weekly meal plan Archives - Page 8 of 8

Weekly Meal Plan {Week 27}

Posted on January 18, 2016 by nyfoodiefamily@gmail.com

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend! I am enjoying the day off of work with the family after a busy but fun weekend. Here’s a peek at what was on our menu last week. If you are interested, you can read more about our meal planning process. Last week was pretty busy, so the slow cooker was used, as well as some prepared frozen foods…..yes, we eat those too!

Saturday – We went out to Golden House, a local Chinese restaurant, where we had Happy Family, Salt & Pepper Shrimp and Beef Chow Mein.

Sunday – The Weekend Chef made Fried Chicken and biscuits and corn. Yum!

Monday – I made Slow Cooker Beef Marsala Stew from Cooking Light, December 2014. I served it with mashed potatoes. This was our favorite meal of the week. Since the beef cubes had to be seared and the sauce made, I prepped it all the night before. After cooking all day, the beef was really tender! This is a perfect cold weather, comfort meal.

Tuesday – I went out to dinner with a friend, so the Weekend Chef made pierogies (Mrs. T’s, not homemade!) and kielbasa for him and the kids. Fast and easy!

Wednesday – I made Bacon, Egg and Brussels Carbonara from How Sweet It Is. This was a tasty pasta dish that was easy to cook. I highly recommend recipes from How Sweet It Is. While they sometimes have a long list of ingredients, I don’t think that I’ve ever made a bad recipe from the blog!

Thursday – I had originally planned to make Slow Cooker Meatball Subs with Parmesan White Cheddar Queso from Cooking and Beer. However, the Weekend Chef ended up pre-making the meatballs the night before and I cooked them instead of making them in the slow cooker. Meatballs seem like a dish that can overcook/dry out if left in the slow cooker too long. I did make the cheddar queso, which was okay, but I actually would have preferred to just have some shredded mozzarella on top.

Friday – While I wish Friday nights were relaxing, they are really super busy for us. With Girl Scouts and basketball practice we usually end up eating later than usual and it has to be super quick and easy. This past Friday I made Black Bean Burgers (the frozen kind!) and fries.

Weekly Meal Plan {Week 26}

Posted on January 11, 2016 by nyfoodiefamily@gmail.com

How was everyone’s weekend? Relaxing, I hope! So far, my goal of eating healthy has been pretty successful. As my husband, the Weekend Chef noted, overall, we don’t eat unhealthily. So, I realized that my meal plan hasn’t changed too drastically so far. I still am trying to choose a variety of recipes that I think our kids will enjoy. I’ve recently been going through my collection of old recipes that I’ve already made. If you’re new around here, I rarely make the same recipe twice. I’m always looking for new recipes to try out. However, in trying to clean out my recipe/cookbook collection, I’m trying to re-make some previously tried recipes, so I can document them here, and decide if they’re worth keeping! You can learn more about our meal planning process if you are new to meal planning. Last week’s menu included:

Saturday – We were in the city. After we saw the musical Finding Neverland, we made our way back to Grand Central and grabbed a quick dinner there before taking the train back home. The kids had burgers and cheese fries from Shake Shack. The Weekend Chef had a salad with steak and I had a steak sandwich from Tri Tip.

Sunday – At our daughter’s request, the Weekend Chef made spaghetti and sausage. Simple, but tasty.

Monday – I made 5 Ingredient Sweet Potato Chili from Pinch of Yum. When she first heard what I was making, my daughter noted, “You know that I don’t like sweet potatoes.” Yes, but in this recipe, the sweet potatoes get blended and help thicken the chili, while also adding some sweetness. And guess, what? Everyone liked this! I served this with some tortilla chips that we were using to eat the chili with and also crumbling some on top. This chili recipe was simple but so tasty! I highly recommend.

Tuesday – I made French Onion Pot Roast from The Little Kitchen which I served with mashed potatoes and honey carrots. My parents came over for dinner and enjoyed this with us. I can’t remember the last time I made a pot roast. And I’ve never made it in the slow cooker before. I have to note that I didn’t really taste the French onion flavor. However, it was nice to have a traditionally weekend type of dinner on a Tuesday night! So, I recommend making pot roast in the slow cooker but not necessarily using this French onion recipe.

