Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2011

Weekly Menu Plan oct 31, 2011 to nov 6, 2011


Weekly Menu Plan for October 31, 2011 to November 6, 2011
Monday
Zatarins dirty rice with ground turkey and fat free refried beans.  Turned that into tacos with corn tortillas and some shredded cheese, have tons of leftovers for lunch tomorrow for the both of us.
Tuesday
Did most of the cooking for the week today.  First off I froze the leftovers from yesterday, I had it for lunch, hubby took leftovers from Sundays meal for lunch, and froze the rest of the dirty rice, and mixed in the leftover beans, will be able to get 4 more individual meals out of freezing it.
I’m slow cooking a small brisket in BBQ Sauce, can serve that on a slice of toast with some mashed potatoes.  I made 2 packages of mashed potatoes, 1 package to go with the BBQ beef and the other for another meal.  I also made a boxed sweet and sour chicken stirfry, added some frozen veggies and mixed in the rice.  I cooked up 3 chicken breasts and used half for the stir fry and the other half for a casserole, I cooked up a box of stuffing and added in a can of corn and the other half of the cooked chicken and baked it in the oven and then added some cheese and let sit in the oven for a few more minutes to melt the cheese, and going to serve this with the other packet of mashed potatoes.  I ended up having that for lunch with some leftover cranberry sauce from Sundays meal. 
So for dinner tonight we’ll be having the BBQ brisket with a slice of cheddar cheese on a slice of whole wheat toast.
Wednesday
Michael is taking some of the sweet and sour chicken stirfry for lunch today. 
Going to have the stuffing casserole for dinner tonight. 
Thursday
Made enchiladas with turkey chili, chili beans, 10 corn tortillas, velveta cheese, and cheddar cheese on top.  This I had for lunch and dinner. 
Friday
Today we took Skaro to a no kill shelter, we had been trying to get him in for the past 2 months, and he got adopted within a few hours, it was so hard having to leave him, I was crying so much and just holding him and then they took him from me, and we left, and a few hours later they emailed us to let us know he got adopted already, so that made it a little easier on me that he found a home so quickly. 
We went to lunch after taking Skaro, because we were in the same town we had to pick Brandon up in, and its an hour and a half away from home so pointless to go back home, after lunch we went to see Harold and kumar in 3D, it was a really good movie, nice to see something funny after going through something sad. 
Then we picked up Brandon and let him know about Skaro, of course he understood because he already knew we were trying to find him a new home. 
So for dinner we had a smorgousboard of leftovers, put them out buffet style and we each had a little of everything. 
Saturday
We Grilled up some Turkey wieners (note: last of our wieners we had in the freezer, we’re cutting wieners out of our diet for  a while now.) and some chicken and made some ravioli pasta with some white sauce (Note: I wasn’t really a big fan of the Ravioli, and I don’t really like white sauce so I only had a single ravioli) and grilled up some small potatoes, and also grilled 2 turkey burgers, we each got half a turkey burger. We had that for lunch and dinner.
Sunday
Leftovers from Saturday for lunch and dinner.  Decided since we had so many leftovers we didn’t go out to eat after dropping off Brandon like we usually do.  And also have plenty of leftovers for both of us for lunch for Monday as well. 

