Category Archives: menu plan Monday

It’s beginning to look a lot like Menu Plan Monday

12/28/2015 Nichole

We had a nice/terrible/nice sandwich for Christmas this year. The morning was super. It was just the four of us, and we opened gifts and reveled until just before noon, when Rockford was struck down with a sudden, horrible pain. We took him to the emergency room, and a few hours later we came home with a diagnosis of a 3mm kidney stone. We went ahead with our plan to have family and friends over for dinner, and the evening ended with more gifts and revelry.

We were originally going to be at Rockford’s sister’s house for a few days starting today, but we’re holding off on that until Rockford has expelled his unwanted guest. He hasn’t had any more pain since that initial bout, but he also definitely still has a kidney stone lurking in there somewhere. So our midweek plans are up in the air for now, and as such I only have a few meals planned for this week.

Tacos: My vegetarian sister-in-law will be joining us for dinner tonight, so I’m adding mushroom taco filling a la Rick Bayless to our taco options tonight.

Hungarian goulash: I used a birthday gift card to treat myself to some fancy paprika specifically for this dish. It’s Rockford’s mom’s recipe, and it’s one of my favorites.

Pizza: And it’s my night to choose the accompanying movie.

How have your holidays been? I hope they’ve been both lovely and free of medical intervention.

Looking for more culinary inspiration? Check out Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.com!

menu plan Monday

In which I make the lead-up to Christmas as stressful as possible

12/21/2015 Nichole

I try to do our Christmas shopping throughout the year, picking up gifts for people here and there as I see things they might like. For some reason I did exactly zero of that this year, and now I am suffering the consequences. By which I mean: I have quite a bit of shopping to do this week. Since I decided to load the entirety of this week’s stress allotment into Christmas-gift procurement, we’re having a week full of simple meals.

Monday: Breakfast for dinner: I still need to pick up some bacon for this.

Tuesday: Fish sandwiches and macaroni & cheese: Poppy requested fish sticks this week, and the store was having a buy-one, get-one sale on Gorton’s products. So I bought some sandwich-size planks for Rockford and myself.

Wednesday: Beef stew: This comes together very easily in the CrockPot.

Thursday: Pizza: Due to the paycheck schedule, I will be — to my great and everlasting chagrin — heading out into the commercial wilderness with all of the other last-minute shoppers. So we’ll order pizza for dinner.

Friday: Christmas Dinner: I’m making Homeroom mac & cheese, sweet potato casserole a la Boston Market and Martha Stewart’s Cranberry Trifle (maybe with some white chocolate added in) for our Friends & Family Christmas Dinner. There will also be smoked turkey, ham, spinach casserole, roasted veggies and possibly other treats.

Have a great week!

Need more meal-time inspiration? Check out OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday linkup!

menu plan Monday

How to make an easy meal even easier

12/14/2015 Nichole 1 Comment

Disclaimer: Al Fresco provided me with coupons for free product. I was under no obligation to write a post in exchange, but I like the product so I wanted to share it with you.

I usually only make breakfast burritos for breakfast, but last week we went wild and had them one evening for dinner. I know. My breakfast burrito formula is pretty simple:

big flour tortillas + scrambled eggs + protein + cheese + veggies

Bacon is obviously a favorite protein choice, but we’ve also enjoyed shredded chicken, chorizo and veggie sausages in the past. I used chopped up Al Fresco Apple Maple Chicken patties for last week’s burritos, because the Al Fresco folks sent me some coupons to try out their breakfast products.

We’ve had Al Fresco chicken sausages before, but I’d never tried the breakfast offerings. To be fair, I still haven’t tried them, because I made myself a veggie breakfast burrito. Rockford and Pete, however, give the maple chicken patties their seal of approval. They each had two burritos for dinner, Rockford had another for breakfast the next day, and Pete had another one for lunch.

This week’s menu features neither breakfast nor burritos. We’re having a pretty busy week, which means the menu plan includes a lot of eating out and easily prepped foods.

Monday: Tacos: I think I might have even remembered to get all the necessary accoutrements this time.

Tuesday: Chicken sausages: I usually get the Sweet Apple chicken sausages, but Rockford picked up the Italian style this week. Let’s just hope it complements our accompanying mac & cheese nicely.

Wednesday: Freezerpalooza: It’s high time we cleared out the freezer. Some of us will be having fish sticks, others will have veggie burgers.

Thursday: “STAR WARS” NIGHT: We’re going to pick up some sandwiches before we line up for the 7pm show!

Friday: Olive Garden: Rockford won an Olive Garden gift card in a raffle at work. I’m going to pick it up and bring it home for an evening in.

Speaking of raffles, I’ve got a coupon for 1 free package of any Al Fresco refrigerated item to give to one of you. Do the Rafflecopter’s bidding if you’d like a chance to win it!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Looking for more mealtime inspiration? Check out Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.com!