Menu Monday

I am really excited that we have been doing this and are still going! Sometimes those ideas we have that are just going to make things so much better don't stick. Thankfully this one has and it has made our life so much easier! I don't plan on doing this forever, but right now it has been exactly what we needed!

I've tried really hard at not repeating meals so far, but we are doing one again- two if you want to be technical. It is hard to keep coming up with new things (and to both agree on them). Derek has just as much say in the menu as I do. We sit down on Friday nights and plan out what we are going to make and write the grocery list. This week's menu was a little tricky, but we finally settled on one. I think it's going to be a good week!

You can just click on the picture or the item for a link to the recipe I used as a guideline!

Spinach and Ricotta Cheese Stuffed Shells (I didn't follow a recipe)

The Pioneer Woman's recipe is so good!  

Chicken Spaghetti

Hamburgers

Taco Soup  (I add a packet of ranch seasoning to mine!)

Shepherd's Pie 

Poppy Seed Chicken

Smothered Pork Chops

For the spinach and ricotta shells, we just made a tomato sauce similar to the one I made a few weeks ago. I just let tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, meat, garlic and herbs simmer in my crock pot. Then I made a ricotta mixture, similar to what you would make for lasagna but I added spinach and I filled cooked shells with the ricotta mixture. Then I poured the tomato sauce over it! Yum!

I included the link to the Kraft recipe for Shepherd's Pie that Derek and I used the first few times we made it. Now that I've made it so much, I really didn't use a recipe! Oh and my mashed potatoes were nowhere near that "fancy!" ha! I just mashed them with butter and milk! Oh and a few weeks ago when we made it, we used a recipe from Derek's favorite Irish place back home. That one had tomato sauce, so I am not counting it as a repeat! :)

Since this is working so well for us, I thought it would be fun to give it a catchy title (I stole this from my awesome friend Amanda) and then create a button that you can grab for your blog. You can see my button in the left hand column! Coming up with menu's for each week is hard! I thought it would be fun to see what others are cooking each week and maybe it will help give us ideas. I know that not everyone likes to freeze meals either, so don't worry if you don't do that!

What are you cooking this week? Link up and play along!

Week 6 Menu

We are kind of settling into a routine of this! I just can't stress how nice it's been to have our meals prepared ahead of time! You can see last week's menu here. (You can click on the meals in last week's menu for the links to the recipes if there is one!) 

Here's our menu for the week: 

Meatballs (with Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli)

Corn Chowder with Dumplings 

Breakfast Casserole

Cheeseburger Pie

Pizza

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo

We had a pot luck on Sunday and it was so easy! I didn't realize we were having one until Saturday. Usually, it would have been a struggle to go get groceries and get something put together but this was as simple as thawing out our chicken pot pie filling and throwing a pie crust on top! :)

I'm not going to lie- this week is going to be hard for us. We are a little bored with this menu! Some of the things we made were a little bland so I'm going to try a few tricks to fix that. 

Derek also learned a lesson this week. He made the pizza and pie crusts for me last week. When he did I reminded him to label them. Someone thought that they would be easy to tell apart though. So Tuesday night he made pizza on a pie crust. No it was not as good as you might think! ha! So next time we will definitely label everything! 

As always, I would love to hear meal ideas and see what you are cooking this week!

 Also, check out our food blog- there's a link on the top left-hand corner of this blog! I plan on moving the weekly menu's there once that blog has caught on more! 

Week 5 Menu!

I'm so excited about this week's menu that I decided to skip my weekend post and go straight into this. We had a pretty boring, lazy weekend- minus the cooking and super bowl (I'll post pics from that soon).

This week I wanted to do some different dishes. I really wanted to stray away from too many casseroles. I love them but I'm worried about being burnt out! I also tried to incorporate a good variety.

The problem I ran into was that these dishes were a little bit harder to prepare. We spent an extra hour or so on these and I still had to do one dish the next day. We were both pretty worn out from it, so I will have to keep that in mind next time. I'm learning as I go. :)

Okay, so here's the awesome menu! (You can click on the meal for the recipes, if there's not a recipe I will try to post one soon!) I also threw in a few pictures just to entice you! ha!

