Menu Plan Monday, 1/19/09

I splurged a little this week. I'm technically over-budget, but it could have been worse! :) I have been CRAVING a good grilled steak lately, and very tempted to head to Applebee's to satisfy the urge. Today, an ad came out for Price Chopper and they advertised top sirloin for $2.44 a pound. It's supposed to be 60° on Wednesday when DH is off, so I decided he's grilling!!!! I went and got the steak today (and had a VERY bad experience with a McKeever's Price Chopper manager that makes me wonder if I will shop there again), and I spent less on all the groceries I bought than I would have spent on a single dinner out, so I feel minimally justified in the splurging. Make sense?? We were way under budget on gasoline this month, so I'm covering it from there. Oh, and to make it even more fun.....HyVee has shrimp on sale tomorrow, so we're giong to make it a steak and shrimp night. Yeah, when I splurge, I go all-out!!!!

So here is my menu plan for the week:

Monday - Chicken Cordon Bleu, steamed rice, carrots, potato bread.

Tuesday - Omelets/scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, baked apples, Grands biscuits (obtained very cheaply with a sale/coupon combo). This day might end up modified, with omelets/eggs and apple crisp french toast (a recipe I am working on developing) if bread comes home with DH tomorrow for "testing" purposes.

Wednesday - Grilled sirloin steak, shrimp fettuccini, green beans, homemade rolls.

Thursday - Steak tips in brown gravy served over steamed rice, corn, rest of the rolls.

Friday - Chicken alfredo pizza on homemade wheat crust.

Saturday - Homemade macaroni and cheese, carrots, biscuits (they'll be homemade unless we don't have the Grands on Tuesday!).

Sunday - Pastitsio, corn, cornbread.

I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to Wednesday night's dinner!!!! *big grin*

For more wonderful menu plans and recipes, visit Organizing Junkie!

Menu Plan Monday - week of 1/12/09

Well, last week's chicken stretch went over very well with the family - no complaints about having chicken so many days in a row. Yay!! The funny thing is, I STILL have chicken left from those leg quarters. I really thought I would use it all up last week, but I've got another meal's worth in the freezer. Can't complain about that! Here is my plan for this week's menu:

Monday - Breakfast for dinner: Quiche (not sure of the specifics yet because I haven't made a quiche in a long time - I'm thinking bacon and cheese) and banana-oatmeal pancakes since I'm not sure the kids will eat quiche.

Tuesday - Ham and scalloped potatoes, carrots, cornbread.

Wednesday - Chicken with sweet and sour sauce (new recipe for us), rice, corn, sourdough bread.

Thursday - Beef stew with potatoes and carrots, sourdough bread. This is a crock pot night because I'm having a painful medical procedure done that afternoon and know I won't feel much like cooking. It's also supposed to be FRIGIDLY cold!

Friday - In lieu of the usual pizza, I'm making Pizza Rice Casserole to utilize some cottage cheese. Hopefully the kids won't object! We'll have green beans and soft buttery breadsticks with it.

Saturday - Pork roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, biscuits.

Sunday - Pork stuffed bread (made w/ potato bread - yum!), Creamy Wild Rice Soup. I received some wild rice as a gift over a year ago and have yet to use it. Fortunately, it is stored in the freezer, so it's fine, but it's about time I tried something with wild rice! This soup sounds really yummy - it's our second new recipe this week (unless you count quiche, which isn't new, but revisited.....lol).

For more great meal plans, be sure to visit I'm an Organizing Junkie!

Homemade Hamburger/Hot Dog Rolls

I had a request for this recipe, so here it is! It's a bread machine recipe, from The Bread Machine Cookbook, but I'm sure it could be easily adapted to be a hand-kneaded or KitchenAid recipe. :)

Sandwich Rolls

1 1/4 c. water
2 T. oil
2 t. sugar
1 t. salt
3 1/4 c. flour
1/3 c. dry milk
1 1/2 t. yeast

Place ingredients in bread machine in the order suggested by the manufacturer. Set on dough cycle. Once done, shape dough into the type of rolls you need (long and narrow for hot dog, round for hamburger, or long and wider for subs). Let rise 40-50 minutes. Bake for about 20 minutes at 375°.

These are so much better than store-bought rolls, and they are wonderful for sloppy joes!!!!

Menu Changes - for the Better!

I've made minor menu modifications (how's THAT for alliteration???) the past couple of dinners, and they were wonderful!! Last night, I didn't feel like chicken alfredo pizza, so I changed it to barbequed chicken pizza. I made the crust, then spread it with barbeque sauce (adding a little extra honey to satisfy the youngest) and topped it with the chicken and cheese. It would have been better if I'd had the smoked Gouda cheese and some cilantro, but it was still quite yummy!

