Meal Planning

I don't know about your house, but I definitely make better dinners if I have a plan ahead of time. If its 430 pm and I'm suddenly realizing these people need to eat, we don't eat very good meals...and I start to look and sound like this:

haha. Anyway, my system works like this:
We get paid every 2 weeks. I have a grocery budget which I try very hard to stick to. I like to get my major shopping done on payday, allowing for the fact that will need to restock milk and produce, and whatever else may come up. So if I plan dinner ideas for at least 14 days, and then buy the food we need to make those dinners, we should be set! (I also keep a pantry full of "food storage" that we rotate into our fridge food...if that makes any sense to you.)
Recently I was trying to put together my menu and was not in the mood to think of meals, so I was asking friends for ideas. (friends are a fabulous resource!!!) Two of them half-jokingly told me that when I came up with my menu I needed to do theirs as well. Hence this post! *grin
I get my dinner ideas by asking my kids what they want (which is always pizza and spaghetti), looking at food blogs (I bookmark specific recipes when I see them), checking my food emails (from Pillsbury & Betty Crocker), and flipping thru our stack of recipe books. And when I can't fill a menu from that I scroll thru this blog for meals that I know we like! I also make sure to have at least one leftovers night per week to make sure the fridge isn't hoarding any science projects, although honestly my husband often takes the leftovers to work for free lunches!

So here is my current menu plan, with links to recipes where I can add them! Enjoy!!

• Saturday: Domino's Pizza
• Sunday: Crock Pot Orange Chicken, Fried Rice
• Monday: Tortilla Soup, chips
• Tuesday: Leftovers
• Wednesday: Mexican Shepherd's Pie, chips, mixed veggies
• Thursday: Tomato Zucchini Pasta, garlic bread, peas
• Friday: Grilled hamburgers, deep fried french fries, grapes
• Saturday: Cheesy Chicken & Broccoli, mixed veg, slice of bread with jam
• Sunday: Meatballs, baked potato with butter & cheese, roasted broccoli
• Monday: Leftovers
• Tuesday: German Pancakes, bacon, fruit
• Wednesday: Beef & black bean enchiladas, chips, lettuce
• Thursday: Hash
• Friday: Baked chicken tenders, baked french fries, apples
• Saturday: Crepes, fruit
• Sunday: Swedish meatballs (recipe found on McCormick Swedish Meatball seasoning & sauce mix packet) & fettuccine noodles with alfredo sauce, mixed veggies

I just noticed, we've been having a LOT of chicken lately...hmm.

Sometimes I like to sort of have a "schedule" that is really just me spacing out similar foods, where each week we have a soup, an Italian meal, a Mexican meal, a breakfast dinner, a super simple meal like burgers or mac n cheese, leftovers and then some kind of meat and potatoes type meal. That gets me thru a week without a whole lot of brain power, haha. Also, since I shop for all these things just as the menu period is beginning, I easily can switch things out depending on how busy I am or what I am more in the mood for each day.
Hope this helps you out today too!

Cheesy baked chicken

Have you noticed the plethora of recipes posted all over facebook? Well this is one such recipe! Since I can't link you to my friends' wall and there is no source listed, I'm copying and pasting!

It starts with a photo and then this:

You may never fry chicken again after tasting this baked crispy chicken.

Crispy Cheddar Chicken

2 lbs chicken tenders or 4 large chicken breasts
2 sleeves Ritz crackers
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup whole milk
3 cups cheddar cheese, grated
1 teaspoon dried parsley

Sauce:
1 10 ounce can cream of chicken soup

2 tablespoon sour cream
2 tablespoon butter

Crush crackers. If using chicken breasts and not tenders, cut each chicken breast into 3 large pieces. Pour the milk, cheese and cracker crumbs into 3 separate small pans. Toss the salt and pepper into the cracker crumbs and stir the mixture around to combine. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk and then the cheese. Press the cheese into the chicken with your fingers. Then press the cheesy coated chicken into the cracker crumbs and press it in.

Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray and lay the chicken inside the pan. Sprinkle the dried parsley over the chicken. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Remove the tin foil, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the edges of the chicken are golden brown and crispy.
In a medium sized sauce pan combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream and butter with a whisk. Stir it over medium high heat until the sauce is nice and hot. Serve over the chicken.

