Tag Archives: Menu Plans

Grilled vegetables with couscous

I must admit I was a little nervous about how the kids would do with the Grilled Vegetables and couscous for dinner last week, but they loved it! We all loved it. I kept the dressing separate because 2 out of 3 of our kids prefer things a little more plain if possible. The picture above actually shows the leftovers. I chopped up the leftover veggies, mixed them with the leftover couscous and dressing, added a bit of chopped fresh spinach and basil and it made a super yummy lunch!

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday

• Buffalo Chicken Wraps (I made them with chicken I cooked in the slow cooker. I also added chopped celery. I couldn’t find yogurt blue cheese dressing at my grocery store, but maybe I should try making some next time.)
• watermelon
• Sun Chips
• carrots

Monday

• 15-Minute Chicken Chili (Bumped from last week. I used regular canned tomatoes and had chiles as an optional topping. I couldn’t find the A1 sauce from the recipe at my store, so I mixed some regular steak sauce and hickory smoke barbeque sauce.  I also added some chili powder and cumin.)
• corn bread
• green salad

Tuesday  

• Taco Casserole (Using the leftover chicken chili from Monday)

Wednesday 

• Beef Stir fry (I’ll use some leftover London Broil and a variety of veggies)

Thursday 

• Vegetable Lasagna (Or maybe a little  like this recipe.)
• French Bread

Friday

• Homemade Pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• raw fruit/veggies

Saturday

• Chicken salad sandwiches or salad
• fruit

So the menu plan last week didn’t really happen. I did have a brainstorm list, but not really a clear plan. But I decided to go ahead and post what we had last week, even though it was only semi-sorta-almost-planned-ish. But this week there is a real plan! Two weeks of meals for you to check out!

Homemade Pizza Night

Favorite meals from the last 2 weeks:

• Homemade Pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• Vegetarian taco salad (I added avocados and more spice.)

Last Week’s Menu “Plan”

Sunday

• Nachos – cheese, refried beans, black beans, green onions, salsa (I made some Healthy Corn Tortilla Chips to use up some leftover corn tortillas, but I did add a tiny bit of oil.)
• raw veggies

Monday – My sister and her kids were here for dinner.

• Chicken leg quarters (baked with olive oil and McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning
• sweet potatoes
• Rosemary potatoes – microwave
• mixed veggies (cooked)
• salad
• olive bread (my sister brought this)

Tuesday  

• A friend brought us dinner

Wednesday 

• Tortellini Soup from the freezer (I froze it without the tortellini, and I didn’t have any tortellini in the house, so I used bow tie pasta instead.)

Thursday 

•  Skinny Tuna Noodle Casserole (I used macaroni noodles and french fried onions on top. Yes, I did.)

Friday

• Dinner out with the family for my secret shopper job

Saturday

•  Vegetarian taco salad (I added avocados and more spice.

Vegetarian Taco Salad

Healthified Ham and Potato Casserole

How last week’s menu went:

Last week went really well. Of course it was huge that we were gifted with 3 out of 7 meals. That was helpful on many levels.

Favorite meal from last week:

Let’s go with the Healthified Ham and Potato Casserole. Great comfort food. I used red pepper instead of green and added some mushrooms that were crazy on sale from Aldi. Oh, and mine wasn’t quite as healthified as the recipe, mainly because I used regular cheese instead of reduced fat.

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday

• Slow Cooker Pulled Pork (from the freezer) on Light Oat Bread (This is a bread machine recipe, but I make it in the oven.)
• apple slices
• raw carrots
• green beans

Monday

• Quick spaghetti and meat sauce: 1 box of spaghetti + 1/2 pound of cooked ground beef + 2 jars of spaghetti sauce = happy tummies in a hurry
• salad

Tuesday  

• A friend is bringing us dinner.

Wednesday 

• Quick Chickpea Curry, I think…
• Maybe naan
• veggies of some sort

Thursday 

• Chicken Fried Rice – I make it pretty much like this Pork Fried Rice recipe, but I add celery and increase the spices

Friday

• Homemade Pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• fruit/veggies

Saturday

• Chicken leg quarters (baked with olive oil and McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning.
• sweet potatoes or Rosemary potatoes – microwave
• mixed veggies

Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers

How last week’s menu went:

Last week went pretty well. I have been such a crock pot failure lately, though. I always seem to forget to get the crock pot recipes started in time! Does anyone have a great idea for this? It happened this week with the Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers. I didn’t get them started in time, so I made them more like this recipe (which I have used before) that uses the oven.  I ended up doing a recipe that was something between the two, and it was good, but one of these days I want to try again to get those peppers in the crock pot on time!

Favorite meal from last week:

I’m going with the Omelet Bar (choice of cheese, a little bit of leftover ham, spinach, sauteed onions, mushrooms) was the favorite for the week. It was sort of a surprise favorite, actually. And I’m adding it to my mental list of good recipes for using up little bits of food that need to be eaten. Omelets are cheap and easy, too!

I didn’t get a picture of the omelets, but Mr. RSS assures me that you all know what one looks like.

I did get a picture of the Buffalo Chicken Salad, which was another favorite (I saved some plain chicken for the kids).