Wednesday – I used the leftover pot roast in burritos. I just cooked some rice and put it in a tortilla with the heated up pot roast, shredded cheddar cheese, salsa and sour cream. The kids loved this! So simple and no real cooking involved! We ate this with roasted broccoli. (The pic above shows the burritos prior to rolling!)

Thursday – The Weekend Chef made Spinach Feta Crockpot Lasagna from Diethood. I’ve made lasagna in the crockpot before and am not sure why I don’t do it more often. It’s a little time consuming in the beginning, but it’s so nice to come home after work and have dinner ready. This recipe was different with the addition of feta and spinach. The feta gave the lasagna a nice tang. This dish was liked by us all.

Friday – I made Double Eggplant Pizza from Every Day with Rachael Ray. I’ve been going through my old magazine recipes that I’ve already cooked. If I’ve saved it, then it must have been pretty good. So I’m trying to recook the recipes to see if they are still as good as I remember. This eggplant pizza was one of those saved recipes. According to the date I had written on the magazine tear-out, I had made this pizza back in October 2010! Neither my husband or I remember eating this pizza. This was a tasty, vegetarian pizza. Not amazing, but good, only if you like eggplant. The kids do not like eggplant, so I mad them a cheese pizza.

Weekly Meal Plan {Week 25}

Posted on January 4, 2016 by nyfoodiefamily@gmail.com

Welcome to the first weekly meal plan of 2016! This meal plan was actually last week’s meal plan, the last of 2015. With the new year here I am on a mission to eat healthier. Be on the lookout for more salads and lighter fare making their appearance in our kitchen. But, I am still aiming for quick and easy but tasty recipes to feed our family. If you have any recipe recommendations that fit the bill, please share! I highly recommend meal planning to keep your grocery bill on budget and to not have to deal with the dilemma of “What are we having for dinner?!” Here’s what was on our menu last week:

Saturday: Straight-up Christmas dinner leftovers – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc.

Sunday: After a long day of after-Christmas shopping the Weekend Chef made homemade pizza. He made one plain and one roasted broccoli and bacon….though we all wanted more of the broccoli and bacon one!

Monday: I knew we were going to have leftover turkey from Christmas dinner. Since I’m not a huge fan of leftovers myself, I purposely looked for recipes where I could use the leftover turkey up without it tasting like leftovers. The first recipe was Turkey & Cranberry Monte Cristos from Rachel Schultz. I had forgotten to buy cranberry sauce for Christmas dinner so we were happy to eat it on these sandwiches. I adapted this recipe a tiny bit, using swiss cheese instead of havarti, and omitting the nutmeg. And of course, using canned cranberry sauce instead of homemade. The kids had never had a monte cristo before and loved this sandwich! This certainly won’t be the last time we make this. This was super quick and easy to make and a tasty way to use some of the leftover turkey. We ate these sandwiches with a salad.

Tuesday: I made Turkey Pad Thai courtesy of Melissa d’Arabian via The Food Network. I didn’t have fish sauce and substituted soy sauce, so this dish definitely lost some of it’s intended flavor. We also didn’t add the sriracha sauce while cooking and opted to add it to the end to just the adult plates to make sure the wasn’t too spicy for the kids. This was really tasty and you definitely don’t feel like you’re eating leftover turkey. While the recipe says this only takes 15 minutes including prep and cook time, this probably took us more like a half hour.

Wednesday: The last of the leftover turkey was used in Turkey Tikka Masala from The Delicious Cook. This dish had a lot of flavor and didn’t remind us that we’ve been eating turkey for days! It was easy to make and super tasty! We ate this with rice and naan.

Thursday: Happy New Year! To ring in the new year we had app-as for dinner! That is appetizers/tapas for dinner including shrimp cocktail, nachos, eggrolls and dumplings. We ended the year with a caloric bang!

Friday: We were out during the day Friday and stopped at a local pizzeria and picked up some specialty pizza slices for dinner. I went with the Eggplant Parm pizza which was delicious!