Well, I don't know about you, but I read the quantities they wanted me to get raw chicken all over and then toss and I was not about to use {waste?!} that much!! I measured out 2 cups of cheese and figured if I needed more I could get more. Yeah, I probably used 1 1/4 cups of cheese. I smooshed up one sleeve of ritz crackers....I bet I could have used half of one. I also only added half the salt and I never measure my pepper because I like it freshly ground.
I want to note that it was not easy to get the cheese and then the crumbs to stick to the chicken, and it seemed like a lot of cheese fell off into the chicken...which doesn't matter a lot, but the process was a little frustrating...

My husband put together the sauce. He followed the instructions as listed but he added about 3 tbsp bottled alfredo sauce. Mixed and heated it up and we put it on the chicken! YUM!
Then! He cooked up some shaped pasta and mixed about half the sauce with the pasta, which we served on the side!

Add a helping of veggies and there was dinner tonight! Dinner was great. The recipe is worth keeping and doing again. Everyone enjoyed it- hooray!

Pork Chops!!

You already know my husband is an amazing cook. But when we have pork chops in the freezer, he almost always chops them up into bites and puts them in some kind of stir fry. He says he doesn't know how to make pork chops without them drying out too much. I think my kids have only had Asian/diced pork chops. Which is kinda sad! One of my favorite dinners when I was a kid was pork chops. I have asked my mom how she made them and her answer is "oh its been too long." dang.
So a friend told me how she makes hers, including how to avoid them drying out, and I thought it was definitely worth trying!! Dinner tonight!

Oven Pork Chops - by Rabilin Snow
Thaw the chops. Set the oven to 350* or 375*.
Put a little water in the bottom of a broiler pan, lay the pork chops on the top of the pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper. (both sides) Cover with foil.
If the pork chops are thick, (1/2 inch - 1 inch) bake about 15 mins, and turn to cook on the other side an additional 10-15 minutes.
If the pork chops are thin, 7-10 mins each side is long enough.

This is the only picture I caught, and its "in progress". Our pork chops were quite thick so we did 15 mins on one side, 15 on the other, and back for another 5 on the first side before my husband said that the juices were clear so it was fine to eat. He and I had a little A1 sauce with our pork chop and it was delicious!! Our kids ate theirs plain and enjoyed them too!

When my friend told me how to make it, she also added that my husband would take the basic idea and "perfect it", haha. So, his suggestion is to sear the chops before baking them. I'll let you know if we give that a try! In the meantime, this is a good method!



Bake a Cake!

While going thru my freezer this morning I decided to pull out some frozen zucchini to make a cake! Just for fun! YUM!

The complete recipe is listed below, but I did use applesauce in place of the vegetable oil, and for probably the first time ever, I used actual buttermilk!
Growing up, we always sprinkled chocolate chips on the top and then baked the cake. The chips stay on the top, and that's in place of a frosting. After today's cake came out, most of the chips had sunk in so that you could only see about 5. Weird. But the thing was, I really, really wanted frosting...I asked my husband what he thought and he said to frost it anyway, so I used half of a chocolate buttercream recipe and that was just enough to cover this 9x13 cake. And it made it soooo rich! And! we discovered that most of the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom of this cake! Weird!!

 

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

(Cheryl Lawrence)

½ cup soft margarine                                                  ½ cup oil

1 ¾ cup sugar                                                              2 ½ cups flour
2 eggs                                                                          4 tbsp cocoa powder
½ cup sour milk or buttermilk                                    1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon                                                            ½ tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg                                                               1 tsp soda
2 cups grated zucchini                                                           

Cream Margarine, oil and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla and milk. Separately blend flour, cocoa, salt, soda an spices. Mix oil-sugar mixture. Add zucchini. Pour into 9x13x2 inch pan which has been greased and floured. Top with chocolate chips and nuts if desired. Bake 40-45 minutes at 350*

More like a SPLAT

..than a flop... haha.
So, my husband was helping me plan out our menu so that I could get the grocery shopping done, and suggested we start putting at least one recipe each round that comes from a cookbook we have taking up space. brilliant! :) So last week we tried this recipe...

Which came from this book...