Monday, October 31, 2011

Weekly Menu Plan for Oct 24, 2011 to Oct 30, 2011


Weekly Meal Plan For October 24, 2011 to October 30, 2011
Monday
Made Some Turkey Chili.  Cooked up a package of ground turkey, sautéed some onions and green pepper and garlic, and added some cumin and salt and pepper, and threw in a can of diced tomatoes, can of ranch style beans, a can of Hormel turkey chili with beans, a can of Hormel turkey chili without beans, and a can of wolf brand turkey chili no beans.  This made a ton of leftovers, so we’ll both have it for lunch tomorrow and possibly freeze some or just keep it in the fridge for my hubby to take to lunch for a few days.
Tuesday
Cornbread Surprise.  Note: take cornbread surprise out of the freezer Monday so its defrosted for today. 
Wednesday
Salsa Chicken with Mexican rice (already cooked and in the freezer) and Pinto Beans (already cooked and in the freezer need to season for flavor.) Pull out everything from the freezer Tuesday so its defrosted for today.  I’m going to boil the chicken on the stove and then when its about done I’m going to bake it in the oven with some Salsa spooned over it, and serve it with my Mexican rice and pinto beans. 
Thursday
Chicken and shrimp and Veggie Teriaki Stirfry with rice.
Friday
Pizza.  I’ll use up some of the sandwhich rounds (45 cal each half) (Note: I was only able to eat one of the mini pizzas with a little of the sides.) I have leftover and add some pizza/spaghetti sauce I already have made up in the freezer and add some mozzarella cheese also already in the freezer all in serving sizes.  Served with leftover Potato that I had for lunch it was a big potato so plenty for the 3 of us plus still had leftovers, and some leftover macaroni, Kraft had this new kind of macaroni that says it has a full serving of veggies, it’s got cauliflour powder or something, I could actually taste the cauliflour, I don’t have macaroni often once every few monthes or so, so I thought I’d give this a try, it was pretty good, but a bit expensive, twice the price of the regular box of kraft macaroni and 1 less serving, but we still managed to make a 2 person box feed three people plus I had some for lunch before I used the rest up for dinner, so that’s 4 servings we got out of a 2 serving box, so that’s not bad at all.  Oh and I had bought 2 cooked chicken breasts at the grocery store I had some of one of them for lunch and the rest is what I used to top the pizzas, there ended up being more chicken left but its been in the fridge a few days so I’ll be throwing out the rest of it.  I really need to remember to freeze extras of stuff right away…..
Saturday
Grill Hotdogs and Corn on the Cob, and BBQ Beans, with whatever chips we already have on hand.  Note: only thing I’ll have to buy is the corn on the cob, and we’ll use regular bread that’s already in the freezer instead of high calorie buns, I use a 45 cal bread.  I am using regular wieners though because I had them in my freezer and I want to get them used up, instead of wasting them and throwing them away, but from now on I’m only going to buy the lower calorie wieners, but I’m thinking about cutting wieners out of our diet all together so I’ll just be using what we already stocked up on in our freezer and when we run out of them then no more wieners for a while, I’m not a big fan of them anyways, my stepson and my hubby are the hot dog fans.  We ended up going car shopping today so we didn’t get to have the hotdogs for lunch, instead we ate at burger king, not my favorite place, I actually hate fast food restaurants….i shared a chicken sandwhich with my hubby and we all three shared an order of fries.  We ended up stopping by my inlaws after car shopping and invited them over for dinner….we had to take both cars home so my hubby drove home and me and my stepson went to walmart to pick up a couple last minute things for the bbq dinner, and then I got a call from my hubby while we were shopping and he ended up locking his keys in the car, and well I didn’t have a set of keys to the house cause I was driving the new car.  Luckily we had invited his parents over and they have a set of our house keys, but unfortionately they were already halfway to our house when he called to tell them he locked himself out and they didn’t have our key with them….So me and Brandon walked around walmart to kill time for a while cause it was going to be about another 45 minutes….and we didn’t want to sit outside with groceries melting…So they went back and got the spare key, and then my hubby had to call a guy to get into his car, cause well those were his only set of keys to that car……Well after all that we still managed to have a nice dinner….I ended up getting steaks when we were at walmart so my hubby grilled those up too, first they were still running blood and so he put them back on and they um well got a little extra well done, they were still edible though, so that’s good. 
Sunday
We had leftovers from yesterday, cause of course I always cook for an army so I usually either freeze the extra or we eat off it for a few meals.  We had the leftovers for breakfast and lunch and then me and my hubby went to dinner at boston market after dropping off Brandon with his mom. 

