Breakfasts:
Cold cereal and milk
Oatmeal
Eggs and toast
Lunches:
Peanut butter sandwiches and chips
Pasta salad
Burritos
Pepperoni sandwiches
Dinners:
Monday: Frozen pizza
Tuesday: Taco Stuffed Shells and Spanish Rice (I AM going to try these this week!)
Wednesday: Lasagna
Thursday: Leftovers, because Mommy is at pool.
Friday: Pizza Roll
Saturday: Chicken and Rice
Get more menus at Menu Plan Monday.
Monday: Lasagna (freeze some for next week)
Tuesday: Hamburger Helper (I’m meeting friends on Tuesday, so my teen is cooking)
Wednesday: Taco Stuffed Shells and Spanish rice (from Jill’s Crazy Life – I’m very excited to try this recipe)
Thursday: Leftovers (I’m at pool league)
Friday and Saturday: Probably pasta salad or pre-frozen burritos for me, since the kids will be at their dad’s.
Sunday: Chicken Enchiladas.
Visit Menu Plan Monday for more menu plans.
Monday: French dips and french fries and au jus. (Using homemade hoagie rolls for the French dips)
Tuesday: Boxed macaroni and cheese with tuna, peas on the side.
Wednesday: Spaghetti with Italian sausage, green beans. (Sauce was made a couple weeks ago and frozen)
Thursday: Eggs, hash browns, breakfast sausage, and toast.
Friday: French toast.
Saturday: Beef vegetable soup, fresh rolls.
Sunday: Chicken breasts, buttered noodles, green beans.
More Menu Plan Monday
So, it’s a week and a day until Thanksgiving. I’m deep into the planning here. This year, we’ll have me, my three kids that still live at home, my grown daughter and her boyfriend, my mother, my brother, and his girlfriend.
Our menu:
Turkey (duh)
Stuffing (cooked outside the bird)
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Cranberries (fresh and the canned jelly)
Squash (at my mother’s request – she and I will be the only ones to eat it)
Cheesy broccoli rice casserole (my daughter is bringing this)
Sweet potatoes (no marshmallows here – yuck)
Rolls
Pumpkin pie (my mom will be bringing this)
Blueberry cheesecake (really blueberry cream cheese pie – this is our family tradition)
And we’ll have my spiced pecans for munching while we wait for dinner.
I’ll be making what I can ahead of time, to leave lots of time on Thanksgiving Day to play board games, which is also our family tradition. I’m going to make the mashed potatoes ahead and heat them in the oven (I’ve never tried this, but I’ve read about it all over the ‘net, so here’s hoping it’s good – mashed potatoes with gravy are THE thing on Thanksgiving for most of my family). I’m going to buy a couple turkey legs and make some gravy ahead of time, because there’s never enough. I’ll make up the sweet potatoes ahead of time, too, and the cranberry sauce. And I’ll get the rolls done early and ready to just thaw and throw in the oven.
The plan:
Monday: Make dough for rolls and freeze.
Tuesday: Make sweet potatoes, spiced nuts, and cranberries.
Wednesday: Make mashed potatoes and gravy. Oh, and cheesecake!
Thursday: Everything else.
Family will arrive around noon and we’ll eat around 3pm. That’s the plan, anyway.
What are your family traditions? What’s your menu?
I found a site, E-Mealz through a friend. Most of the menus they suggest won’t work for my family for one reason or another, but last night we tried one.
You take a store-bought pizza crust (in the roll, like biscuits), and spread it out into a rectangle. Then spread shredded mozzarella cheese over it, and then pepperoni. Roll it up (from the long edge, so you make a longer roll. Brush butter on it, sprinkle it with garlic salt, and bake it according to the package directions. When it’s done, you just slice it and dip into heated marinara.
It was a hit in our house (how could it not be?), but next time I will use less garlic salt, and use a different sauce than my usually garlic-y spaghetti sauce. I will probably also make the crust from scratch, because that pre-made pizza dough was expensive, and even though we’re down to four family members here now, I will probably need to make two rolls. And at $3.79 per crust, that’s a bit much. But it will definitely be added to our regular rotation around here.
Here is my menu for the next two weeks. I think most of these things have recipes here on the site. The sloppy joes are just from a can – Manwich was on sale. They were out of regular Manwich, so we tried the BBQ. We had that on grocery shopping night. Nasty. Stick to regular Manwich.
Spanish Rice
Red Beans & Rice
Goulash
Black Bean Burritos
Tuna Patties
Biscuits and Gravy
Shepherd’s Pie
Swedish Meatballs
Tuna melts, baked beans & chips
Sloppy Joes
Spaghetti w/ sausage
TV Dinners
I use frozen fish sticks and frozen tater tots. Easy enough.
I do usually make my own tartar sauce, though.
Mix a big blob of real mayonnaise with either dill pickle relish or dill pickles chopped fine. Add just a touch of the pickle brine and some lemon juice.
This is Sylvia’s Favorite!
I buy the store brand nuggets and the store brand spicy fries. The nuggets are supposed to cook at 400 for 5 minutes, and the fries are supposed to cook at 425 for 15 minutes. So I put the oven at 425, and cook the fries for 10 minutes, flip them, then put the nuggets in the oven on the upper shelf.
I serve these with barbecue sauce, ranch dressing, and catsup.
I line the cookie sheets with tin foil and serve dinner on paper plates, so this is really a no-fuss, no-muss dinner.
I follow the recipe on the Bisquick box. Basically, you cut up some cut chicken (or in my case, since I don’t usually have leftovers around, cut up some chicken and sautee it). Put a bag of mixed vegetables in a colander and run warm water over them until they’re thawed. Mix the chicken, vegetables, and a can of cream of chicken soup in a pie plate. Mix up some Bisquick and milk as if to make biscuits and spoon on top. Bake until the biscuit topping is done.
Tonight I made a yummy dinner.
I marinated some chicken breasts some “Greek Marinade” that I found at the grocery store (and when I go back, if I remember to make note of the brand name, I’ll come back and edit this entry).
I grilled the chicken breasts on my stove top on one of those flat cast iron grill pans (which I obviously hadn’t seasoned well enough, because the chicken stuck, and it smoked, and our very loud smoke alarm kept going off – well, I guess at least we know it works).
I sliced some zucchini and sauteed it in butter and olive oil after seasoning it with salt and pepper. After it was done, I put it in a bowl and crumbled feta over the top.
I also served some boxed couscous (I can’t find bulk couscous around here), and a bowl of greek black olives from the deli.
Even though the chicken sacrificed some of its outer layer to the grill pan, it came out delicious, as did the rest of the dinner (well, I didn’t eat the olives, but everyone else said they were good. Yuck, olives).