Thursday, August 9, 2018

What's for Dinner: This Week's Menu


I am happy that I had a chance to sit down today and actually figure OUT a menu plan for this week.  Saying it's been hectic around here would be a gross understatement on things between cleaning, new school preparations, back to school preparations and everything else.

When it comes to the menu plan this week, I'm working on using what we have in the house.  I'm out of produce pretty much, at least fresh (all I really have left are root vegetables and apples for the daughter's snacks), so things like salad are out until payday next week (we don't really have any money at all till then).  So, I'm just going to work on using up things I know I have, like I still have fresh potatoes and I do have one bag of pre-made meatballs that have been sitting in the freezer for a while, so I want to use those up.  So, let's get to the menu for this week!

Thursday:  Hamburgers on home made bread. tatar tots, apple pie for dessert 
Friday:  Pan fried pork chops, apple sauce, baked potatoes 
Saturday:  Ham slices (pre-cut in freezer), pea soup (I'm going to take Julia Child's "Edible Pea Pod Soup" recipe and tweak it to use frozen peas instead as I love the flavor of the soup I made last year :), rolls 
Sunday:  Meatball subs (make rolls), French fries, Mince meat tarts for dessert 
Monday:  Parchment baked fish with julienne  vegetables (onions and carrots), rice 
Tuesday:  Country fried steak, cheesy mashed potatoes, green beans 
Wednesday:  Roast chicken, stuffing, roasted potatoes, cranberry sauce (make from the whole cranberries that are in the freezer).

Breakfasts:  Easy croissants (I found a bunch of different recipes online, so I'm hoping to make the dough tonight to have for breakfast tomorrow with jam), toast, granola, cereal, oatmeal.

And there you are folks.  Our menu for this week.  How about you?  Got anything neat planned for meals this week?

7 comments:

  1. I am just going to flat out saying that as sad as I am this is my oldest child's last year in elementary school in my youngest first year I will be so happy when it's just me going to the grocery store. Despite my best efforts I have not been able to stay in the budget at all the whole summer because my teacher husband has been with me every time. I have never spent so much on food, and to top it off what's worse is that my husband now discovered that he has a health issue that's going to require some expensive supplements and medicines and diet change for the next couple months to see if he can get it under control. That means the bread and pasta dishes that I have rely on are not something he can eat because he's going to have to go without basically anything that creates yeast so carbs sugar all that stuff he can't have for the next couple months. I'm going to look and see if I can find some low carb pasta because he won't eat zucchini made into noodles or any other sort of vegetable so got to have something so I can make the meals just with his special food and somewhat with the rest of the family on normal. It's very frustrating and very upsetting and of course I absolutely want his health to do better but geez special foods are so expensive. He can't eat any fruits because they produce yeast and have too many carbs so it's going to be a fun few months. Thank goodness I'll be going back to work a little bit more with sub jobs and can help supplement the grocery budget. It is been so stressful lately about money and thankfully we have enough we haven't had to touch our emergency fund but it's always right there in the back of my mind because so many things have happened.

    Your menus look great!! I feel spoiled with all the posts!

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    1. I’m sorry about your husband! That’s awful and I’m sure you are worried sick :(. There is a product called “Miracle Noodles” that you used to be able to get on Amazon and some stores carry them with the fresh produce. They are zero carbs. The process to cook them is a bit finicky from what I read (you have to rinse them and things) but people on special diets seem to agree that they get the job done.

      Hope everything starts to look up for you soon!

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    2. Thanks for the tip!! I am going to see if I can find them, and for a price less than akn arm and a leg!!

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  2. Your menu looks really good!

    We're having tomatoes. All week long. Just tomatoes. (Kidding. Kind of.) Our garden is basically a waterfall of tomatoes right now, so I'm going to need to get creative and figure out what I want to do with them. I'm probably going to make a bunch of sauce and freeze it (to add to the other containers of sauce I have in the freezer already from a batch of marked down tomatoes earlier this year!), and I'll have to figure out how to can salsa, which I've never done before. But basically, I'm trying to work tomatoes into every meal. They're really tasty tomatoes, too- all different kinds as well, with great flavor, so that's my challenge for the next few weeks!

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    1. Whenever I have too many tomatoes ripening at the same time, I freeze them whole. In the winter when I have more time I can defrost a bagful and cook them down for spag. sauce or whatever. The nice thing is when they are thawing the skins slip right off.

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    2. Try looking for Mrs. Wage’s salsa mix. It’s just a seasoning packet that you add to the tomatoes and you add vinegar too. It makes good salsa and cuts down on cost of ingredients. The instructions on the packet are for fresh or canned tomatoes, so you would be set there :).

      There are also recipes out there to make tomato paste (which I froze in the past), ketchup (I wasn’t a fan of home canned ketchup, but I think it was me goofing it and cooking it too long), tomato based BBQ sauce, you name it. When Alvah got diagnosed allergic to garlic, I went to a local green house and bought 100lbs of tomatoes to make everything tomato based (since it pretty much all has garlic in it), so I know how much work is involved in processing that stuff. Good luck!

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  3. I always love to read menu plans because they remind me of all the great meals I forget about! Thank you for sharing. My plans this week include calzones and salad, white chicken chili and cornbread, a favorite pasta dish with chicken and bacon and tomatoes (Johnny Carino's "bowtie festival" copycat), Italian beef sandwiches (the meat is leftovers in the freezer), breakfast for dinner (dutch oven pancakes, bacon, and peaches/plums), and bulgogi beef (from costco) with rice and zucchini. Should be a good week!

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