Monday, October 17, 2011

Meal Plan for 10-10 to 10-16

I decided to Start posting the meal plan after the week is over because I always end up going back and altering things and adjusting things or adding things in, so figure this way everything will be finished when i post.
Weekly Menu Plan for Monday 10-10 to Sunday 10-16
Monday
Crock Pot Chicken with Black beans and Cream Cheese.  This is from a new recipe I found that I’d like to try. Also made some Mexican rice to go with this.  Had plenty for leftovers for lunch for tomorrow, and froze some and have enough for lunch on Wednesday too. I ended up making the recipe my own and adding some extra stuff to it.  My version is called Chicken Slop.
Recipe for Chicken Slop:
4-5 Chicken Breasts (boneless Skinless)
1 Jar of Salsa Whatever level of heat you prefer
1 can of Cream Corn
2 Cans of Whole kernel Corn
2 Cans of Black Beans Drained and rinsed.(I only had 1 can on hand but I definitely think it could have used another can so I’m listing it as 2 cans.) Note: if you don’t like black beans I’m sure ranch style or pinto beans or anything else would work too, just rinse and drain so you don’t have the flavors from the beans.
2 8 oz packages of Cream Cheese. (I use Fat Free).
1 Can Refried Beans
Optional: I had a little bit of leftover cheese dip a tostinos cheese dip, so I threw that in there to, just to use it up.
Various Spices: Salt, Pepper, Cumin, Garlic powder or garlic salt, Onion Powder.  Those are the spices I added but you can add hotter spices if you like it hot. 
Throw everything into a slow cooker and cook on high for about 4-6 hours or until the chicken is completely cooked.  Very simple and quick to throw together.  This recipe will feed a crowd.  We’ve gotten about 10 meals out of it, so about 5 meals each, and that doesn’t even include what I froze in individual portions, so next time I’d probably freeze a bit more of it cause it does get a bit boring having the same thing over and over again.  We had it over rice for a couple of meals and then over baked potatoes for a couple of meals. It’d be great made into enchiladas also.  Just layer corn tortillas and chicken slop and then throw on some shredded cheese on top and got an enchilada casserole.  It’d be good as a nacho dip as well, but I’m trying to limit my chip intake so didn’t do nachos with it.  Sorry I don’t have any pictures of the finished product, but by the name of it I’m sure you can tell what it looks like, Chicken Slop.   Oh and if you don’t have chicken, or don’t want to use chicken, you can cook up some ground beef or ground turkey and throw that in there instead, just remember to cook that before putting it in the slow cooker.
Tuesday
Creamy Brocolli Tuna Helper. Note: ended up having leftovers from yesterday, but had it with potatoes this time instead of rice.  I cut potatoes in half and baked them in the oven and then added some light butter and some sour cream and salt and pepper and dried salad topping bacon and dried chives and baked it in the oven a bit longer.  Needed to use up the potatoes before they went bad.
Wednesday
Going to my mother in laws for the day, Have therapy at 2 pm, and have support group meeting at 6 pm till 9 pm plus its an hour and a half away from home, so we’ll be eating out today.  Note:  Got Free meals for tomorrow night from the support group meeting, we had some speakers there that make really healthy meals, unfortionately they are very expensive, but it was nice they gave us free sample meals.
Thursday
Going to the Fair So most likely will eat there.  I know its not the healthiest but the fair is only once a year and we only go the one time, so yea we’re gonna splurge a little but we always share things rather then each get our own, so we can at least try a couple of different things. Note: I really overdid it at the fair, ugggg my stomach was not happy with me, luckily I didn’t go so overboard that I got sick or anything, just uncomfortable.  So I just walked it off and felt better, man it was nice having so much energy, we were there for like 7 hours and I wasn’t even that tired by the end, my feet were a little sore but that was it, compared to last year oh my gosh back then I felt like I was going to die, and I’m sure we weren’t there nearly as long last year, I don’t think I would have been able to walk for that long.  Note: I ended up getting a waterless cookware set, uggg I spent $5000 but I put it on layaway for 6 monthes, hope to pay it off by next month though, sell some stock and get it paid off, I’ve been wanting it for a few years now, and we never had the money, and I was willing to wait a few more years if I had to to get get it, but my hubby told me to go ahead and get it, so it counts as my birthday gift which is nov 23, and our anniversary gift which is nov 13 and our Christmas gift.  Plus probably won’t have money to go out anywhere nice for our birthdays or anniversary but I think its worth it, this cookware is suppose to last forever, and be a really healthy way to cook, and since I love to cook I’ll be having a lot of fun trying all kinds of recipes in this cookware, and I’ll be giving my parents all my old cookware, which was expensive to me back when we got it, no thousands but it was hundreds, plus we got a few free gifts, an awesome slow cooker, which you can use any of the pans that fit on it as the slow cooker which is so cool cause if you just want something small you can use one of the small pans or if you want to make a huge pot of something use one of the big pans, and we also got this veggie and cheese cutter thing, not sure what its called, and a really  nice salad bowl, and this really big pan that was worth over $500 all those for free for buying the big pan set, oh not to mention the basic set was free because we got the big set and that’s a $1600 set.
We had our daytime meals at the fair but we’ll be having dinner here at home, so we’ll go ahead and use up those free meals from the support group meeting yesterday for dinner tonight, nice and simple and quick and free. Oh on top of those two free meals I also scored 8 blouses, 7 bottoms, 1 dress, all for free, I love my support group meetings, a nice way to get new clothes for no cost, and everything looks new and is name brands, and once I shrink out of them I can take them back and trade them for something else. 


