About Me

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Phoenix, Arizona
Growing up my initials were OP, which was pretty cool in the 80's, right? Then I got married and my initials got updated to match our very texting obsessed era that we now live in (and shake our heads at)...OMG. For those who are texting illiterate, I'll spell it out..."Oh, My God!". I pity the girl whose initials are W.T.F. (I won't spell that one out. You can Google it or email me for an explaination on that one!)

1.10.2010

Menu Planning: Take one

Since life is about to get hectic again (school starting this week), I feel the need to get ahead of the game.

I have seen many people blog that they do menu planning and I just never 'got it'.
How do you know what you will feel like eating next Thursday?

That's pretty much a symptom of how I do things. Or better said, it's a symptom of how I let my emotions rule things in my life.

With the building stress and anxiety of the craziness of school upon me, I am in survival mode and that means I need to get CONTROL of whatever I can right now. Lord knows that I can't control ANYTHING related to nursing school. But I can control what happens at home.

That being said, I am SO feeling this menu planning thing this week!

We sat down on Saturday and tossed around some meal ideas (he just agreed with me. Good job, husband!). Then I picked up the things I needed for the recipes. Then I had to strategize what to make and when because I work on Tuesday and Wednesday so I am not home for dinner. I get home around 8pm those nights. I will prepare those meals on Monday as Brian assures me he can boil the noodles. :)

According to the football on the tv...it's Sunday now. I have the crockpot going with Creamy Beef over noodles. And I'm loving this feeling of planning ahead and have started an Excel spreadsheet of ingredients I have on hand and potential meal ideas. And I'm browsing blogs I follow and my recipe box on allrecipes.com for ideas. Getting a bit OCD about it all but I'm glad I have the time right now to get things in order.

Here's my plan for the week. I am using lots of recipes from my new favorite cookbook...Make if fast, cook it slow. I bought it after enjoying her blog.

Sunday- Creamy beef over noodles with fresh green beans.


Monday-Buffalo chicken tenders (frozen item, thank you very much!), crockpot garlic baked potatoes, crockpot broccoli with toasted garlic and hazelnuts.
How good does this look? Can't go wrong with lots of garlic and melted butter and olive oil. Right?



Tuesday-crockpot basalmic chicken thighs with spring veggies (squash, zucchini, red onion) and quinoa. (edited: didn't care for this straight out of the crockpot but it was really good the second day. I'm keeping that in mind for more recipes in the future.)
Wednesday - spaghetti (I already made the meat sauce and it's in the freezer). I'll add some yellow squash to the sauce since I have some in the house to use.

Thursday-chicken breast (haven't decided how I will cook these), instant mashed potatoes (don't judge. these are great! only ingredients are potatoes and butter..nothing artificial.) and crockpot sweet and sour caramelized onions (with raisins and pine nuts. sounds interesting. I can't wait to try it.)

Friday- Brian's favorite day, we order pizza. I like this day too. No cooking or cleaning. Oh, I like pizza too, don't get me wrong. I just really like the no cooking/cleaning part. Especially since I have school all day long on Fridays.

Saturday-he's on his own. That probably means it's mac & cheese day in our house. I have clinicals all day and am totally worthless. I could use this as a day to go out to dinner but I'm usually even too tired to go out. Unless it's to IHOP. We could go to IHOP.

Another thing I'm excited about is that I'm buying produce with an actual plan to use it. That's a novel idea for me. Usually I just grab veggies and hope I feel like cooking it ....eventually.

3 comments:

Nancy said...

Hello there. Wanted to come over and meet you properly.

Good for you! I see that you're on the menu planning bandwagon. I hope you find it to be as helpful to you and your family as I do. Have a good week.

Amanda said...

You wouldnt care if I ripped off this whole blog post and made everything you were making would you?? ;)

Good job girl!

Blessings-
Amanda

Debbi Does Dinner Healthy said...

I HAVE to menu plan or life is SOOOOOO much more stressful. I started my blog because I was already menu planning and counting the calories and I have all my recipes on the computer. I just needed to start taking pictures of stuff. Now I just need to figure out how to make my blog look pretty like yours! I have NO idea how to do that stuff, pretty computer illiterate here. Thanks for checking out my blog, hope you find some things that you like.