Sunday:  Leftovers from fridge.  We did not do the family meal, due to ill children.

Monday:  I crushed up cornflakes from a box that has been around a long time, and will coat the fish with them.  Crunchy Fish Nuggets with Lemon Tartar Sauce from the American Heart Association Quick and Easy Cookbook is the recipe I’m using.  I confess I ate the green beans already after I took the picture, so I’ll get out another vegetable tomorrow.  This is very quick to make after work.

Tuesday:  Roast in the Crock Pot.  I will either do the pork or beef, whichever one I find on top or at the front of the freezer.  We have a couple of appointments on Tuesday, one is in the late afternoon.

Wednesday:  Leftovers.  I have green chicken chili, and turkey-rice soup and I work late that day.

Thursday:  Lovana’s choice.  It’s been Mexican food for the last 3-4 weeks, so I’m guessing Mexican…..?   Who knows, I might be surprised.  I chuckle because when my mom wanted me to cook, I would take the leftover roast beef from Sunday dinner and make French Dip–every single Monday–as my meal.  She though I was being difficult because she wanted me to practice cooking lots of recipes, but I really, truly, loved French Dip and still love it to this day.  So, I just let her make Mexican every week, my only rule is that we have to have the ingredients in the pantry or freezer.

Friday:   My mom and aunt are coming to help me clean, sort, etc.  I want soup in the crock pot for lunch and will serve leftovers for dinner since we have a late afternoon caseworker visit.  (Truly no pressure about getting the house pristine–this is our dear Nicole who has been out of the office for 3 months–she’s coming to see Patsy–not the house, and we are eager to see her.)

Saturday: Pizza.  We didn’t make it this week, so still have all the toppings from last week.

Sunday:  Family dinner. Since this week’s dinner was cancelled, the lasagna was frozen down there, the cake is frozen here–I will still make beans and salad.

As I was explaining to Patsy, the menu plan I write is mostly for my own benefit.  It helps me to have it written down in a place where I can refer to it easily.  When I have a busy week, like this one’s shaping up to be, it keeps the whole week moving more smoothly.

Last night, Rob barbecued chicken.  He used a rub of barbecue seasoning, brown sugar and garlic powder and then cooked it on the grill.  That was an unplanned meal, but caused us no grief because it all came from the freezer and storage.  I sauted frozen green beans with butter and garlic, thawed squash, and cooked white rice from a 50 pound bag Rob got 2 summers ago.  We have put in quite a few hours the last 2 days packing, sorting, burning trash (lots and lots and lots of trash….), and the troops were all home working all day and were starving.  So, they burned through most of 2 pizzas, almost all of this chicken and vegetables, bacon, sausage, eggs, a huge pan of home-made hash browns, and I’m not sure what else.    Once I saw how the day was going, I cooked up a huge pan of rice, so there is rice left, plus a little chicken.

Sunday:  Family dinner–my sister made ham and mashed potatoes and gravy. We did green beans and my aunt brought salad.  I took cauliflower and a berry crisp.  We had 13 today, so a small crowd.  This evening, there is leftover chicken, salad, 4 pieces of pizza and peanut butter sandwiches to choose from.

Monday:  I found some chicken thighs in the freezer.  They had been in there too long, so I thawed them and trimmed off any suspicious areas and put them in a marinade to soak. I used ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar and water.  They will be sauted in a pan and will be teriyaki chicken, served with rice and broccoli.

Tuesday:  clam chowder

Wednesday:  Turkey noodle casserole

Thursday:  Lovana cooks.  She wants to do Mexican food, involving corn tortillas–her choice when the day comes as long as we have the ingredients.

Friday:  chili in the crockpot–4H day, so very busy and we are tired when they all go home

Saturday:  Cashew chicken.  I found some frozen pea pods from last fall’s garden, and some cashews when I was digging around in the freezer and want to use them.  I can make brown rice with this, as I have lots of that as well and we actually prefer it.

