Weekly Meal Plans

1. Garlic Roast Beef w/ Creamy Potato Casserole
2. Leftover Night
3. General Tso’s Chicken w/ rice
4. grilled steaks w/ Penne with Roasted Asparagus and Balsamic Butter
5. grilled burgers w/ Devilish Potatoes w/ rolls, lettuce, tomatoes, red onion
6. Chicken Bacon Quesadillas
7. Sausage, Basil, and Mustard Pasta
Lunches: Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

This is it!  The last week of meals before I leave for Norway!  Woo and eeek!  Aside from meal 1, which is a holdover from last week, I decided to keep it simple and plan my meals solely from my blog archives.  Almost an entire week of repeats – what a rarity! 

It’s also the first week of the Farmers Market, so I had to incorporate lots of tasty green veggies into the meal plan.  Broccoli will be used in meal 3, cucumbers in the lunch recipe, lettuce with the burgers, and asparagus in meal 4… lots of delicious veggies to consume!

1. smoked pulled pork w/ Mustard Sauce w/ rolls w/ side salad
2. Leftover Night
3. Shanghai Chicken Salad
4. Tuna Noodle Casserole
5. Movie Marathon - Out
6. Garlic Roast Beef w/ Creamy Potato Casserole Out, although I forget why.
7. Loaded Carbonara
Lunches: Tater Tot Soup

Well.  Last week did not go as planned at all.   The good side to this is that two of the meals for the week are a holdover from last week.  Meals 2 and 5 are also non-cooking nights.  The rest of the meals are from Cook’s Country.  Hopefully this week will be better than the last one.

1. Smoked Pulled Pork w/ Mustard Sauce w/ rolls w/ side salad Out
2. Unclear Out
3. Mom’s Chicken w/ Tomato-Basil Bread Pudding
4. Thai Red Beef Curry w/ rice
5. Chicken Biryani w/ Yogurt Sauce
6. Roast Chicken with Dijon Mustard-Thyme Sauce w/ Linguine with Garlic Cream Sauce
7. Loaded Carbonara Out
Breakfast: Breakfast Fried Rice

I’m not really in the mood for meal planning this week.  I’ve got some potentially scary health stuff going on at the moment and this isn’t conducive to cooking or planning what I’m going to cook.  As you can see, two of these meals are holdovers from last week due to this lack of desire.

As an attempt to inspire myself, and after seeing just how many Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country (recipes I’ve tried over the years, I decided to treat myself to online subscriptions to both sites.  While I still love the hard copies of the annuals, being able to copy/paste (recipes into my software will be ever so much easier than typing them out! 

I browsed through a few years of Cook’s Illustrated, starting from 1993, and I’m amused that they release a new “best ever” recipe for roast turkey every year for Thanksgiving.  Cook’s Country also seems to have a new recipe for Macaroni and Cheese in every issue. 

All of the new (recipes this week that aren’t holdovers from last week are from Cook’s Illustrated or Cook’s Country. 

This is also a pretty chicken-heavy week.  Chicken is my “comfort protein.”  I’m not sure why this is the case, especially since I used to be completely grossed out by raw chicken and would make Art cut it.  Maybe it’s because chicken tends to be more versatile (at least I think it is) than other proteins?  I don’t know.  I just know that when things are not all right in the world of Gwen, I turn to chicken. 

Hopefully this week will be full of tasty and inspiring meals.

1. Teriyaki Flank Steak with Green Onions
2. unclear Leftover Night (choir)
3. Smoked Pulled Pork w/ Mustard Sauce w/ rolls w/ side salad Out
4. Island Marinade w/grilled chicken w/ Pineapple Fried Rice
5. Stuffed Shells with Sausage and Spinach
6. Breakfast Enchiladas with Ham and Peppers
7. Mom’s Chicken w/ Tomato-Basil Bread Pudding

I have a meal plan!  Yay!  It’s nice to get to plod along on it at a leisurely pace on Saturday before everyone else wakes up.  And then after everyone else wakes up.  Meal planning takes me a long time. 

