lovin' life: this week's menu

can't think of what to make for dinner this week? well here you go...

thursday- creamy chicken casserole (p.19 wf*), side of sweet potatoes with texas roadhouse butter

friday- honey grills! steak and veggie kabobs with mystery steak from the freezer and squash, zucchini, and red, green, yellow, and orange bell peppers. and maybe a bit of pineapple or onion. also, veggie-herb cheese toast (p.189 wf)

saturday- cinnamon rolls for breakfast! pioneer woman cauliflower soup. maybe i'll make this in advance in case i'm feeling lazy that afternoon...

sunday- baked potato with costco's 90 second chili, sour cream, cheese etc. (for lunch right after church) and then veggie pasta and parmesan garlic bread

monday- brown sugar meatloaf... and whatever veggies are still left in the fridge get grated up and tossed in too because goodness knows this is no healthy recipe on its own...

tuesday- chicken parmigiana with angel hair pasta (p.81 wf)

wednesday- spaghetti sauce and meatball sandwiches with mozzarella and parmesan.

thursday- oven fried fish (p.29 wf) although very subject to change due to my current aversion to white fish (salmon is okay)... has been on the last two weeks of menus and has yet to be made.

friday- molasses grilled pork tenderloin

snack- homemade kale chips

quick backup dinner- costco ravioli with sauce and cornbread already made and in the freezer

you're welcome.

a whole week of dinner planned! this used to be my most dreaded chore of the week... and though it's still painfully time consuming, second trimester pregnancy has turned this into a wonderful hobby instead!

*wf= southern living's easy weeknight favorites cookbook. because the whole point of this post is to make my life less stressful when my little menu plan paper seems to go missing and will not force me to keep a million recipe tabs open on my browser all week as has been the case lately. also hoping this will make future meal planning easier if i can manage to make this a weekly habit.

8.9.12 - the review

thursday- the sweet potatoes were divine and the butter was a great addition. wouldn't recommend the creamy chicken casserole though. neither christopher nor i liked it but he stole my heart again the next day when he texted me from work to tell me he'd taken the casserole pan with him and was eating it for lunch. he finally brought it back on tuesday or something saying "umm, i think i'm done with this." ha. well honey that is much appreciated because i actually never want to eat that ever again.

friday- the kabobs were great although when they were done we just threw everything on a plate and picked what we wanted so next time i'd probably make a stick of meat and a stick of squash, etc. so that everything cooks how it needs to. i would have prefered the steak more rare and the veggies more cooked. live and learn but it was still delicious. i think the veggie herb cheese bread would have been really great but i had honey mix up the stuff for me while i was assembling kabobs and while he was grilling, i spread the stuff on the bread and baked it. when we ate it we were both overwhelmed with mayo. then as i looked at the few dirty dishes by the sink it hit me and i had honey recount to me what he mixed together. i did it right! 1 cup cheese, 3/4 cup shredded carrot, 3/4 cup mayo... and then i had to break it to him that the recipe actually only called for 1/4 cup mayo. we'll try it again eventually and make sure we're really really careful about it. but i think honey now has a greater appreciation for my cooking seeing as how it can be very easy to make simple mistakes that can ruin a recipe.

saturday- cauliflower soup. i made it perfectly i'm sure but it wasn't mind blowing to me. eventually i realized that i was enjoying the soup, minus the cauliflower part. apparently this pregnancy i've developed an aversion to cauliflower and never had the chance to know it until now. good news though is that the soup is better the next day and even better the day after that and i think i'll love it when i go back to loving cauliflower more!

sunday- this is where the menu meal planning went downhill. on the way home from church i wanted a bacon avocado tomato sandwich which made honey want one too. so we had that and soup instead of the baked potato and chili. and then i ended up sleeping all afternoon and being lazy so that veggie pasta didn't happen either. whoops.

monday- made the veggie pasta! super simple and easy but i'm finding the biggest downside of cooking with tons of veggies is that it ups the prep time like crazy because of all that washing and chopping! by this time i'd used up all my roma tomatoes (i only had one left and the recipe called for six) so i used a can of diced tomatoes instead and it made and awesome sauce. i'll do that on purpose next time because it worked out so great this time around. also, i only used half the amount of meat it called for and cut it in thin half coins to make the italian sausage flavor more widespread but less powerful and it was still a bit much. honey and i both agreed that italian sausage isn't our favorite. next time i want to use bacon! mmm bacon. and forgot about the garlic parmasan bread i was going to make but we got our carbs in the form of our spiral noodles (i used the garden kind that's three colors and it looked so pretty!).

tuesday- i made the brown sugar meatloaf because i was a day behind on the menu. a few things came up last minute so i ended up being on a huge time crunch while making this. sooo, to save time i didn't try to sneak any veggies in (i'll say it again, veggie prep takes too much time!) but i did half the ketchup/brown sugar sauce from what i normally do and honestly... i was eating it and dreaming of more delicious sauciness. next time i'll do 3/4 cup since 1 cup seems to be too much and doing a 1/2 cup let me wanting.

wednesday- i had to get to our relief society activity early since i was in charge of helping with setup so with all the leftovers in the fridge i confidently told honey it was a fend for yourself night.

thursday- still had quite a bit of leftovers in the fridge to the point that we need to clear up space before making anything new... i somewhat told honey it was a clean out the leftovers in the fridge night. which he first accepted with a less than enthusiastic "hmm, well i had a late lunch so i'll just wait a while" and eventually morphed (after smelling and stealing a bite of my cauliflower soup (i told you it gets better with time) into a "mmm, maybe i'll just finish off the soup..."

friday- okay this chicken parmigiana was delicious! not the funnest thing in the world to cook (i hate touching raw meat so dipping raw chicken in raw egg wasn't the highlight of my week. also, it dirtied several dishes and for me, the messier my kitchen gets, the less i'm enjoying my cooking experience. crock pot stuff = favorite meal to "cook") but honestly it was worth it! i thought it was as good or better than what i'd get at a restaurant so maybe i'll have to suck it up an make it again sometime.

snack- kale chips. not a success. i bought one bunch of kale and half i did with just olive oil and salt and pepper and the other half i did with salsa. well, the salsa made it too heavy and it didn't really get that crumble in your mouth seaweed texture that the olive oil half got. sooo, honey said it was all "okay" but he prefers the costco seaweed so i guess we'll just keep buying boxes of that. we didn't do a side by side test for baby girl so i don't know if she has a preference but i know she's obsessed with costco seaweed but seemed to eat the olive oil kale chips just fine and kept asking for more. verdict: not worth it for us.

so my biggest fail of the week was that i wasn't in love with the stuff i made except the chicken parmigiana (although that could have to do more with pregnancy cravings/aversions/etc) and that i've been slacking on serving vegetables as a side, especially when the main course is primarily meat. that is honestly just due to pure forgetfulness (i guess i need to schedule that in my menu so i remember!) because in my baby steps with this whole cooking thing i only require there to be an entree. making an entree, salad, side, and bread and being able to have it come together perfectly so it's all hot and ready to be served at the same time still seems pretty impossible to me. eventually i'll get there though. in a little while... like ten plus years from now.

and because everything is better with pictures...