Menu Plan June 14 - 19

Here's the plan for this week!

Sunday: kielbasa and cabbage

Monday: lemon balm chicken (using pesto made from the lemon balm taking over my herb garden!)

Tuesday: tacos

Wednesday: tuna casserole

Thursday: leftovers

Friday: stuffed peppers (I have the filling already made and in the freezer, so this is a super-quick and easy dish).

Be sure to visit www.orgjunkie.com for many, many more menu ideas!

For Kimmer - hamburger ideas

I've been thinking about Kimmer's comment about what to do with ground beef during my pantry/freezer challenge. The more I think about it, the more ideas I come up with, which then promptly leave my brain, but here are some to get you started. I have recipes for most of these, which I can post if you need them!

- hamburgers (of course!)
- chili
- veggie beef soup
- stroganoff
- hamburger gravy on biscuits (I love this but hubby won't eat it so I never get to make it)
- tamale pie
- hamburger casserole (hubby's mom's recipe - a concoction of beef, noodles, tomato soup, veggies, and cheese)
- nacho dip
- beef and bean burritos
- Hamburger Helper (I use the box on lazy days, but there are a ton of recipes out there on the internet for homemade ones)
- chili mac
- spaghetti and meatballs (or just meat sauce)
- Swedish meatballs (this recipe is already posted on the blog)
- sloppy joes (another favorite of mine that hubby won't eat...sigh...)


And that's all I can think of at the moment (and it's getting awfully close to my bedtime), but I'll post some more as I think of more!

Menu Plan Monday June 8 - 12

Well, here we are, another week already! Last week's menu plan was seriously messed up - first we ended up being away from home at dinner time two days in a row, because my car had to go into the shop, and then I lost my grill because of new patio construction. Who knows how long it will be before I get my grill back (it's in the shed till the patio cover is built), and I'm sure going to miss it!



Anyway, here's the plan for this week (and tonight we had creamed tuna on biscuits, by the way!):

Monday: Swiss steak

Tuesday: Pineapple chicken

Wednesday: Hamburger casserole

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: meatball subs.

Sounds like a yummy week!

Menu Plan Monday

I know it's only Sunday, but I'm ahead of the game. What can I say?

Monday: Tacos

Tuesday: Hamburgers

Wednesday: Broccoli and cheese calzones (I'm modifying them a bit, though!)

Thursday: Hamburger casserole

Friday: Leftovers.

Now, I know Thursday is supposed to be leftovers night, but my desire to use up a bunch of stuff before it goes bad has pushed it off to Friday. I'm sure we'll survive, LOL!!!

Head on over to orgjunkie.com for more great menus from other bloggers!

Budgeting, meat, and a (sort of) pantry challenge

Tomorrow is June. A new month, another chance for me to get serious about sticking to our budget and tracking our expenses. It needs to be done. Hubby has a layoff on the horizon - we don't know when, but sometime in the next year, year and a half. Which means we need to sock away as much as we can, while we still can. Mainly, this means that I need to quit buying so darn many groceries, because we do pretty well in all the other areas!

I used to track our budget from my first paycheck of the month, rather than the first day of the month. Now that my paychecks don't matter so much, I'm going to go by the calendar. It's all put together and ready to go, I just have to do it.

Like I said, grocery shopping is my biggest weakness. I can easily plunk down $150 a week for groceries, and that's basically for the two of us. Needless to say, we have a very well stocked kitchen, but we also waste a lot of food because I lose stuff and don't remember that it's there. Well, that has to change. I need to keep better track. Thursday I'm cleaning out the freezer, and all the old meat that was never repackaged (I should *always* repackage my meat!) is going in the garbage (Friday is garbage day). And then, we start over.

But first, a pantry challenge of sorts. Today while I was grocery shopping, I found a bunch of clearance meats, with a sell-by date of tomorrow. I didn't go completely crazy, though I wanted to! I did, however, get six meals worth of ground beef, three meals worth of pork chops, and a very nice looking round steak. This, of course, represents even more meals, when you consider leftovers.

So, for the month of June, we're living on this, plus another bag of chicken tenderloins (we eat a lot of chicken tenderloins because they cook so fast), plus whatever else is in the freezer. My challenge will be to combine these with things that we have in the pantry (and there's a lot to work with there!). So, I'll just be making meals with what we have on hand.

This means that my grocery budget for the month will be spent on perishables - dairy products, fresh produce, and bread, mainly. The rest of the budget I can use for sale and coupon items. Hopefully this will help with the rotation - getting rid of some older food while making room for some more inexpensive purchases. We'll see how it goes!

Menu Plan Monday

I'm sitting here with a kitchen full of food and no inspiration about what to make with it! Grr... We've reached that juncture in the weather where it's too hot for a lot of the make-ahead things we're used to (stews and casseroles and such), and yet there's no time to cook in the evenings, so what do we eat???