I started off my planning this week by picking out some cuts of meat from the freezer.  I haven’t actually looked in the meat freezer for a while because Art has been selecting meats.  I was surprised to see what a great dent we’ve made in our meat stores!  It’s pretty impressive.  I picked flank steak (meal 1) and pork shoulder (meal 3).  When Art joined the land of the living he requested Italian sausage (meal 5). 

After figuring out what to do with the meats I turned my two most recently acquired cookbooks and started looking through them.  I picked the side in meal 7 from Weeknights with Giada.  The other book, Cook Like a Rock Star, sadly yielded nothing I wanted to try.  A lot of the dishes look good but when I read through the ingredients, they mostly seem like (recipes I wouldn’t want to make or couldn’t acquire the ingredients in order to make.  It’s a pretty book, but I’m a bit disappointed in it. 

From there I filled in the gaps with (recipes from my bookmarks and now it’s all good to go.  Meal 2 is unclear because I’m having a minor procedure done on my sinuses that day and I have no idea at all what I’ll be up for when we get to dinnertime.  We’ll play that night by ear.  Edit: Sadly my procedure was rescheduled to next week.

I am sort of considering writing blurbs on cookbooks from time to time, but I’m not entirely sure how to go about it.   I do know that I don’t want to do a full blown book review for each cookbook, so it would end up being more like a “thoughts and impressions” type of thing – perhaps with links to the (recipes that I had tried.  I think that would work out well and I could always add to the posts as time went on.  It might make sense to have a page with a hyperlinked list of the cookbooks I’ve babbled about. 

In other news, I’ve been working hard to catch up with my backlog of blog posts.  Since getting home from Nashville I’ve made 49 posts!  I believe I’m as caught up as I’ll ever be.  I have two (recipes left to post and then two random articles that are bouncing around in my head – one would be a post about my favorite kitchen tools and the other would be a post about restaurants we like in Southern Maryland.

1. Bacon Wrapped BBQ Chicken w/ Creamy Pasta
2. Leftover Night (choir)
3. Pizza with various toppings
4. Mexican Tortilla Chicken w/ Pico w/ Mexican Rice
5. Grilled Skirt Steak w/ Roasted Potatoes with Garlic Sauce
6. Chicken Meunière with Tomato and Parsley Sauce w/ Risotto with Currants, Pine Nuts, and Feta Cheese (Yes, I liked the risotto so much that I’m making it twice in two weeks.  What is the world coming to?)
7. Roasted Lamb Loin with Persillade w/ Basic Risotto + Seasonal Veg

As you can see, I haven’t finished up with the meal planning for this week, but I needed to start because I’m going to the grocery store tomorrow and want to at least get food for the first half of the week.  To get that food, I need to know what I’m cooking!  I’ll figure out the last two meals of the week at some point, just not right now. 

Meal 1 is a holdover from last week.  Meal 3 is a request Lance probably made a year ago at this point.  The rest of the new (recipes are from my bookmarks.

Risotto twice in one week!  What is the world coming to?

1. Chicken with Lots of Garlic w/ rice w/ green beans
2. Leftover night (voice/choir)
3. Pasta with Sausage, Basil, and Sundried Tomatoes
4. Risotto with Currants, Pine Nuts, and Feta Cheese
5. Mongolian Beef w/ rice w/ broccoli
6. Bacon Wrapped BBQ Chicken w/ Creamy Pasta Out.
7. Prime Rib Roast w/ Horseradish Cream Sauce w/ Mini Yorkshire Puddings w/ roasted asparagus simple veg (broccoli or asparagus depending on what the store has that looks good)
Lunches: Lemony White Bean, Tuna, and Arugula Salad

I feel like I’m planning this week’s meals early, when I’m really on the late side of things.  What’s up with that?  I’ve got a ton of blogging to catch up on and started making a dent in my backlog earlier today.  Then I decided to take a break and ended up meal planning instead.  After I post this, I’ll really be taking a break.  Or going to cook dinner..

