Well, after taking stock of my freezers I have to say that I was kind of depressed at my meat options. Unfortunately, the sales on meat just haven't really been there in any "wow I need that" type of way, so I've just been steadily eating down our stockpile of meat in the freezers. So, when I went and took stock I realized that I have a decent supply of hamburger and chicken and otherwise we're kind of down lower than I want on everything else. I did pick up some shrimp and a meal's worth of fish while grocery shopping yesterday as I was completely out of fish, but still...I need to keep an eye out for things to put in the freezers in the coming months.
But, yeah, since I have a good amount of hamburger AND hamburger still seems to go on sale decently cheap, be prepared for a lot of hamburger recipes in the coming months as I'm really trying to cut down the grocery budget (which seems to be impossible with the way the kids are growing like weeds) and still making food interesting to eat.
Oh and as an aside, the photo above is actually a Jello No Bake cheesecake I made the other night. I put about 1/2 tsp of ground ginger into the crust when I made it and then I made the topping from this recipe, although I used apple juice instead of apple cider and I had to use about a tablespoon of cornstarch to thicken it to pie filling consistency for the top (not called for in the recipe, but just a personal preference). It turned out awesome and we enjoyed it for a few nights for dessert :).
So, here we go, this week's menu!
Wednesday (since I made my list yesterday): Leftovers/help yourself night
Thursday: Pizza night
Friday: Homemade soft pretzel twists and Knockwurst (from the freezer...this is a REALLY, REALLY late Octoberfest type of meal that I promised to make for the husband ages ago)
Saturday: Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura and salad
Sunday: Easy Mongolian Ground Beef over rice with edamame on the side
Monday: Swedish Meatballs (I'm going to use straight ground beef for these and use up the other 1/2 of the package of ground beef that I didn't use for the Mongolian Beef the night before) over noodles, salad
Tuesday: Baked Chicken, rolls or bread, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy
Breakfasts: I'm hoping to make pancake muffins, blueberry muffins, cranberry orange muffins, some breakfast bowls and things to give us some quick and easy breakfasts to choose from, but it all depends if the kids give me time to get that stuff done.
Desserts: Lemon Bars (Sunday), bread pudding (Tuesday...Use up odds and ends of home made bread in the freezer to make).
And there you are folks. My menu for this week. How about you? Having anything good?
Nice to see that you're back to posting again, although understandably MIA much of last year. Glad that things are progressing so well for your family.
ReplyDeleteThis January, I've done a Pantry Challenge to plan meals mainly from my freezers and pantry to recover from the holiday spending and to just use up older produce and random bits of this-and-that. Although I did need to stock up on some staples - like flour, as I bake my own bread and baked goods, and buy fresh milk for drinking (I use dried milk for cooking), and some fresh produce, I didn't need to spend much on groceries. Yay! Well, that's one point of a pantry challenge.
Since I didn't make as large a dent into my stock as I'd like to, I've decided to extend the Challenge into February as well. Spring/Summer will be around the corner and I'd like to restock with the new season's fruits, vegetables and of course, newer meat. So far so good as no one has been complaining.
Menus have mainly consisted of using up frozen holiday appetizers; roasts; random bags of chicken/beef stock to make larger pots of soup or gravies for stews and pot pies; using up a couple of summer hamburger patties, chicken kebobs and hot dogs and pairing it with 3 bags of french fries, that may have contained a cup or two of fries in each bag :), using up a few frozen pancakes, waffles and cinnamon rolls as breakfast-for-dinner; and finishing off some of the frozen Christmas baking.
Now that most of the odds-and-sods foodstuffs (there's still a bit more) have been used, I'm focussing more on "Complete" meals now.
Pat J.