Weekly Menu for 8/19

And I'm back!

One of the nice things about doing this blog is that I have a record of previous menus.  When I just don't feel like figuring out what to eat, it is nice to be able to go back a bit and just grab a menu that I've already done. I know that the sales won't necessarily match up, but it is certainly more reliable than me trying to menu plan when I just don't feel like it.

Anyway, we are on to a new week and looking forward to some beautiful weather.  Pork chops are one sale, as are bratwurst, so those two things are making onto the meal plan for this week.  So we are having:

Pork Chops
Taco Salad
Smoked Sausage and Mac and Cheese
Sandwiches (requested by the kiddo)
Brats
Grill Something

There will be lots of grilling this week!  Add some grilled meat with fresh vegetables, and you have pretty much my husband's ideal meal.

So what are you having this week?

Weekly Menu for 7/22

This week is supposed to be crazy hot!  I hope you are able to stay cool.  My plan right now is to generate as little heat in my house as possible.  One of my meals does require the oven to be on for a few minutes, but nothing major.  Other than that, most of the cooking is either minimal, or on the grill.

The sales my stores are running this week make my menu easy on my $100 budget, which is always nice.  Also helping out my budget is that my husband won't be home for dinner one night, so that will be leftover night for me and the kids.  Thank goodness for leftovers!  There isn't much that causes my desire to cook to drop faster than it just being me and the kids.  I'm sure it is mostly laziness, but I know the fact that the kids would be perfectly happy with chicken nuggets plays a part as well.

On the menu for this week is:

Grill Something
Breakfast (waffles, bacon, and eggs)
Caesar Chicken Pasta Salad
Beef Sate with Peanut Dipping Sauce
Club Sandwiches
Cedar Plank Fish (making this up as I go)

I'm making use of having extra bacon from breakfast which is why the club sandwiches made the menu plan for this week.  I'm also going to double the waffle recipe so that we have extra waffles to keep in the freezer for breakfast for the kids.

I know I'll have leftover rotisserie chicken from the pasta salad, so I'm planning on taking that and freezing it until I figure out what to do with it.  Don't be surprised to see something next week that calls for rotisserie chicken.  What do you like to do with cooked chicken?  I'm still on the hunt for a couple of great new recipes.

Update:  I got my grocery costs for this week added up.  You can check out how I did here.

Pork Medallions with Maple-Glazed Apples

This recipe is really easy, but also really popular with my family.  Not only will my kids eat it, but my super-picky sister will eat it, too.  And sometimes it's harder to get her to try something than it is with my older son.


Pork Medallions with Maple-Glazed Apples
Serves 4

4 baking apples (Granny Smith, Gala, etc.  Pink Lady is my favorite), peeled, cored, and sliced
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 pork tenderloin, trimmed, and cut into 1 inch thick slices
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2-3 tablespoons canola oil (can use olive oil if you prefer), divided


For the apples, heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add apple slices and saute until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.  Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the maple syrup.  Simmer until the apples are tender, about 10 minutes.  Stir occasionally.

Pound pork slices until thin (1/4 inch).  In a shallow dish or plate, combine flour, salt, and pepper.  Lightly dredge pork medallions in flour mixture.   Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet pan over medium-high heat.  Add pork to pan in a single layer.  Cook 2-3 minutes on each side until the pork reaches desired level of doneness.  To serve, spoon apples over the pork medallions.


A couple of notes:
*I like to do the pork in my cast iron skillet.
*The pork usually takes me a couple of batches with the size of my pan, hence the extra oil.  Between the batches, add more oil to the pan as needed.
*If it will take a couple of batches to do the pork, turn your oven to warm and have a baking dish inside.  Remove pork from the pan to the baking dish as it is finished to keep it warm.
*This will serve 4 moderate eaters.  If you are serving big eaters, I would double the amount of pork and count on it serving 6.

Enjoy!

Weekly Menu for 5/20

Things are warming up, and we are starting to use our grill a lot more.  Pretty much from here until the end of summer, you will see a regular item on my menu for each week.  That would be: Grill Something.  Very specific, I know.  My husband loves to grill and I love grilled food, so we are a good match.  Pretty much when the plan is to grill something, we choose either something that sounds good or is on a good sale.  Also, Grill Something is prepared with a fresh vegetable side.  You can see that I'm big on advance planning when it comes to grill night. :)

Other than Grill Something, the menu planning strategy is the same as it was before.  Of course, I'm trending toward menu items that are a little lighter on the palate and generally a little quicker to prepare so that I'm not heating up the kitchen too much.  It is definitely okay to take kitchen temperature into consideration when you do your meal planning!

So this week, we are having:

Taco Salad
Grill Something +Vegetable

Menu for 12/7

The weather is turning colder and so more hearty items are making it onto my menu each week.  Some considerations for the menu plan this week were using up the leftover Roast Pork that I made on Monday, the fact that I want a hamburger (my husband will still grill as long as it isn't snowing or raining, lucky me!), and trying to keep my budget on the low side.

I am keeping the basic expenses as low as possible because my grocery store is having a meat sale this weekend.  I already know that I want to get a couple of pork tenderloins since I just used the last one from my freezer.  Beyond that, my purchases will depend on how much money I have left and how good the prices are.

Menu for 11/30

Another week is upon us and after the craziness of last week, I'm ready to start cooking at home again.  We are going to be at home for 5 meals this week, so planning wasn't too bad.  Since the meal plan from last week barely got looked at, there are still two meals that I was going to do that we weren't home to have.

After scanning the grocery ads for this week, I saw that other than a few stock-up items, there wasn't a whole lot that was going to help out with keeping the grocery costs down this week.  I have to check to see what we have before I go to the store, but I'm guessing that half of our protein is coming out of our freezer.  One thing that I did see on sale for this week was avocados.  I love avocados.  Seriously love them.  So one of the big considerations this week was planning for at least one meal that needed avocados.  Here is what I came up with:

Menu for 11/23

Thanksgiving is upon us, and of course this makes for ever-changing menu plans.  I will say, it does feel a bit strange to be thinking about what to eat more than a week from now.  I realize, though, that with our holiday plans, if I don't think about the menu now, the earliest I would get to it was probably next Monday.  And that means that Saturday through next Tuesday would be a mess of trying to get shopping done and meals on the table.  So here I am planning!

The first thing for me to take into consideration for the upcoming week is that this last meal plan that I was working with got changed.  Our 6 dinners at home have now become 4.  Since I already had what I needed to make all of those meals, I had to figure out which ones to keep on schedule and which ones to move back into this coming week.

Menu for 11/16

Here is the menu plan for this week.  I knew that we would have at least one dinner away from home, so there are only 6 evening meals planned.  We will be having:

Baked Potato Soup
Pizza