Menu Plan Monday: Back on the Road Again

While I haven't been posting them here every week, I have continued to Menu Plan.  Over the past couple of months, I've leaned HEAVILY on my Top Ten Meals.  So heavily in fact that I'm sick and tired of eating them.

Making the same meals so often makes dinner easy to get out, even on the days when cooking is just about the last thing I want to do.  The flip side of that is that cooking gets really boring.  Really. Boring.  Even when I have the energy to cook, I'm so uninspired that the first thought that comes to mind is whether I should call for Pizza or Chinese.  Being bored quickly defeated all of my good intentions behind menu planning.

My approach this week is a bit more ambitious than past weeks.  I'm trying out a few new recipes.  Prep each night will be required to make the next night's meal.  But to feel inspired  to cook each night is worth it.  Motivation will follow.  I hope.

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me & Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ
Lunch:
Soup & Bread
Apples
Lettuce Salad/Veggie Sticks

Monday: Tortellini Soup with Beans and Chard
Tuesday: Teriyaki Chicken with Rice
Wednesday: Mini Meatloaf with Roasted Cauliflower & Green Beans
Thursday: Tuna Rollups with Spinach
Friday: Quesadillas with Guacamole and Salad
Saturday: Pork BBQ
Sunday: Shrimp Kabobs with Cous Cous

Do you ever find the same old recipes uninspiring? Where do you look for recipes to spice up the dinner routine?

Menu Plan Monday: Turkey Towels.

The past year has been officially celebrated for both of my girls and I'm ready to get into the holiday spirit.  The THANKSGIVING holiday spirit if anyone is wondering.  This past weekend I changed over our house decorations from Halloween to Thanksgiving and realized the same thing I realize every year.

Thanksgiving is almost completely skipped over in the stores.  Each year I add one or two items to my Halloween decoration box (admittedly we have a Halloween problem in this house) and even more to my Christmas box.  But when it comes to decorating for Thanksgiving, I barely have any kitsch to put out.  This year Bean noticed that I put out special hand towels for Halloween.  As soon as I said Halloween was over she requested Turkey towels.  I was THRILLED.  She and I made time for a special trek out in search of Turkey towels.  And then we made a second trek...  Then a third!

We found more items with Santa on them than we could count, but there was not a single cute Thanksgiving item left on the shelves.  We did find a very unattractive table top turkey, but Bean looked at it and frowned.  Thankfully she was eventually content with a turkey t-shirt and some towels with fall leaves on them, but I am SOOO disappointed!  Next year I'm going to have to tackle the turkey towel acquisition starting in September.  It feels so wrong.

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me) Egg on an English Muffin & Blue Machine
(Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ

Lunch:
LO Mac & Cheese
Ham Sandwiches
Grapes
Lettuce Salad/Veggie Sticks

Monday: Chicken, Green Bean & Rice Casserole
Tuesday: Spaghetti
Wednesday: Grilled Fish with Carrots & Spinach
Thursday: Out to Chick-Fil-A on the way to Choir Practice
Friday: Beef Tacos
Saturday: BBQ Chicken
Sunday: Baked Potato Bar

Do you decorate you house for Thanksgiving?  When (and where) do you acquire your decorations?

Menu Plan Mondays: In Recovery

Last week was great.  The house was chaotic.  The schedules were loose at best.  I didn't make it to the gym one single day.  I filled my head with lots of fun techie dreams with little respect for reality.  Bean's birthday was celebrated multiple times with great enthusiasm and a touch of whimsy.  Inchie started WALKING.  The week was honestly a stellar success.

And if I hear myself say "Wow.  It's really been a busy couple of weeks" one more time, I may stop speaking entirely.  I'm beginning to feel like the Mom who NEVER has enough time and EVERYONE knows she never has enough time because she TELLS everyone she never has enough time.  First step to stop annoying myself?  Stop ACTING surprised that I'm busy.  It's not like this is a new thing.  The time has come to adjust and move on.

So how do I move on?  My approach has always been to do a little introspection (navel gazing if you will) and pick a few priorities.  Using those priorities I take a big black satisfying sharpie to my To Do lists and make some serious readjustments.  This week is one of those readjustment times whether I have TIME for it or not!