It was very simple to put together, as everything I've ever seen from Pampered Chef is. My can of chicken is more than 10 oz...maybe it was 15? I used 1 tsp of lemon juice rather than zest, and the bell peppers I had were frozen slices of red, yellow and green, and everything we had didn't quite total 1/2 a cup, so we had all three kinds in our mixture. Then I ran in to a snag...
I don't own a pizza pan, or any round pan!
...and neither do the two friends I called, haha!
So, I ended up doing sort of half circles on the rectangular pans I do have, like this...

and it was a hit! It was a light meal, perfect for spring or summer. It was really good- everyone of us enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure my kids have never raved about anything I've made as much as they did this, haha.
Not so great as left overs- crescent rolls don't reheat very well.

But the story behind the title?
As I was rotating the pans in the oven, because the two rectangle pans didn't fit very well,
one pan was resting on the stove and started slipping....
and in my attempt to shove it back on and save it...
I flipped it over.
and it looked like this:

That was not happy.

Valentine Jello

My husband saw THIS on one of our favorite food-inspiration blogs so I bought the ingredients and we're having it with our Valentines dinner!
I must admit, while I was mixing the white gelatin (for 30. long. minutes.) I was worried that it wouldn't taste good...it did NOT smell good.... However, it was a big hit and it was very yummy! PHEW! haha! As a note, I bought Juicy Juice Berry to make the red jello.

Here are my pictures...

 ta-da!

Simple Chicken Soup

Today our corner of the world experienced something called Freezing Rain. And it was very cold, even in the house. Plus a couple of us were not feeling well, so it was the absolute perfect day for chicken noodle soup! I used this post as my starting point and here's what I did:

We had about 2.5 cups of frozen turkey stock left from Thanksgiving, which I put in the pot, on medium heat. Then I chopped up 1 onion, 8 carrots and 5 celery stalks, and put them in the pot as I completed each kind of veggie. I pulled out 4 boneless-skinless chicken pieces and put them in the microwave to thaw just a little. I cut them into very thin slices, similar to the carrot "coins", and chicken is easy to cut if its partially frozen. I put in two bay leaves, a tbsp of minced garlic, 3 cups of water, 2 cubes of chicken bouillon and some black pepper. My husband added maybe a tbsp of lemon juice too.

I was going to put in egg noodles, but I mentioned that I don't like noodles in my soup and my husband said it would be totally fine to leave them out! yeay! haha! With the chicken cut as thin as it was, it didn't take long to cook- really only until the carrots were done. We served it with biscuits and there was our dinner! I think my quantity will do 7-8 servings. And it was very tasty!

Chicken with spinach and mozzarella

It's been a while!! I've been just making more of the same for the last long while, or even (gasp!) eating out! But here's a post for you!

I needed a new idea for dinner and saw this linked on facebook. So, I tried browsing the links and we had the ingredients for this one so hey, hey! there was the winner!
Well, I sort of had the ingredients. I didn't know we were out of shredded mozzarella, so I used string cheese, haha! And because it won't get over 20* outside...and my grill is totally covered in ice and snow, I didn't grill the chicken- I just browned it on the stove. meaning I cut the frozen pieces of chicken into two (giving them all a flat side), laid the pieces in a hot cast iron pan, ground up some black pepper over them, and sprinkled on a bit of seasoning salt as the chicken cooked.
I used another pan to heat up the spinach mixture.
When the chicken was cooked thru, I put the pieces on a foil-lined cookie sheet, smothered each piece with the spinach mixture, and topped that with strings of cheese, haha. Most of the chicken pieces got a slice of frozen red pepper, but I knew the kids wouldn't love it so I left it off some. The spinach was SOO tasty with the garlic!

I served it with some not-totally-done brown rice, the crunch made it so tasty!! And then just some simple mixed vegetables on the side.
My son didn't love the spinach, even tho he loves garlic, but the rest of us enjoyed it a lot!

Too bad the lighting in our dining room is crummy, especially at dinner time...