Then tonight, I added a strange ingredient to my enchiladas that DH and I loved! I had a school meeting last night to prepare for a fund-raiser. At that meeting, we had munchies. I brought home some hot spinach artichoke dip. I mixed it with the chicken and cheese and filled the enchiladas, then topped them with more of the creamy dip. They were sooooo good!!!!! I did make the kids plain enchiladas, though, because they don't tend to eat anything that says it has artichokes in it. It's just something they refuse to try. Oh well!

I still have some dip left that I need to use. That might mean that tomorrow night's dinner will have to be changed, too, since dip will NOT go with Chicken Tetrazzini. I'm going to have to think about that one.....

Menu Plan Monday - Week of 1/5/09

Please be warned....you are going to be seeing a lot of chicken on this week's menu. This is because I am cooking off 10 lbs of chicken leg quarters and plan to do as much as I can with them. I'm starting the week off with some beef entrees so hopefully nobody will complain! ;-) Nothing new this week - it's all tried-and-true.

For more menu plans (and probably a lot more variety!), check out OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday!

Monday - Sloppy Joes on homemade buns, crunch-top potatoes, corn.

Tuesday - Lasagna (already made - woohoo), salad, rolls (planning to make them at the same time I'm making the buns for Monday).

Wednesday - Oven-fried chicken (using the whole leg quarters), mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, biscuits.

Thursday - Chicken noodle soup, chicken packets.

Friday - Chicken alfredo pizza.

Saturday - Chicken enchiladas, corn, cornbread.

Sunday - Chicken tetrazzini, glazed carrots, breadsticks.

I'll probably go easy on the chicken next week - the leg quarters, anyway! :-) So what's on YOUR menu????

New Recipe: Bourbon Chicken

The last of the new recipes we tried this week was tonight - Bourbon Chicken. DH wanted to know where the actual bourbon was! :-) I did make a mistake in following the recipe, but it turned out okay. The directions say to reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Well, dummy me interpreted that with "cover and" included in the wording. After 20 minutes, I wondered why my sauce was so thin. *sigh* So, I dissolved a bit of cornstarch in some cold water and stirred it in which instantly thickened the sauce and didn't affect the flavor at all!

Now, I do have to also admit that I changed the menu plan, as well. I decided as I started cooking that I really wanted it over rice, rather than with baked potatoes, and I couldn't resist turning what was left of the mashed potatoes from earlier in the week into homemade potato rolls. So the rolls took the place of the cornbread (and I DID make yogurt yesterday, too!!). Also, I changed the side to glazed carrots when I realized I had FOUR bags of baby carrots in the fridge! One of the cardinal rules of frugality - be flexible!

So....how was it, you wonder? Well, it wasn't Golden Corral's version by any means, but it was good, and everyone voted it a "keeper." My picky youngest tasted it after some coaxing and declared it to be "okay." That and the fact that she ate it were very complimentary! I think next time I try it, I might try changing it up a bit and maybe adding some actual bourbon to the sauce, and maybe some extra brown sugar. Or maybe I'll just keep it as-is and actually simmer it correctly!!! ;-)

Now it's time to start thinking about NEXT week's menu plan. How is it that the weeks go by so fast??? Let me know if you give Bourbon Chicken a try!!

Am I completely insane?

I am really starting to wonder if I'm completely losing it! I just went to the grocery store and I am officially STOCKED on boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cheddar and colby/jack cheese. One of my local stores, Price Chopper, had the chicken breasts on sale for only $1.19 a pound!! I have NEVER seen it that cheap! So I picked up 7 packages, each 2 to 2.5 lbs. I actually considered buying more, but since I already had some in the freezer, that *would* have been insane! Good thing I didn't, because I have no more room....more on this later in the post.

Then, I went to another grocery store, Hen House. There I picked up 7.5 lbs. of shredded cheese. Why?? Because they had cheddar and colby/jack shredded cheeses in 40 oz. bags (2.5 lbs.) for $5.97! I usually pay $3.79 for a pound of shredded cheese, and that's cheap here! I couldn't resist $2.39 a pound!

Last night, I got a 25 lb. bag of bread flour for $8.01, marked down at Sam's. It worked out to less per pound than I pay at Aldi for the all-purpose flour, and I like the texture that bread flour gives my breads and baked goods.

Do you realize that works out to almost 50 POUNDS of foods that I've bought in the past 24 hours?? I'm thinking that I shouldn't need to buy these things for at least 2-3 months. In the long run, that's going to save me money, but right now I'm just laughing at myself, wondering if I'm going completely overboard on the stockpiling of food. To put it into perspective, we have a side-by-side fridge/freezer upstairs, a freezer-on-top large fridge downstairs in the garage, and quite a good-sized stand-up freezer downstairs. Every bit of my freezer space is occupied. Had I bought more chicken breasts, I would have had to cook them tomorrow, and I already have a 10 lb. bag of leg quarters thawing in the refrigerator to cook next week!

Well, I guess if the store sales get sour, we will still have plenty to eat for awhile!!! (That or I'm totally insane......)