Friday
Use up the two frozen pizza’s in the freezer and add extra sauce and meat and cheese.  Note: we still have some leftovers in the fridge from Monday so my husband will be taking those plus the potatoes I ended up making on Tuesday for lunch at work today. 
Saturday
Chicken Parmasean, I’m going to make this with some chicken nuggets, there’s like a third of a bag in the freezer I couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so I thought this up, since I already have frozen cooked whole wheat pasta and frozen sauce and frozen shredded cheese, I put everything in a gallon ziplock baggie, everything of course is in their own individual bags in the gallon ziplock baggie and then I’ll make this probably for lunch.  Serve with some green beans if I can find them in my freezer, its pretty full at the moment.  Note: found the green beans.
For dinner I’ll take the 5 turkey wieners and cut them up in little pieces and add to a can of wolf brand turkey chili or Hormel turkey chili, they’re both good, and add to my low calorie bread, I like to toast it add the chili mixture and then top with cheese and bake in the oven so the cheese melts. 
Note: Michael had to work today so Brandon and I went out for lunch and I ended up making the chicken Parmasean for dinner instead of the hotdog casserole.
Sunday
My Corn Bread Surprise.  Going to make enough to freeze and have leftovers for a few meals. Note: ended up getting a rotisserie chicken from walmart, had that on flatbread with macaroni salad.  I will be making my corn bread surprise tomorrow instead.  We ended up going out for dinner, we usually go out for dinner Sundays because it’s a 3 hour commute to take Brandon back home, and it happens to be right in the middle of when dinner time is suppose to be.  So we use it as our “date” night. 

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Weekly Menu Plan 10-3 to 10-9