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me) Pumpkin Raisin Muffins & Blue Machine
(Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ

Lunch:
LO Chili (and whatever else I find living in my fridge)
Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches
Health Choice Entrees
Lettuce Salad

Monday: Chicken & Carrots in Cream Soup over Rice
Tuesday: Hot Dogs & Green Beans
Wednesday: Spaghetti
Thursday: Out to Arby's on the way to Choir Practice
Friday: Family Dinner
Saturday: Crock Pot Indian Food
Sunday: BBQ Chicken

Do you ever feel maladjusted to your everyday life? What do you do about it?

Menu Plan Mondays: Flying Solo

Weeks like this one are few and far between at our house, but still fill my heart with fear when they do happen upon this. Maybe if it happened more often I would fear it less.  Some how I doubt that.

What is happening?  My husband in off schedule at a conference and I'm off schedule at off site training.  Both of these things combine to get the girls off schedule.  And life as I know it ceases to exist.  Cats and dogs living together.  Mass hysteria.  Add to that, Bean's Birthday Party is this weekend.  Yeah.  I'm nuts.

But I'm not weeping yet.  While I say this doesn't happen often, I do have to Fly Solo about 4 times a year.  Hubby works with the public and the public is not always available from 9am to 5pm.  Over the past few years, I've come up with a few coping mechanisms.

• Lower my expectations.  There will be no overachieving this week.  Many things need to be accomplished, but perfect is synonymous with good enough right now.
• Enforce what routine remains.  We have a bedtime routine.  Aim to keep it even if it is an hour late.  Clothes are picked out and bags packed at bed time.  Regardless of when bedtime is this makes getting out the door in the morning so much easier.
• Accept help.  Every time I mention an upcoming trial, my best friend immediately offers to come over and lend two more hands.  On weeks like this, I make sure to say yes, loud and clear.
• Embrace convenience.  The grocery store is full of frozen and prepared foods for a reason.  Some of them are very good.  Stock up!

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me) Broccoli Cheese Quiche & Blue Machine
(Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ

Lunch:
LO Chicken Alphabet Soup
Lunch Meat Sandwiches
Lettuce Salad

Monday: Ham & Cheese Pita Pockets with Carrots
Tuesday: Mac & Cheese with Broccoli
Wednesday: Pita Pizza
Thursday: Out to Panera on the way to Choir Practice
Friday: Out for Bean's Birthday - Chick-Fil-A (her request)
Saturday: Peirogies
Sunday: BBQ Chicken

How do you cope when your usual routine gets turned on its head?

Menu Plan Monday: More than Dinner.

Whew!  Last week was a rush!  We had a short week  but it was still more than I was up to planning.  I mean, I planned for it, but I still had some slip-ups - like planning to eat lunch out on the day I was without a car and forgetting to pick up out CSA share until the next day. Thankfully, I have some awesome co-workers who happily took me to lunch and lots of gracery stores on the way home for mid-week stocking up.

Not to mention we've had rain EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. in the past week.  I might just be losing my mind.  Tropical Storm Lee broke up over the East Coast and decided not to move on.  Everyday was gray and rainy.  Not just a little drizzle either!  Lightening and Flooding and buckets of water coming from the sky.  It was all pretty overwhelming as the week went on.  I was glad I had done my planning and shopping before the week started.  That helped a lot.

One area of concern this week was lunches.  I pack lunch for myself and my husband each day.  Well, I at least try to every day.  Between our changing work schedules and the sporadic availability of leftovers, packing lunch can be onerous.  There have been more than a few last minute lunches thrown together by packing an American cheese sandwich, a Ziploc of stale crackers and an over-ripe banana.  I'm proud of my ingenuity of producing SOMETHING for lunch, but I can't say it is something I like repeating.  Plus we inevitably don't have enough food to make it through the day when one of those lunches goes out the door.

This week I've added a loose Breakfast and Lunch menu.  At least now I've put an extra minute of thought towards what we are going to eat that week in our lunches and I'll have ample supplies in the house.  I can't say I dislike 10pm grocery store trips - the quietness of Giant at 10pm is awe inspiring - but requiring one every week stops being a treat.

