Menu planning -- dull, huh? "Not so," says the one who couldn't drag herself to do this for literally years!!! The week was most definitely made easier by having my meals all figured out in advance. Busy days call for a plan of action.
We are in the midst of a freeze, here in the Pacific Northwest of the US. That means the outside garden is on a break, and my "garden" produce is coming from my indoor light garden. It's just a small patch of baby salad greens. But a wonderful treat once a week! I used the light garden lettuce this past week for the base of the avocado-citrus salad on Monday. It was delightfully fresh and made me think of spring.
How did the menu plan go? Well, for the most part, pretty well.
The thumbs up --
- having the menu plan on creative savv meant that my kids could look up what we were having for dinner, without asking me
- I could go online and quickly see what I needed to do for the next night's meal
- it meant we were even more on top of using everything up, including working through the freezer stash. I went through the freezers, pulled out all the dinner leftovers for Saturday's dinner, and breakfast leftovers for this morning's breakfast. And I now know what we have, and what we're needing. (It was a bonus to discover I have several containers of pasta sauce still!)
- it saved me the trouble of thinking what to have each night, and wondering if we had all the ingredients in stock
- my kids' help Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday gave me a bit of extra time to take care of other matters
The thumbs down --
- My one big glitch came on Thursday. I made an oversight. When planning that day's dinner, I totally forgot that I would be starting back to work this week, and Thursday is my day out of the house. My plan had me preparing 3 items for dinner, from scratch. I managed to get one item finished and another set up and ready for the oven, before I left for work. I gathered all my ingredients for the third and had them in one place. Cooking that dish was made slightly easier by that bit of work in the morning. So, while it did work out, I was dead tired by the end of the day. I'll have to remember this for Thursdays.
This next week will be even busier, as I have a couple of afternoon appointments, along with work, volunteer work, dance classes, and driving the daughters to and from school every day. So most of my menu will be simpler items, though still scratch-cooked.
I'm still working from the freezer. I have 3 freezers here. I'm trying to empty one of them, so that it can be unplugged.
Shopping is minimal. We had a freeze this week, so kale and broccoli are gone for the time being from my menus. Frozen leafy greens will need to be purchased. I'm using fresh produce which is seasonal for winter -- cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, celery and mushrooms.
what I have ready and in the freezer: buns, cooked ham and turkey, pureed pumpkin and sweet potatoes
what I need to buy: soymilk or Lactaid, mushrooms, celery, frozen spinach
Monday
- turkey-noodle casserole, with homemade mushroom/celery cream sauce, served with carrot-pineapple salad and pumpkin snack cake (pineapple in freezer, double snack cake recipe for Tuesday, make extra cream sauce for ham/spinach on Thursday, cook extra noodles, and toss w/ EVOO for Wednesday's pasta with marinara, save some shredded carrots for tossed salad on Tuesday)
Tuesday (daughter make plum-apple sauce)
- French dip sandwiches on buns, tossed salad w/ shredded carrots, cabbage, and light garden lettuce, plum-apple sauce, leftover pumpkin snack cake (buns from freezer, snack cake leftover from Monday, save leftover beef for soup on Friday, make extra plum-apple sauce for Wednesday)
Wednesday (daughter chop celery, shallots and garlic)
- pasta with marinara, marinated lentil salad with celery and dijon dressing, leftover plum-apple sauce (marinara in freezer, make extra salad for Saturday's dinner)
Thursday (son help chop carrots and onions)
- ham and spinach in leftover cream sauce over toast, with roasted carrots and onions (take turkey breast out of freezer for Sunday)
Friday (kids cook)
- vegetable-beef soup, biscuits, brownies (for vegetables in the soup, use carrots, onion, celery, potatoes, canned tomatoes in freezer, spinach in freezer)
- oven roasted potatoes, leftover lentil salad, fruit salad, leftover brownies
Sunday
- roast turkey breast, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato souffle, spinach