 Here is my weekly menu plan, based on ingredients I already have in my house, I wish there were more veggies, but I'm do for a shopping trip to buy veggies, so for now I just want to use up what we got....plus its better to have a plan with the veggies cause they go bad quick unless they're frozen which i usually prefer most of my veggies frozen so i'm not timed on when i need to use them, we have some bean sprouts and zuccinni that i'm going to use for my chinese food day, in my stir fry and rice and we have onion and green pepper that i put in almost everything, and we have mixed frozen veggies, it just seems to be a week of corn and mashed potatoes though, so next week i'll try for more colorful things, i just have this bag of potatoes that i need to use up this week, or they're going to start sprouting as a few already are.  Also planning on making some Pinto beans in the slow cooker sometime this week to freeze in 1 cup servings.
Weekly Menu Plan 10-3 to 10-9
Monday-Sour Cream Chicken Enchilada Casserole.  (already made this yesterday and put it in the fridge for today.)  Was enough for Lunch for both of us as well.
Recipe
3-4 Chicken breasts cooked and cubed or shredded
Half a can Rotel
Half a can Cream of Chicken Soup
Half a cup of Sour Cream
Various Spices (Salt, Pepper, Cumin, Onion Powder, Garlic Salt, Seasoned Salt) Really can put in pretty much whatever spices you feel like. 
9 corn tortillas
2 Cups Shredded Cheese
Half a Can Refried Beans
·       Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Mix Chicken, Rotel, Soup, Sour cream, Spices in pan and heat. 
·       Take a baking pan and add three of the corn tortillas to the bottom, two next to each other and I had to cut the third in half to fit them.  Then add the beans to the tortillas, and add some shredded cheese.
·       Take another layer of 3 tortillas and put on top and then add some of the chicken mixture and some shredded cheese, and then the last layer add some tortillas and chicken mixture and cheese.  I only put the beans on the bottom layer but you can put them on each layer if you want. 
·       Then Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, till cheese is melted.
Tuesday
Lasagna and Mashed Potatoes.  Making 2 lasagnas, one to freeze, making extra sauce to freeze.  The potatoes should be enough to last for at least 2 meals so whatever I make tomorrow can be served with mashed potatoes. Note: ended up burning both lasagnas, but they still taste fine, so they're still good to go, just less cheesy, but when i was younger my favorite piece of lasagna was always the piece with the burnt cheese, so its not to bad, hopefully it'll still be ok in the freezer and reheated though. 
Wednesday
Mashed potato Pie.  Take leftover mashed potatoes put on bottom of pie dish or baking pan, put a can of corn over that, and some cooked meat, I have some fajita meat that’s already cooked in the freezer I can add on top and some cheese on top of that and bake it in the oven, I have half a can of cream of chicken soup in the fridge that needs to be used up so I can mix that with the meat and put that on top and then the cheese on top of that, so it makes sort of a gravy. 
Thursday
Breakfast for dinner, Take the bag of mixed sausage and veggies and add some eggs to it and a couple of potatoes and some toast.
Friday
Chinese Food at home.  Make Chinese fried rice, and lemon chicken with this new sauce I bought at the Asian market, but i'm not going to fry the chicken like they typically do with lemon chicken, i'll just bake it in the oven or boil it and then add the sauce and bake it with the sauce for a bit with some pineapple tidbits and some veggies. 

Saturday
Hot Dog Casserole.  With Turkey Weiners and Wolf Brand Turkey Chili, and heartsmart Bisquick mix and Shredded cheddar cheese, with French fries made out of real potatoes and baked in the oven.

Sunday
Fend for yourself day, leftovers or go out to dinner.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Trying out Weekly Menu Planning

I've been researching ways to save money on groceries, and one of them is to plan your meals for the week or the month or whatever.  Well i'm going to try Weekly menu planning, see if i can actually follow through with the plan.  I've also been reading on freezer cooking, don't really want to do that for the entire month or anything but i figure if i make a meal i can always make enough to freeze for later, which i do anyways but hadn't been freezing it, mostly we eat off what i make for a few days then when we're sick of it i throw out the rest, so thats a big waste, I'm going to start freezing portions right away instead of having to eat the same thing for several days, I also want to try to turn leftovers into new meals, rather then the same boring thing day after day.  Today i did this with leftovers from friday, we had roast beef with potatoes, and corn, I took the meat and cut it up in little pieces and mixed it with a can of bushes beans and some bbq sauce, and i took the leftover potatoes and cut them up in little pieces and mixed in with some sour cream and shredded cheese, and then i took some already cooked and frozen brown rice 1 cup serving out of the freezer and mixed the rest of the corn with this along with some turkey sausage crumbles.  I heated everything in the microwave and thats what we had for dinner tonight.  We've gotten 10 meals (4 for me, 4 for my husband and 2 for my stepson) out of that one meal i made, we just ate it the same way on saturday as we did friday, sunday we went out to eat.  Tomorrow I'll be making something new, i'm sure there will be leftovers from today for my husband to take for lunch tomorrow.