Photo Courtesy of Taste of Home 

Corn Chowder with Dumplings (I substituted the chipotle pepper with seasonings)

Pioneer Woman's Chicken Pot Pie (the link takes you to turkey pot pie, same thing)

Chicken Alfredo Pizza (feeling little brave...)

Photo courtesy of Betty Crocker .com

Impossibly Easy Cheeseburger Pie 

Photo courtesy of Food Network .com 

Breakfast Casserole (I love breakfast for dinner!!)

Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo (My own recipe with homemade Alfredo sauce)

Comfort Meatballs (I adapted this recipe... I might post it later!)

We made the pie and pizza crusts and froze them. I know it will be a little bit of work, but we can just roll those out and use them when we need them. We are going to try an alfredo pizza! I've never made one before so it's going to just be something we come up with as we go.

I will also have to make the chicken fettuccine alfredo the day of but I went ahead and cooked the chicken and then froze it. I'm debating adding seasoning just to the chicken after I thaw it. It's going to be coated with the alfredo sauce so it's not going to seem dry or anything. By the way- that alfredo sauce is super easy! I will share that soon.

I doubled the breakfast casserole recipe and made about 4 smaller ones so we could pull those out for breakfast! I'm toying with adding breakfasts to our frozen menu later on so I'm trying to experiment with breakfasts we will actually eat!

I really enjoy cooking these meals. It's a good thing to do as a couple because you have to work together  and communicate and in our small kitchen it's crazy. I'm pretty sure therapists use this kind of thing for their marriage counseling exercises. ha!

I'm always looking for new recipes so I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Week 4 Menu

So remember when I mentioned how this would be somewhat of a learning experience? Well note to self... 3 sort of Mexican dishes in one week is probably not the best idea! ha. Don't get me wrong, they were delish but they have gotten a little old... I will definitely have to mix it up more! 

We are stretching last week's menu into two weeks again! I'm sure this doesn't sound as good to some but it is what's working for us right now! Since Derek is down to just the one job we are trying to be more conscious of our budget and this is one area where we are really saving! (By saving I mean we are cutting our budget down by 1/3 while still managing to eat the things we like!) 

So here's what's on the menu for this week: 

Texas Tortilla Bake 

Chicken Noodle Soup

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

Spaghetti

"Chicken" and Wild Rice (remember last week where I mentioned forgetting the chicken!)  

Baked Ziti

I'm already working hard on the menu for the next week or two! I'm excited because we have the Super Bowl (so at least one sweet treat for that) and I'm also taking a meal to someone so I will be able to have a meal geared for that (and dessert-my fave).  

I'm always open to suggestions and new ideas, so if you have any feel free to comment! :) 

Week 3 Menu

We had another great week of easy, ready-to-go meals and it was awesome! I feel like these meals could actually reduce our monthly grocery budget which is so exciting. I know we will get better at them as we go along too! 

I'm going to try to new ways of container-ing the food so that it saves me on freezer space and dishes. I will admit that I was a bit lazy this week and I just used my pyrex dishes. I had planned on lining them with foil but it seemed like a lot of work! 

Another little trick I read about is to put a container in the freezer that we put our leftover veggies in until it is full. Then those veggies can be used for vegetable beef soup! I think this is a really neat idea! I got it out of one of my Paula Deen cookbooks. 

I made a sauce in my slow cooker to use for lasagna and spaghetti and hopefully a 3-cheese baked ziti. Then whatever sauce I have left over can be containered up for later! Easy, easy! All I did was pour two large cans of plain tomato sauce and added lots of different spices and herbs. Then I browned some hamburger meat with minced garlic and drained that. Then I added my meant and chopped onion. It is delicious! 

I guess I should tell you my menu plan, huh? You can click on a couple of the meals for the recipe if I used one as a guideline! I actually altered all of them though. 

Lasagna 

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole (I meant to have chicken in this but I forgot it!)

Chicken and Dumplings
Chicken Noodle Soup

Texas Tortilla Bake

3 Cheese Baked Ziti
Chicken and Tortilla Casserole
Spaghetti

We had the lasagna on Sunday. Oh my was it good! I wish I had paid more attention to what I did on that because I'm not sure if I can do that again!

