This is one of the dishes we are making, Chicken Cordon Blue casserole. I made it the last time I freezer cooked and it was a raving favorite! We are definitely making more of these! Yummo!
Sometimes I’m not sure why I’m not a chef…I love to cook. I wish I had an unlimited budget to cook with and a fully stocked pantry with everything you could think of in it! Anyhow I digress…today I had a massive cook day. I started at 10:15am as I had decided to not go to The Multiplex after my Yoga date fell through. Instead I cooked meals for the week. I made a crock pot of chili, taco beef for our Taco Tuesday night, adobo shredded pork for Taco Tuesday Night, cabernet braised short ribs with roasted potatoes, asparagus and rosemary pull apart bread. I prepped all the veggies for tomorrow’s soup. I made carrot muffins with cream cheese icing from scratch. I was so hot by the time I was done I thought I would die! I was all done by 11:30am. The chili turned out smoking hot…I can’t seem to tame it down. It’s for lunches so hopefully it won’t be so hot after being frozen and re-heated. The rest are in the fridge labelled with which day it’s for and the rest of the instructions on how to prepare in case Randy beats me home.
We’re on a budget of $100 a week for groceries. We are shopping at Superstore and No Frills for most of our groceries and getting our meat at Blackmans’ Butcher Shop. We’re trying to avoid Costco as much as possible lately…it always sucks us into buying things we don’t need! I’m only buying what we need for meat and groceries and so far so good. It’s nice to pare down to the basics every once and a while! I have lots of food in my freezer so the goal is to use it up. So I’ve been creating a menu plan to use up what I have stocked in the freezer. For this week’s menu all I had to buy for meat were the short ribs and 2lbs of lean ground beef. Everything else comes from my freezer.
I’ve gotten back into my menu plans…with structure to them. Sunday is roast night, Monday is soup and sandwich night (Crockpot), Tuesday is leftovers or something quick (I’ve got water aerobics!), Wednesday is Burger night (Chicken, fish, beef, buffalo), Thursday is ethnic night or crockpot night (Water aerobics again!), Friday is usually seafood/fish night and Saturday is something that is a home cooked meal kind of meal.
For example here is this weeks menu plan:
Sunday: Cabernet braised short ribs, roasted potatoes and asparagus, M&M Meat shop rosemary pull apart bread.
Monday: Crockpot Creamy leek and potato soup, cod fish sandwiches, Caesar salad.
Tuesday: Beef tacos, shredded pork tacos, burritos, Spanish rice.
Wednesday: Chicken burgers, sweet potato fries, tossed salad.
Thursday: Chicken Curry, coconut basmati rice, homemade peach chutney, steamed broccoli
Friday: BBQ’d Pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn, tossed salad.
Saturday: Chicken parmesan, spaghetti, roasted broccoli, tossed salad.
I have everything pulled the night before to thaw and ingredients laid out before I leave for work so I can walk in the door and start cooking right away! We’ve managed to not spend our $50 dining out budget for the last 2 weeks as a result and I know we’re having a healthy, nutritious meal! I plan my meals two weeks out and make up a grocery list that reminds me in my blackberry on Friday to pick up stuff we need before the weekend. It’s been working for the last 3 weeks for me…hope to keep it up! I’m going to make a menu plan coil bound book so that I can keep my menu plans for the year…it will be easy to get ideas for meals when I’m stumped then! If you want one, let me know…I’ll charge you about $10 for one. Are you menu planning? What works for you? Drop me a line and let me know! Take care and happy cooking!
