Menu Plan...Tuesday?

Better late than never. Tonight we had leftovers from the 4th of July BBQ. Chicken kabobs and corn on the cob.

I have come up with a new system to plan my menus. I would love to do the once a month cooking but right now this is not feasible so I did this instead... I started with 7 categories; Pasta, Casserole, Crock pot, Chicken, Vegetarian, Bean and "other." I came up with as many meal ideas for each category as I could think of and now when it is time to do my menu I will reference the lists and pull one item from each of the categories for each day of the week. The idea is to  come up with one month of meals at the beginning of the month and do all the shopping that I can ahead of time. Its the fifth and have I done it yet? NO. But in my defense I had company for two weeks (which I loved) and we didn't want to have to stick to a menu. So, by the end of this week it should be done but with my Life Atypical, no one knows. I'll keep you in the loop.

For this week we are having:

Wednesday Bunkhouse Beans (kid friendly- allrecipes.com) (a new one) Beans
Thursday    Chicken Spaghetti (Pioneer Women Cooks)                            Pasta      
Friday          Meatball Sub Casserole (Once a Month Cooking)                   Casserole      
Saturday      Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken) (my favorite!)       Chicken          
Sunday         Eggplant Parmesan                                                                  Veg.      


It may not be in that order. I do have the rest of the month planned out but will post it weekly.... maybe.
So you noticed there wasn't a beef or a pork category, huh? Well, Food Inc, ruined my life and I haven't eaten beef in 1 year and 3 months. (Oh except for that one bite at the church brisket fundraiser when I forgot I wasn't eating beef. oops) And my pain management doctor told me I shouldn't eat pork but it may make an appearance sometimes anyway. For any recipe that calls for ground beef I substitute ground turkey instead and it works out great.  With not eating beef and little pork I kinda got in a cooking rut and we were eating way too much chicken! This idea will give us a little more variety and I added the bean category for some extra protein. The "other" category is for things like pizza and panino and items that don't fit anywhere else.

Sounds like a good system to me, we'll see if it works.

I am exhausted and have to get up early to get the girls off to summer school so I am going to go start the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, at least get a few pages in.

Jen