This week's menu:

Breakfast:
(Me) Muffin, Cottage Cheese & Blue Machine
(Hubby) Oatmeal, Bananas & OJ

Lunch:
LO Ham Bone Soup
LO Spaghetti
Mediterrean Tuna Salad
Fruit (Watermelon, Strawberries, Bananas)

Monday: Crockpot Ham Bone Soup
Tuesday: Grilled Fish with Rice & Carrots
Wednesday: Spaghetti
Thursday: Chicken Tenders with Sweet Potato Fries
Friday: Family Dinner
Saturday:Dinner at Grandma's house
Sunday: Beer Can Chicken

How do you deal with Breakfast and Lunch each day?  Is there variety to your selections?  Do you with there was?  *grin*

Menu Plan Monday: Top Ten List

Last week went well.  Better than I'd expected for being the first week I formally planned our menu in over 2 months.  I followed the plan until we hit Friday at which point I realized that my schedule was not right.  I knew it wasn't right when I learned on the way home from work that three people were at my house waiting to eat and I wasn't there to let them in.  Oops.

Thankfully I was my job to host, but not to cook and everyone else was on the ball.  Needless to say I've done a little more double checking this week in hopes of not leaving anyone stranded on my back deck.  At least we had really night weather this week for them to enjoy while they waited for me!

In my MPM First Edition, I alluded to a Top Ten Meal List.  This is the list of ten meals which I can prepare from memory in well under 30 minutes with two hot'n'tots underfoot.  The list got made 5 months after Inchie was born and I'd been back at work for two months.  I realized that with one child I had been able to be a a bit more ambitious during weeknight dinners.  We had favorites like Chick Pea Burgers or White Chicken Enchiladas which I'd make from scratch starting when I walked in the door after work.  With the addition of the second child, I learned that microwaving Spaghetti O's was an accomplishment some nights and I was bothered by how much Bean liked Spaghetti O's, more than Mommy's crazy dinners.

So I responded the way any sane working mother would. I got totally overwhelmed most nights while trying to make dinner and sobbed on the phone to my husband who promptly ordered me out of the kitchen and brought home take out.  THEN, after a month of sobbing, I made my Top Ten Meal List.  Without further ado, here's the list:

1. Spaghetti (with or without Meat)
2. Broiled Fish
3. Burgers
4. Pita Pizza
5. Grilled Chicken/Pork
6. Tuna Melts
7. Chili/Soup
8. Stir-fry
9. Chicken Tenders
10. Crockpot

And yes, Crockpot is a meal.  Anything that can be thrown into a crockpot the night before and refrigerated until the morning when I put it on the counter to cook is fair game.  AND often easier than even the simple meals I can prepare.  Any prep I do at night or on the weekends keeps these go-to meals from being the most droll dinners.  Without it I would be very bored of these 10 meals by now.

This week's menu:

Monday: Labor Day - Burgers & Corn on the Cob
Tuesday: Grilled Chicken & Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Wednesday: Stir-fry
Thursday: Tacos with Corn Salsa
Friday: Crockpot Ham Bone Soup
Saturday: Seafood Kebabs
Sunday: Beer Can Chicken

Do you have a Top Ten Meal List as well?  What are your go-to dinners?

Menu Plan Monday: First Edition

I've been menu planning for a few years now.  As my family has grown, my job changed and my cooking focus shifted, my planning has evolved.  Most recently, meal planning occured on the first weekend of the month.  In my kitchen hangs a calendar white board that lists all the family obligations as well as the proposed meals.

Lately I've encountered two problems with this.  The first is that it takes me over an hour to make the monthly plan.  When I don't get it done on the predestined weekend, my motivation for complete it on subsequent weekends is pretty much nil.  About 60% of the time, I'm making up my meal plans on a weekly basis.  Secondly, I have to make a shopping list each week based on the planned menu, the contents of my pantry and the leftovers in the fridge.

Given all this, I'm joining Menu Planning Mondays on I'm an Organizing Junkie.  I like the idea of piggy backing on others great ideas for weekly plans as well as preserving my menus to reflect back on in subsequent weeks.

For this week's menu, I'm leaning on my top ten meal list (more on that later).  Nutritious, delicious and all ready in under 30 minutes (with the prep I do on the weekends to make sure week night dinners stay under 30 minutes!!).

Monday: Spaghetti with Homemade Tomato Sauce
Tuesday: Grilled Pork Chops with Sweet Potatoes & Salad
Wednesday: Tuna Melts
Thursday: Stir-fry
Friday: Burgers & Fries
Saturday: Family Dinner Out
Sunday: Wedding Reception

What do you have planned for dinner this week?