Planning

Here's another shot of Eliza - the smiley baby! My newest thing, as far as planning goes, is thinking out a menu for the week. I've never done this in the past. I've heard much about it - how it saves $ on buying groceries, saves headaches of having to wonder each day of what to make & how it saves frustration of being disorganized-not having meat thawed out-right ingredients on hand-etc.

Well, now I know that planning a menu is true about all the above. Our freezers are full and I need to be intentional about using up the meat & veggies (many of which were given to us) in it as well as using what's in our cupboards. The funny thing about it, is as soon as I get some space cleared - something else quickly takes its space. For example, in September we cleared out (ate) some meat & then I got TONS of free apples, which turned into applesauce that we froze. Well in October, we got two 70 lb bags of squash that started to rot on us. So I baked lots & lots of it over 2-3 weeks & froze it, too. Then we ate some more meat & veggies up & last week some friends dropped off 12 packages of pork/sausage meat for a Christmas gift for us! Isn't God awesome in how He provides when finances tight.

So back to the menus . . . Last week I had 4 days of suppers planned out. A couple of them got bump to the next day because of having leftovers. We have lots of shredded frozen zucchini & so we try to stick it in recipes to use it up & get more veggies in our meals. Once frozen zucchini is thawed & drained, it doesn't add much liquid to the dishes we add it to. Also we bought an industrial size can of sliced black olives from Sam's club & that can is getting opened this week. Thus lots of meals that can include that item are listed below. Here's this weeks line up:

Sunday - tonight we had easy beef stroganoff over pasta with green beans

Monday - Breakfast (B) baked oatmeal
Lunch (L) Leftovers & sliced apples
Supper (S) Meat loaf (w/ zucchini), potatoes w/ cottage cheese, cabbage (last from the garden)/carrot stir fry

Tuesday: L - Fried potatoes with onions, peppers & any leftover veggies (using previous suppers potatoes) & sliced apples
S - Roast chicken with potatoes/carrots

Wed: B - cooked oatmeal
L - Fried potatoes & sliced apples
S - Lemon/tomato chicken (using olives & leftover chicken), wild rice, peas

Thur: B - Egg bake - sausage, olives, zucchini
L - Clam Chowder-using lots of potatoes (Tom's day at home & he's the expert at making this dish) & homemade bread
S - Pizza - using olives, peppers, chicken (if anymore is leftover) or beef

Fri: L - leftovers
S - Burritos - olives, refried beans (already frozen), beef

Sat: L - leftovers or P&B sandwiches
S - Chicken alfredo with pasta including olives, broccoli

We'll see how the week goes with this menu!