Menu Plan For week of 9-26 to 10-02
Meal plans just include dinners.  We usually don’t eat breakfast or just grab something simple, lunch is usually leftovers, or grab and go meals out of the freezer. 
Monday-Leftover Beef mixed with Bushs original baked beans and some BBQ sauce.  Leftover Potatoes cut up into small pieces and mixed with sour cream and shredded cheese.  Brown Rice 1 cup serving from the freezer mixed with leftover corn from the original beef meal and some turkey sausage.  Very Easy Prep work since everything was already cooked, most things were leftovers, just added some already cooked rice and a can of beans and voila a brand new meal was able to be served.  There will be plenty for dinner tonight and enough for Michael to take to work for lunch tomorrow.
Tuesday-Make my meat and potatoes, and taco meat with refried beans so I can freeze some extra meals with both, oh and make some Mexican rice too.  I can freeze the meat and potatoes in 1 cup servings and the taco meat, beans, rice and cheese will go in a tortilla wrap to make burritos to freeze for later meals.
Recipe For Meat and Potatoes
Ingrediants:
3 potatoes peeled and diced
1 pound ground turkey
1 can Diced Tomatoes
1 Can tomato paste
1 can beef broth
Salt and pepper
Cumin
Half an onion chopped
Half a green pepper chopped
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 square caldo de pollo
1 tbsp olive oil
Water
1.      Saute onion and green pepper in olive oil, then add the garlic sauté for another minute or so, then add the ground turkey and cook till no longer pink. Note: I sauté the square of caldo de pollo with the onions and green pepper or you can dissolve in water if you prefer)
2.      Add potato, Seasonings, tomato paste and can of diced tomatoes, , beef broth and enough water to cover potatoes bring to a boil and then simmer for about an hour or until the potatoes are soft.
Note: Can serve this with Mexican rice and refried beans, and tortillas, or chips, or just eat in a bowl by itself.  Still taste great the next day as well.  You can also add chopped carrots and celery to the mix or corn, you can play around with this recipe add different things to it to give it different flavors, also if you want to heat it up you can add a can of rotel instead of diced tomatoes, and add some hot spices.  If you want it to be more liquidy like a soup or stew just add more broth or water and you could also use tomato sauce instead paste. 
 
Dessert Recipe for tonight.
Yummy Raspberry surprise
This recipe I took leftover raspberry muffins from the freezer and cut them up in small pieces and then I took 2 eggs, a little bit of milk, some raspberry sugar free torani syrup and vanilla sugar free torani syrup and a couple tbsps. Of sweetened condensed milk.  I mixed everything together and baked in the oven at 350 for about an hour or so.  It came out pretty tasty too.  I think I coulda added frozen raspberries to it for that extra kick, maybe next time.  
 Wednesday-Date Night.  I have My ob appointment and then we’re going to a movie, the Jason statham movie, and then afterwards maybe we can go for dinner at applebees or something or have leftovers.
Note: We both ended up having the 7 oz steak for dinner at applebees, note to self remember don’t order corn again there it was just blah or the potato, they charge way to much for a tiny amount of cheese plus the potato was still hard.  The steak is good though (nice and tender, easy to chew), I was able to eat half the steak and a small amount of the potato and corn, took the rest home and ate that for breakfast the next day, only ate a little of the potato for breakfast saved the rest for Michael for dinner.  Usually don’t have red meat that often, maybe once or twice a week, typically use ground turkey for anything that I would use ground beef in.
 
Thursday-Chicken with corn salsa plus save a cup of the Mexican rice to go with this dish.  
Note: Since I went to lunch with my mother in law today I ended up having quite a bit of leftovers so I figured instead of cooking an entirely new meal might as well share my leftovers with my hubby since there were plenty, I included the leftover potato from yesterday for him and some leftovers of my meat and potatoes from Tuesday there wasn’t very much left of the meat and potatoes for a meal by itself but perfect amount to have as a side with the leftovers from lunch. 
Friday- Use up the leftover pizza sauce and the other pizza crust and make pizza for dinner, using the sandwhich meat ham and the turkey sausage and some pepperonis and mozzarella cheese, just remember heat up the meats before putting them on the pizza cause last time they didn’t taste that hot. 
Saturday-Use up leftover wieners that are in fridge to make hot dog casserole.  Cut them up in little pieces and add to a can of chili, and take out some slices of bread spread the chili and weiner mixture on bread slices and add some cheese and bake in oven till bread is nice and toasty and cheese is melted, or toast bread first and then just bake till cheese is melted.  Serve with chips if we have any on hand.
Note: I use low cal bread, 35-45 calories a slice depending on the brand, also use jennie O turkey wieners, and Turkey Chili which both are a lot less calories then there regular counterparts. 
Sunday-Going to eat at a Japanese restaurant after we drop off Brandon.