My current backlog, after today’s posts, is about 11 (recipes (this doesn’t include whatever is still on the camera in the “photo studio”), 6 restaurant reviews, and 2 recipe roundups.  I’d also, some day, like to make a post with the places we eat which are actually in Southern Maryland.  My goal is to get all caught up over the next few days and then stay on top of things between now and when I leave for Norway.  Then, when I get home, I’ll only have the Norway wrap up stuff to post!  We’ll see how successful I am at reaching my goal over the next 5-6 weeks. 

This meal plan came together relatively smoothly.  Meal 1 is a holdover from last week since I wasn’t feeling too hot on Friday evening.  Meal 3 is Art’s request.  Meal 4 and the lunch recipe are from Giada’s new cookbook called Weeknights with Giada.  It has a lot of great looking (recipes but these were the first two to reach out and grab me.  Don’t tell Lance that meal 4 is vegetarian!  Meals 5 and 6 are from my bookmarked (recipes. 

I think that Brian will be coming over for meal 7 and I kind of sort of want to make Prime Rib while he’s here since it’s one of his favorites and I got some prime rib roasts from our last cow order with Brian in mind.  I’ll need to do a bit of recipe and menu research to see how feasible that will be and what I’ll want to serve with it! 

In very exciting food news, Lance has secured us reservations for Maaemo, Oslo’s newest (and only) 2-star Michelin restaurant.  I am super thrilled about this and it should be amazing, if a bit intimidating!

1. Out after concert
2. Leftover Night (Tetrazini)
3. Tilapia Piccata
4. Chicken with Lots of Garlic w/ rice w/ green beans Out
5. Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joes
6. Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing w/ some sort of bread I forgot my plan to make bread!
7. Grilled Salmon (and Chicken) with Creamy Horseradish Sauce w/ Spinach and Orzo Salad

This week’s plan is a bit more inspired than last week.  I’m mostly back in the swing of things with day to day life, I’m feeling better, and this choir season is wrapping up.  Life is always hectic right after a trip and right before a choir concert.  It’s even more hectic when both of these things happen at the same time. 

Even though Art is home, I’m sneaking fish into the menu twice this week.  He’ll be out of town for meal 3 and for meal 4 we’ll be grilling salmon and chicken with the same preparation. 

I’m looking forward to getting to cook this week; it’ll be great to feed my family again!

1-2. L&G: Out, A: Fends for himself
3. Out
4. pasta w/ sauce w/ garlic bread - all store bought
5. Out
6. pasta or pizza leftovers
7. Out after concert
Hummus for concert reception

This is the midway point in my meal planning… I’ll fill it in as I get a clue.  Right now things are dependent upon whether or not I’ll actually be able to get to the grocery store on Wednesday.  I’m hoping to get there for at least one meal of food. 

This is a busy week for me.  Not only did I just get home from a 11 day trip, but this week is the week of my choir concert which means I’ve got sectionals on Tuesday, dress rehearsal on Friday, and then concerts on Saturday and Sunday.  I have no idea what meals we’ll be home for as a result! 

Hopefully I’ll have more of a clue about what is going on this week as the day goes on.  It would be nice to, you know, actually get to cook this week!

Update: So much for cooking this week.  Next week will be better!

1-7. L&G: Out, A: Fends for himself

Exciting meal plan, eh?  Lance and I were in Indianapolis, French Lick, and Nashville during this week to work events.  Art was home and had a large supply of leftovers for meals. 

It seems silly to post this as a meal plan, but I’m a completionist.

1. Makhani Dal w/ Naan w/ basmati rice
2. Leftover Night (voice/choir)
3. Chicken Sancoche
4. Eye Round Roast w/ Horseradish Sauce w/ Sautéed Mushrooms
5-7. L&G: Out, A: Fends for himself

Well then.  Last week did not go as planned at all and, as a result, two of this week’s meals (1 and 4) are holdovers from last week.  Oops.  This week is also a short week due to an upcoming trip, so I only had to add one meal to the plan.  I’m taking the easy way out and adding a family favorite – Sancoche.  Yum. 

Sadly this trip out of town won’t involve a ton of awesome restaurants, but we will be going to St. Elmo (hopefully) for my birthday which is super exciting! 

I’ve got a great deal of blogging to catch up on, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen until I’m home again from this trip.