Sunday:  Hamburgers at my sister’s.  She and one of the girls will be out of town visiting our niece who is in college.  They will probably also visit Mickey Mouse:)  We will bring all of the dinner between us and my aunt and feed my sweet brother-in-law and the kids who are still at home.  He invited a couple of young adults also, and there are a couple friends of my kids who might show up, so we can just unthaw a bunch of burger from the 1/2 beef we bought last fall, and cook a bunch up, with hot dogs for Michaela and Jake.  I should know how much to thaw for sure towards the end of the week.  I will probably do potato or macaroni salad, a relish tray, and some kind of dessert.  Patsy and I made zucchini chip bars today–I may re-make them if they taste good.  Sometimes changing a regular recipe to gluten-free needs a few tries to make it work out.

We also made some brown banana bread with flax seed.  They were a little less sweet than we wanted, but definitely edible with a little jam!

Last week the food turned out to be a little different than I had planned, but that’s ok.  I love having a plan.  If I choose to change it, no big deal, I allow myself to do that.  On days when I’m in a hurry, stressed, or have to delegate the cooking–the plan is in place and all of the ingredients are on hand.  When we ended up having some of our very best friends breeze in unexpectedly from out of town, I quickly thawed some salmon and–you guessed it–Rob barbecued it up for us.  Yum.

When the family dinner turned into 24 people, my sister and I thawed more meat, which Rob and Ron barbecued, she did about 10 lbs of twice-baked potatoes, and I made 2 dozen eggs into deviled eggs, and I plus-sized the berry crisp I was making.  My sister pulled out all rolls in her freezer, plus bought a couple more packs. We had assorted rolls.  My aunt brought a huge salad.

One more interesting thing I ended up cooking was a recipe for lettuce wraps done in the style of P.F. Chang’s.  I used ground turkey, water chestnuts, and some other things.  I bought some gluten-free hoisin sauce.  They turned out really good, but were rather expensive because the hoisin sauce was so high-priced–over $4 for the bottle.   The recipe used 1/2 of the bottle. If I am comparing the price of making them to buying them from the restaurant, of course they were less expensive.  I will probably make them one more time to use the rest of the sauce, but save them for a special treat, instead of a regular addition to our menu plan.

So, here’s the menu for this week.

Sunday night:  nachos or leftovers

Monday: hamburgers

Tuesday: Spaghetti

Wednesday:  tamale pies (homemade and frozen for some time)

Thursday: Lovana will cook –her choice

Friday:  Pizza

Saturday:  Leftovers or soup

Sunday dinner:  Sister–ham, Aunt–salad, Me–small quinoa salad (found a bag that needs using), potato salad or more deviled eggs (chickens going crazy right now), dessert (possibly crisp again, depending on what berries or fruit I find as I keep going through freezers)

Veggies will be canned green beans, frozen cauliflower or broccoli, green salad, squash, corn, and carrots.  There is always canned fruit to add.

We enjoyed another great dinner on Thursday, compliments of Lovana.  She is not taking Community College classes this term, but is still working at a Starbucks in a Fred Meyers store.  So, she has some days off.  She has agreed to cook every Thursday, and this will be the 3rd time we’ve come home to a nice, hot meal after taking the other 2 girls to dance classes.  It’s nice to have some help with the cooking on busy days!  All that 4H cooking practice is now paying off for us.

Here’s the plan for the week:

Sunday:  family dinner-for the noon meal, leftovers for supper.

Monday:  Meatloaf, salad, broccoli

Tuesday:  Minestrone soup, French bread

Wednesday:  Split Pea soup  (leftover from yesterday-lots left), muffins or French bread

Thursday:  Lovana is cooking.  She says she will make something with turkey burger from the freezer–her choice, to be decided later

