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. 

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.