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I'm pretty sure you have a recipe handy for this already, but I am going to share this one because I want to keep it!
Confession #1: usually we mix up a batch of the Betty Crocker Choc Chip cookie pouches. It only takes like an egg and a cube of butter. Fast, tasty, gets the job done. But. Its gone in like 20 minutes. And today I needed more than that.
The next option is usually the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips. The bag I bought doesn't have a cookie recipe.
I pulled out our handy Good Eats book (the Early Years) and realized I really don't want to weigh my ingredients, even if he does say

yep. sometimes I am just that lazy. Confession #2.
Then! I remembered that one of my favorite bloggers had just shared a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I may as well give it a shot, right? Well, I ended up halving the recipe, mostly because I didn't think my mixer could hold 8 cups of flour. haha. I had to google how to half 3/4 cup, so for your information, the answer is 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. Good to know. (how did we survive before google, seriously?!)
Also, when I cut open the bag of chocolate chips I have to sneak a couple and ohmygoodness I think I found heaven! I took a picture to show the difference between these chips and the kind I usually buy. These are much bigger and probably the perfect candy to nibble on! haha!

Confession #3: I love cookie dough. Yes I KNOW there's the egg problem. And in this case I'm eating crisco (yuck!) but I really love cookie dough and this one is a keeper!! Add in the chocolate chips and oh my word....I lost interest in baking them! hahaha!!!

But of course I DID bake them (easier to share that way) and it really DOES make tons and everyone enjoyed them a lot, even if there were only 2-3 chips per cookie, haha!

So here's what I did:

1 cup regular crisco
1/2 cup margarine
3 eggs
1 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 Tbsp salt
1/2 Tbsp. baking soda
1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla
3/4 tsp baking powder

I let the mixer run a good while and added
4 cups all-purpose flour, gradually.
Then closer to 2 cups chocolate chips.
Bake at 350 for 11-12 minutes.

Cauliflower Soup!

Tonight, I mixed up my potato soup recipe and created this:

1 head cauliflower
4 small potatoes
3 cubes chicken bouillon
2 cups milk
4 cups water
granulated garlic
black pepper
1/3 cup dehydrated onion 
When the veggies were soft I pureed it all together using my stick blender...

Then added 1/3 cup crumbled bacon
chives
frozen carrots
frozen corn
1 can cheese sauce
handful parmesan cheese

and served it with french bread. YUM!!
*My husband thinks it needed some shredded cheddar or other cheese to make it smoother, but the kids ate it just fine.

Dark Chocolate Caramel Apple Crisp

I mean, with a title like that, what's not to love?!
I found THIS recipe in a Betty Crocker email last year...or maybe the year before that? and I finally got to make it tonight!

This is what * I * used tho, because apparently I'm learning to be a little more creative in the kitchen, haha!
5 granny smith apples
1 golden delicious apple
cored and sliced, and put into a greased 9x13 baking dish.
Sprinkled the flour and cinnamon the recipe states, and mixed it all up.
Chopped 12 caramels into quarters and not so much sprinkled as placed them throughout the apples.

Melted 1/2 cup butter and mixed it in a bowl with the Betty Crocker oatmeal cookie mix. I used my mini food chopper to turn a bunch of almonds into crumbs and mixed in 1/2 a cup of that, and added then closer to 1/2 a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, because that was the end of the bag. Sprinkled that mixture all over the apples and stuck it in the oven for 35 minutes to bake.

my house smells SOOO good.....
and it is DELICIOUS!

Liz's Apple Crisp

My friend Liz posted this recipe on facebook about a month ago and I have been anxious to give it a try. I actually made it right after we enjoyed the minstrone last week! Apples are my favorite part of autumn baking! Apples of all kinds were on an awesome sale this week, so it was a great time to make it!

Her instructions and ingredients are as follows:

Slice 10-12 apples into bottom of 9x13" pan.

Sprinkle 3/4 c. white sugar on top.

Dot with butter (I slice off maybe 2-3 tbsp and cut it into bits over the top) and sprinkle appx. 2 tbsp. flour evenly over the top.

Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over the top (I do quite a lot of cinnamon).

Combine 1 c. brown sugar, 1 c. oats, 1 c. flour and 1 c. butter (cold). Use pastry blender (or forks if you don't have one), and cut in butter until mixture is crumbly.

Sprinkle oat mixture over apples, sprinkle more cinnamon over the topping and

bake @ 350 for appx. 1 hour.

It was soooo good!!! I did let it cool for about 45 minutes before serving it, because that sauce was BOILING, as you can see in the photo! We had whipped cream on top while it was hot, and that was great, but plain, and cold was delicious too! It was the perfect balance of autumny cinnamony apples, hearty oatyness and butter, lol! YUM!