At any rate, here's the plan for this week, I think!

Monday: Chicken fajitas
Tuesday: dinner out - we have to be across town at rush hour to sign our wills, no way we'll make it home for dinner!
Wednesday: shredded pork sandwiches
Thursday: chicken sausage casserole
Friday: grilled chicken and potatoes (I have the day off - four day weekend - woo hoo!).

Visit orgjunkie.com for a ton of great menu ideas!

This week's menu

Not bad, figuring out my menu when the week's half over!

Let's see...

Monday: we had an Italian chicken concoction (chicken, diced tomatoes with roasted garlic, Italian seasoning, and Italian cheese blend) that I threw together in the crock pot, with baked potatoes and steamed cauliflower.

Tuesday: Potstickers and green beans

Today: honey mustard pork tenderloin, rice, some kind of veggie

Thursday: leftovers smorgasboard

Friday: shepherd's pie (made with leftover roast beef)

Oh, and I don't plan weekend menus because I never know what they will bring!

Lunch tote giveaway

Erin over at $5 dinners is giving away a designer lunch tote from Spring Los Angeles! I have one - these things are so cute and so well insulated!

Go here - http://www.5dollardinners.com/designer-lunch-tote-giveaway to enter...

This week's menu

Well, well, well. I think it's high time I got back to blogging again! Things have been, well, a little hectic lately, and all my blogging time has been spent on Caitlyn's blog, instead of mine. After all, I did cease to exist on December 9, and someone named "Caitlyn's Mommy" took my place in the world, LOL!

I've been back at work two months now. Hubby works from 5:00 to 1:30, and I work 2:00 to 6:00, which means that I'm making dinner about 10:00 every morning so we can eat it about 7:00 every night. The good news is that we're far too frazzled to eat out, so we're saving a ton on food! Now, if I can just curb my compulsive grocery shopping habit...

Anyway, each week I make up a weeknight dinner menu. Sometimes I stick to the days, sometimes things get rearranged a bit but most weeks, we stick to it. Here's this week's:

Monday: Leftover pizza (we had Papa Murphy's tonight)
Tuesday: Tacos (happy Cinco de Mayo!)
Wednesday: Shepherd's Pie (utilizing the leftover roast beef from last week)
Thursday: Chicken Ziti
Friday: Pizza-stuffed meatloaf

Hubby's not going to be very happy - I'm trying out two new recipes this week - the chicken ziti and the meatloaf. He's a little gunshy about new recipes ever since the creamed salmon fiasco of 2002, which I will never live down...

Schedule

It's long been my hope that, once I'm only working half time (and, of course, now that I'm home full time), I'll actually be able to stay on top of the housework. Naturally it's much more tempting to sit on my butt in front of the TV all day, what with all the excellent crime drama I've been recording (gotta love TNT for having Cold Case, Without a Trace, AND Crossing Jordan all on on a mostly daily basis!). But, alas, I need to be an adult (not to mention that, at two months old, Caitlyn's already becoming quite the TV junkie, and that needs to stop!).

So I've been pondering what a daily schedule would look like for me, between baby care, self care, hubby care, house care, and, well, watching TV (oh, and keeping up wiht email Facebook, and Myspace). That's a lot to pack into a 24 hour day! Here's the basic gist of it so far:

4:00 or 5:00 a.m. - get up with Caitlyn. Feed, burp, pump, and feed me.
5:30 a.m. - back to bed with Caitlyn.
8:30 a.m. - up again. Feed, burp, pump, and hang out with Caitlyn till naptime.
10:00 - naptime. While she sleeps, I take a shower, start laundry, empty dishwasher, eat, and (once I go back to work) do dinner prep.
Noon - wake up Caitlyn. Feed, burp, pump, etc.

This is where things get fuzzy. Right now, if she wants another nap, she gets one, and I get to do some housework. If she's ok, then we can go run errands. I start dinner about 4:00 or so and make hubby's lunch for the next day at the same time.

Once I go back to work, this is when we'll be leaving to meet hubby and make the kid swap. Then I'll go on to work, and I won't get home till 6:30. Then it's dinner, feed Caitlyn, put her to bed, and have a little one on one time with my hubby before he goes to bed way too early (since he'll be starting work at 5:00 a.m. once I go back). Then it's off to bed to start it all over again.

Honestly, once I go back to work, I'm not sure when errands will get done, when housework will get done, or whether I'll actually be able to pull off a dinner that hubby can just "toss in the oven" every day. It's going to take a lot of planning and creativity, that's for sure!

Every day, I wish more and more that I could just stay home and take care of my little family. We thought for a while that might be a possibility, but until the economy settles down and hubby's job is more secure, that's just a pipe dream. Sigh...