For the chicken and dumplings and the chicken noodle soup I just decided to make the "base." I bought bullion cubes instead of broth because I wasn't sure how much I needed. I ended up buying the bullion cubes that had herb seasoning mixed in them. Then I added a couple of large cans of cream of chicken soup to about 4 cups of the broth and I boiled that with some celery and pepper. You don't really need a lot of salt with bullion cubes. I felt like it was a bit too creamy but there was no room in my pot to dilute it with broth so I decided to go on and divide it and just planned to add more broth when I cooked it. I added chicken that had been boiled and shred into larger pieces too.

So tonight we decided that's what we would eat. We had a guest so we decided at 5 this was the best thing to make. Of course it took a lot longer because it had to be thawed. I like to use the Pilsbury biscuits for my dumplings. Their buttermilk biscuits taste more homemade than any other biscuit I've tried. All I did was add about 3 more cups of broth to what I already had and I felt like that was perfect. Then I brought it up to a boil and added my dumplings. I let those cook for about 15-20 minutes until they're not too doughy! I like to lean on the doughier side of things but Derek prefers them cooked all the way!

It was probably a lot easier than I just made it seem! My dumplings tasted great too! Anna-Kate and I went back for seconds and thirds!

So that's what we are eating this week and probably next week too! I'm going to work on a few breakfast ideas for our next cooking day. I think that would be really fun! 

Week 2 Menu!

This is going to sound terrible...

and possibly even gross to some...

Our meals made so much extra that I decided to go on and just eat the left overs this week! 

(that means I saved on an entire week's worth of groceries and I didn't have to brave the grocery store wahoo!) 

I'm actually super excited. Last week's meals turned out awesome! Derek and I both enjoyed having a meal already prepared. There are so many nights when we get home right at dinner time and the thought of having to fix a meal is just draining, so we usually wind up just eating out. Even those times we have plenty of things at home. 

It was such a great feeling to come home to a meal already prepared! 

I made the alfredo pasta last night and tonight we had chili, on top of baked potatoes. Anna-Kate was resistant, but she wound up scraping the potato out! 

On the menu for the rest of the week: 

Ritz Chicken (didn't make that last week) 

Vegetable Beef Soup

Chicken and Dressing

Chicken Spaghetti

Everything froze and thawed really well last week too. 

I've already made a list of recipes for next week too! Can't wait to share! 

Week 1 Menu!

I mentioned that one of my resolutions was to simplify by preparing recipes for the week and freezing them. I thought it would be fun to share my menus each week! (Since these aren't really creative meals, I'll skip the recipes for now. If you'd like one just let me know!) 

Saturday was so much fun! We got up and made pancakes. Anna-Kate told me that I made the best pancakes because I made her baby pancakes! haha. (Basically one day she was helping me make pancakes and she noticed that I dripped batter and she thought I had done it on purpose to make her itty bitty pancakes. So now we have to do that every time!)  

After breakfast we got ready and did our weekly grocery shopping. It was a little crazy but we got done just in time for the kids to take naps! 

That was the perfect time for us to make our meals. It took around 2- 2 1/2 hours to make 6 meals. Here's what we made: 

Chili

Shepherd's Pie

Cheesy Tuna Noodle Bake

Ritz Chicken

Vegetable Beef Soup 

Pot Roast (Assembled everything together so we just have to throw into the crock pot and season) 

Bowtie Pasta Alfredo (I was worried the alfredo sauce wouldn't freeze well so I decided to just make this one the night of. It's a very simple recipe- the alfredo sauce takes about 10 minutes to make.) 

We are loving having our meals prepared!  We have an expensive habit of eating out a few nights a week, so having a meal that I don't have to prepare is a lot of help.  Yesterday was a snow day so we chose chili. It was so good! We had Shepherd's Pie. I made the mistake of pulling it out of the freezer a little late, so it was still frozen when we got home. We wound up heating it at a lower temperature for a longer time. It worked but I will definitely remember to pull out dinner the night before! 

The only bad thing that I've noticed is that our meals are just too large. We have about half the meal left over. I even cut the chili recipe in half! We are considering making two weeks worth of recipes and just dividing all of the them in half so we have a month's worth of food. Obviously that would mean we wouldn't have too much variety that month and I'm a girl who loves food...so I'm still just thinking about it! We are just trying to figure things out! 

Anyone have any recipes, suggestions or tips? I'm pretty new to all of this and would love to hear some ideas!