakfast eaters. A piece of toast with jam or a small bowl of cold cereal usually works great for us. Andy prefers hot oatmeal, as it gives him a great start to his workday, so I try to keep that on hand for him.
Pasta is another affordable option. The kids have really become fans of alfredo sauce, so I add a bit of frozen broccoli to it, and sometimes bits of chicken or bacon. This week I’ll be adding bacon crumbles, and I already have the bacon strips in my freezer, so I didn’t need to buy them. That’s a good money saving tip there. Bacon adds deliciousness to many things, but you don’t really need a whole pound of bacon to add flavor. So I’ll buy a pound of bacon and divide it into three or four portions and freeze them. I have instant bacon on hand then to add a bit of flavor to eggs, soups, pasta, or salads. Bacon always makes the kids happy.
This time of year we almost always have a soup floating around. This week it’s a Classic Lentil Soup, to which I’ll add some leftover smoked sausage that we ate the other night. Leftover soups get eaten by the adults in our home for lunches for a few days. The kids are not the biggest soup fans, so I always have a homemade bread to go with that they can load up with peanut butter and jelly to go with the soup. That way I can feel better when they decide they don’t care to finish their bowl of soup.
Stir-Fries and Stews are another way to stretch a small bit of meat to go around. When I make a chicken stir-fry, I use just one or two chicken breasts, depending on their size, and then load up the stir fry with inexpensive vegetables. If I took that same chicken and simply grilled it, serving it with veggies and rice on the side, I would need twice the amount of meat. This week’s stir-fry is a treat because I’ve been craving Indian food. I have some good quality ground chuck in the freezer, so that will be thawed out and turned into some delicious kofte. I can’t wait for that one!
Frozen vegetables make frequent appearances this time of year. The fresh vegetables are waning terribly at the grocery store, so while we have a few fresh veggies, the bulk of our vegetable eating is from the frozen variety. I always buy the veggies that come without sauces or butter, and then doctor them up myself as I desire. The one exception there is corn, I prefer to buy canned corn over frozen corn, and did that this week as I needed corn for Thursdays crock-pot stew.
The chicken I bought at the grocery store yesterday will work for two meals this week, and I expect I will have extra to put in the freezer. I buy whole leg quarters because they are affordable, and my family prefers dark meat. I’ll be breaking them down myself, separating the thighs from the legs. A bunch of them will be Friday’s crispy chicken, a bunch of them will go into Thursday’s stew, and then I suspect a third bunch will be wrapped up and frozen for another day. One package of leg quarters is a little too much for our family, but not quite enough for a second meal. So buying two packages and spreading it out over three meals works great. I’ll also buy the boneless/skinless chicken breasts when they are on sale and portion them out into meal-size portions and freeze them that way. This is the time of year I find those on sale frequently, so I’ll be keeping my eye out and may buy a little extra for the freezer.
Most likely, I think I’ll stick to my menu plan for this week. But the beauty of having a plan set like this is that now that I have all the required elements on hand for preparing everything, I can change it up as I desire. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for example, might very well ending up getting switched around, depending on how the weekend plays out.
And of course, the meal planning never really stops, as I’m already trying to come up with ideas for meals for next week, and as I use items I bought this week, I’ll consider how I can use any leftover bits in next week’s menu plan so as not to be wasteful of any of the fresh ingredients.
I thought of you on my trip to the grocery store this week, and it made me even more conscious of the things I was buying. I wished you had been with me when I came across chicken legs (thigh and drumstick) for $.79 per pound – I don’t know what I’ll do with them yet, but it made me think of you. 🙂
Thank you for this post! I like how you explained your choices and reasonings to go along with the menu. One of my goals this year is to plan out weekly menus for cost-cutting and health reasons. So, currently, I’m a sponge for any great planning tips to help me out. It is tough starting out!
Rachel, make them CRISPY! Make crumbs out of anything you want (crackers, corn flakes, rice chex, stale bread, toasted waffles even), dredge the chicken in crumbs which have been seasoned, spray with cooking spray and bake.
Mass, I think the biggest thing I’m really trying to do with the menu planning this go-around is reducing waste. I throw out way too much food before it goes bad because I just don’t feel like dealing with it. Forcing myself to a budget is keeping me more focused on using what I already have before it goes bad. I think it’s going to be an eye-opening experiment.