Buffalo Chicken Salad

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday

• Homemade Pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• raw veggies

Monday

• Chicken Divan, Lightened Up (I’ll increase the sauce amounts, use cheddar cheese, and add curry powder)
• brown rice
• red grapes

Tuesday  

• Beans and Rice – I was totally winging it on this one – sauteed onion and red pepper, taco seasoning, diced tomatoes, black beans, kidney beans, brown rice (served with a few optional toppings like cheese and sour cream)
• optional tortillas to make a burrito (the kids like this)
• apple slices

Wednesday

• grilled hot dogs
• I might try to make these Beautiful Burger Buns as hot dog buns
• Sweet potato fries
• coleslaw (I use less sugar) or raw veggies

Thursday 

• Spinach and Bacon Quiche (I use half the bacon and part cream, part milk)
• fruit salad

Friday

• Big-Batch Vegetable Soup  I’ll add a bay leaf and a parmesean rind while cooking. I’ll also added some pasta at the end.
• I think some bread, like this Crusty French Bread

Saturday

• leftovers

Steak Salad

How last week’s menu went:

Last week went very smoothly. Gotta love that.

Favorite meal from last week:

I’m going to say that our favorite meal was the Steak Salad, although I can’t take any credit for the steak part because our marvelous friends sent us home with it after a dinner party. But I did make the salad. And I did reheat the steak and slice it. I even made the dressing. So I say it counts. I added some lightly sauteed yellow peppers and loved that addition, too.

I could pick several dishes for second place, but I do want to say that the Make-Ahead Unstuffed Shells were really super easy and yummy and we all loved them.

Make-Ahead Unstuffed Shells

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday

• Omelet Bar – cheese, a little bit of leftover ham, spinach, sauteed onions, mushrooms
• steamed broccoli
• homemade vanilla yogurt with blueberries (I use low fat milk and add 1 c. of nonfat powdered milk to thicken)

Monday

• Quick spaghetti and meat sauce: 1 box of spaghetti + 1 pound of cooked ground beef (from my freezer) + 2 jars of spaghetti sauce = happy tummies in a hurry
• green beans

Tuesday  

• Buffalo Chicken Salad (new recipe)

Wednesday

• Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers (new crock pot recipe I’m trying)

Thursday 

• Chicken Tortilla Soup
• maybe a salad

Friday

• Homemade Pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• raw veggies

Saturday

• Chicken leg quarters (baked with olive oil and McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning)
• sweet potatoes, I think
• mixed veggies

How last week’s menu went:

There were definitely some changes to last week’s menu. I was a little indecisive about my Monday meal. I ended up making the Hearty Lentil Soup (I add celery, add chopped spinach instead of parsley, and only use 1/2 tsp of the balsamic vinegar) and the Oatmeal Blueberry Applesauce Muffins. Both great choices.

On Thursday I realized that I had set myself up with a casserole-heavy week. The weather was beautiful and I decided to marinate some chicken breasts to be grilled instead of making the Chicken Divan, Lightened Up (but it’s still a favorite). We put the grilled chicken on a spinach salad. Perfect!

On Saturday we ended up going on a spontaneous day trip to visit some wonderful friends (Who fed us yummy things like  steak and homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream, by the way!), so I moved the Corned Beef  to Sunday. I’m sure you understand.

Taco Casserole

Favorite meal from last week:

Of the meals we made here, I’m going to pick the Taco Casserole as the favorite. All 5 of us loved it. And there was not a crumb left.

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday I was really late getting the corned beef going, so the kids ate pizza quesadillas and we ate the corned beef after they were in bed.

• Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage (I used potatoes and yellow onion instead of parsnips and pearl onions)
• leftover Shamrock Cake

Monday

• Jim’s Famous Hamburgers
• Beautiful Burger Buns (first time I used this recipe – loved it!)
• fruit salad
• raw veggies

Tuesday  

• Steak Salad with leftover steak our friends sent us home with! So nice! I’m planning to make it kind of like this recipe. I think it’s hard to go wrong with a steak salad. Yum.

Wednesday

• Make-Ahead Unstuffed Shells (thanks to OrgJunkie for the recommendation)
• broccoli or green beans

Thursday 

•  Vegetarian taco salad

Friday

• Coconut Chicken and Rice with Carrots

Saturday

• I think we are going out to eat for my new secret shopper job.

Big-Batch Vegetable Soup

How last week’s menu went:

Last week went well. I played around with the new Spinach Calzone recipe a little too much, and I think I made it not as good as the original. I was trying a little too hard to use up all of the spinach I had. I might try it again sometime with fewer changes to the recipe.

Favorite meal from last week:

I’m going to pick the Big-Batch Vegetable Soup as the favorite. I love how healthy it was and that it allowed me to use up 8 cups of veggies! I added a bay leaf and some grated parmasan. Next time I will add a parmesean rind while cooking, as a couple of readers suggested. I also added some pasta. There’s alphabet pasta in the picture above, but in the other half I used macaroni, which was better for this soup, I think. The Shrimp Scampi was also really tasty.

This Week’s Menu Plan

Sunday

• Homemade pizza with a quick and easy crust (I use part whole wheat flour and knead the dough after mixing)
• raw carrots

Monday

• Beanie Wienies – I’m not loving the name, but I do love that it’s quick, easy, yummy, and healthy enough (I added extra beans) I also found this recipe that uses turkey hot dogs and serves it over brown rice. I like that idea, too.
• Sweet potato fries
• grapes

Tuesday  

• Corn Chowder (I use more bacon. Cook it up and crumble it up as a topping. Please.)

Wednesday

• Baked Ziti (I’ll use all ground beef this time)
• salad

Thursday 

Friday

• Some friends are treating us to pizza

Saturday

• Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili (I’ll double the beans and use less orange zest)