Linking up with Simcha Fisher.
Now that Lady Infant has started eating solids, we are burning through produce faster than a Salad Shooter, and our grocery expenditures are starting to go through the roof. Part of Mr. Husband's and my plan to address this issue is to go back to planning our meals for the week. This is something that I did very consistently when I was in grad school and was gone two nights a week, but haven't done consistently at all since Sir Toddler was born. This is what we've been eating this past week.
Saturday: We had dinner guests that night with a planned Amerimexican theme (my second oldest brother-in-law makes amazing margaritas) so we had loaded nachos with pulled pork, refried beans, olives and cheese (duh) on top, and guacamole and salsa on the side. Since the meat sales weren't particularly promising that week, we actually purchased premade pulled pork in barbecue sauce. It was much better than I thought it would be. I don't know if throwing a bunch of ingredients on chips and tossing it in the oven until the cheese melts really qualifies as cooking, but the margaritas were made from scratch.
Sunday: Mr. Husband was out that night. Usually that's my cue to make breakfast for dinner, but I had some tomato sauce already made from earlier in the week, plus some zucchini to use up. You may be thinking that I did some fancy veggie spiralizing, but that is blasphemy to my half-Italian heritage so we had Market Basket brand tortellini with the sauce and baked zucchini (slice into half-coins, add olive oil, salt, and pepper, bake at 400 º until browned) on the side.
Monday: I planned on meatballs, but I realized rather late in the day that we were not only out of breadcrumbs, but we had also just used up all of the sandwich bread. So bolognese sauce it was, plus green beans and rigatoni.
Tuesday: Chicken enchiladas (with grocery store guacamole) from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The great thing about this type of recipe is that we use fewer pieces of chicken when it's shredded and mixed into something rather than serving a chicken dish with sides.
Wednesday: Pasta with chicken and pesto. It was really the last hurrah of my basil plants; they look dreadful now. I used the pesto recipe from The Joy of Pasta minus the pine nuts because I never have those on hand. Again, I shredded chicken into the pasta to stretch our chicken supply a bit.
Thursday: Pizza. I never make more than three pizzas (we had a dinner guest) so I make the crusts from scratch in my stand mixer, but I discovered six months ago that it made no difference in cost to buy the little cans of sauce, pre-sliced pepperoni, and pre-grated mozzarella. I usually sautée some peppers and mushrooms for toppings and assemble.
Friday: My meal plan was originally a rice and beans dish (an attempt to cut down on our meat expenditures by eating less of it) that involved cooking the beans all day in the slow cooker. I forgot to get the beans cooking in my rush to fit in a morning run/playground romp so we had Two-Ingredient Crockpot Chicken with lemon spaghetti and (previously frozen) peas.
I'll post the lemon spaghetti recipe later, as Lady Infant is currently using my legs and torso as a pull-up bar.
Now that Lady Infant has started eating solids, we are burning through produce faster than a Salad Shooter, and our grocery expenditures are starting to go through the roof. Part of Mr. Husband's and my plan to address this issue is to go back to planning our meals for the week. This is something that I did very consistently when I was in grad school and was gone two nights a week, but haven't done consistently at all since Sir Toddler was born. This is what we've been eating this past week.
Saturday: We had dinner guests that night with a planned Amerimexican theme (my second oldest brother-in-law makes amazing margaritas) so we had loaded nachos with pulled pork, refried beans, olives and cheese (duh) on top, and guacamole and salsa on the side. Since the meat sales weren't particularly promising that week, we actually purchased premade pulled pork in barbecue sauce. It was much better than I thought it would be. I don't know if throwing a bunch of ingredients on chips and tossing it in the oven until the cheese melts really qualifies as cooking, but the margaritas were made from scratch.
Sunday: Mr. Husband was out that night. Usually that's my cue to make breakfast for dinner, but I had some tomato sauce already made from earlier in the week, plus some zucchini to use up. You may be thinking that I did some fancy veggie spiralizing, but that is blasphemy to my half-Italian heritage so we had Market Basket brand tortellini with the sauce and baked zucchini (slice into half-coins, add olive oil, salt, and pepper, bake at 400 º until browned) on the side.
Monday: I planned on meatballs, but I realized rather late in the day that we were not only out of breadcrumbs, but we had also just used up all of the sandwich bread. So bolognese sauce it was, plus green beans and rigatoni.
Tuesday: Chicken enchiladas (with grocery store guacamole) from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The great thing about this type of recipe is that we use fewer pieces of chicken when it's shredded and mixed into something rather than serving a chicken dish with sides.
Wednesday: Pasta with chicken and pesto. It was really the last hurrah of my basil plants; they look dreadful now. I used the pesto recipe from The Joy of Pasta minus the pine nuts because I never have those on hand. Again, I shredded chicken into the pasta to stretch our chicken supply a bit.
Thursday: Pizza. I never make more than three pizzas (we had a dinner guest) so I make the crusts from scratch in my stand mixer, but I discovered six months ago that it made no difference in cost to buy the little cans of sauce, pre-sliced pepperoni, and pre-grated mozzarella. I usually sautée some peppers and mushrooms for toppings and assemble.
Friday: My meal plan was originally a rice and beans dish (an attempt to cut down on our meat expenditures by eating less of it) that involved cooking the beans all day in the slow cooker. I forgot to get the beans cooking in my rush to fit in a morning run/playground romp so we had Two-Ingredient Crockpot Chicken with lemon spaghetti and (previously frozen) peas.
I'll post the lemon spaghetti recipe later, as Lady Infant is currently using my legs and torso as a pull-up bar.
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