Friday:  Tamale pie, green beans

Saturday:  Pizza

Sunday: Family dinner at my sister’s (around 15 expected at this point–may end up more or less).  Steak and chicken.  We both have beef from a farmer, so we will both bring 1/2 the steak and I will bring the chicken, since I have a lot.  Twice-baked potatoes (her), salad (aunt), dessert (me).  If either of us gets into a mood, we can always make something else as well.  There have been more and more young people attending–niece and/or nephew, friends of my daughters or hers, etc. so we are needing quite a bit of food these days.  It’s so nice of her to host each week, and it’s fun and a good time of eating and visiting for everyone.  It also saves a lot of money for all of us.  Because they are so involved with their church, they often only had time to go out to eat previously between morning and evening church.  Rob and I get done at church first, head over and put the finishing touches on the meal, and then everyone gets to eat promptly after church.  Eating out is super fun, but we are saving our pennies these days, and rarely go out.  We’ve been using paper plates since so many are coming eat time.  I have a bunch we got for free a few months ago, so will take some there soon, or we take turns buying large stacks from Cash and Carry.

I plan 1 meal per day.  I always make lots.  We eat leftovers for the other meals, often including breakfast.  Breakfasts are also smoothies with fruit from the freezer, cereals or oatmeal, or pancakes, or anything else we feel like grabbing.   If it seems like the leftovers are mounting up, I simply replace one of the new meals with leftovers instead, to use them up.  I don’t micro-manage Lovana.  I just ask her to use things we have.  My pantry is extremely well-stocked, so I feel that is reasonable.  I have noticed she has picked up a few ingredients occasionally if she wants to make something and I don’t have all the items in the recipe–on her dime–and that’s ok with me as well.

I’m a little late putting up my menu plan, but trust me, we have still been eating!

Yesterday, Rob made these barbecued shish-kabobs.  We had marinated some of the pork  he had purchased a while back for the great price (around here) of $1.27/pound.  Yesterday, he stopped at a fruit stand and got a few vegetables to go with the pork and this was the result.  I worked a lot yesterday, and was exceptionally tired for some reason, so it was very appreciated when I came home to a hot, cooked meal.  He paired it with cauliflower from the freezer, and some sweet potatoes he had grilled as well.  Yum!

Here’s what I planned for the week.

Sunday:  We ate at my sister’s as planned, and did some prep for the week.  We marinated the pork, and Rob cooked a ham on the grill.  we ate some that night, but most of it is for the week.

He used the packet that came with it, along with some brown sugar, water, and a whole Tablespoon of ground cloves for the topping.  Then he put it on the grill, in it’s little foil pan, for 2-3 hours.

Monday:  Shish-kabobs, cauliflower, and sweet potatoes

Tuesday:  Soup.  I have some open broth that needs to be used.  I will probably make chicken-rice or turkey-vegetable.  Muffins or cornbread.

Wednesday:  Ham, potatoes, green beans

Thursday:  I’m asking Lovana to cook again, since we don’t get back from dance until 6:30. She wants to do Mexican.  We have ingredients for many Mexican dishes, and so she can decide which one she wants to make.

Friday:  Leftovers.  If they are all gone, I’ll have Rob barbecue something.

Saturday:  Green Split Pea soup, using ham broth and bits

Sunday:  It’s my turn to bring a bunch of food to the family dinner.  My sister is so gracious and generous, and often just provides the bulk of the meal.  So, I was actually begging for a turn!  We will thaw 2-3 of the chickens Rob raised, and he will barbecue them up.  On Sunday, I will just warm the chicken up at her house.  I also plan to make potato salad or deviled eggs (the chickens are laying well now) and a berry crisp (lots of them left in the freezers).  She will make some lettuce salad or whatever she wants to go along with it.  My aunt will bring something as well–whatever we tell her to bring.  She loves coming, and we love being with her.  Since she has always been single, she loves to just bring a bag of salad, or chips, etc. because cooking large quantities is foreign to her.  The amount of people has been ranging from 12-20, depending on who can come.  This past Sunday there were 13.  As the day gets closer, I will have a better idea of how many people so I know if I should thaw 2 or 3 chickens.

I will have to say that the best part of Rob’s job loss is the amount of extra time I get to spend with my family.  I know that things are always changing, and this arrangement is probably temporary, so I’m enjoying every minute of this time.