It's time for a new blog post. It's been a while since I've posted anything. But I posted on FB that I am trying something new for my menu since we have now added football into the mix of the craziness, and I have been asked to share my menu plan for this month.
The first week was before I decided to do the crockpot freezer meals and monthly planning/shopping.
W 8/1: Grilled cheese, tomato soup
R 8/2: Chicken Helper, veggies, salad
F 8/3: Chicken with Sautee'd Tomatoes & Green Beans, rice, salad
S: 8/4: Birthday Party at my Uncle's (no prep)
Su: 8/5: Chili Turkey Dogs, fries, veggies
W 8/8: Pizza, salad, fruit (got the pizza's on sale with coupon shopping)
R 8/9: shredded BBQ chicken (take 3-4 chicken breast, put them in the crockpot, dump a 16oz. bottle of BBQ sauce on it, cook for about 6-7 hours on low, shred with 2 forks and serve on rolls), salad, jello
F 8/10: Hamburgers, potatoes, veggies (hamburger patties were made up earlier this summer and have been in the freezer - this is our last batch. Will have to make more)
S 8/11: Spinach chicken enchiladas, salad, refried beans (I cooked and shredded the chicken for a double batch of this on Sunday and put it in the freezer. Each batch actually makes enough for two meals, so when I finish this, I will have four meals.)
W 8/15: sausage, rice & beans or jambalaya (just cooking some sliced turkey sausage and adding it to a Zatarain's mix), veggies, salad
F 8/17: Breakfast Burritos (will make a huge batch that will feed us for breakfast for months! Well, maybe not months. It depends on how often we eat the leftovers. But we will eat it for dinner and then use the rest to put in the freezer, and at least a couple of us will eat them for breakfast). I will post my recipe below.
Sa 8/18: Spinach, potato, and tomato soup, bread (IMO, make sure you use Chicken STOCK, not Chicken broth for this recipe. It is more expensive unless you make it yourself, but it is much more flavorful)
Su 8/19: Spaghetti with Divine Spaghetti Sauce, veggies, salad (The recipe I got from someone is the exact same as this, except a package (1lb.) of sweet Italian Sausage is browned with the ground beef. I will be making it with both the hamburger and sweet italian sausage. I am going to make a double batch, but it makes a ton, so I expect to get at least 4 batches out of this - possibly more.
F 8/24: Sausage, rice and corn chowder, bread, veggies - I usually get the sausage in 16oz. packages, so I make a double and we eat leftovers for lunch. This is one of those that tastes awesome the next day.
Su 8/26: Spinach & Carrot Quiche, salad. This recipe makes 2 quiches, but I am going to double and make four. We will eat two, and will freeze two for a later date. The recipe calls for 6 eggs. We make it with 8. And I use shredded pepperjack cheese instead of monterey jack. Sometimes I will mix pepper jack and monterey, and other times I will make one with pepperjack and one with Monterey.
T 8/28: Chicken Fajitas (this is going to be made the normal way, but if we find out that we like the crockpot chicken fajitas, we may make them in the crockpot instead).
W 8/29: Grilled Chicken Pasta Salad (we will make a double batch here, because we are taking a double camping with us. This is just as good cold as it is hot.) The recipe I'm linking is a modified version, but the only thing I see different is that the parsley is left out. I noticed that the person that modified the recipe said they use romaine lettuce, and we use that often as well. The recipe says it serves 4, but we've made one batch and have been able to feed 4 adults and 5-7 children with it.
F 8/31: Cold Grilled Chicken Pasta Salad
*Breakfast Burrito Recipe
This recipe makes a ton. We will eat some the day we make them, and wrap the rest and freeze them. I am making this up off the top of my head, because I don't always make them the same.
1pkg. potatoes O'Brien
1/2lb. bacon, chopped
2 pkg. sausage links (the kind you can throw in the microwave frozen)
1-2 cans black beans, rinsed & drained
3 dozen eggs
about 5-6 pkg flour tortilla shells (about the 8" size)
a jar of salsa
about 2-3 cups of shredded cheddar
First, take the 1/2lb. of bacon and chop it into smaller strips. (Take the other half and cut it in three sections and freeze - you can take each section out, let it sit for about 5 minutes, cut it into smaller strips, throw it in a pan, cook it up, add some onions and garlic, and then throw a bag of frozen peas or beans in the pan, and cook for another 5 minutes or so, and you will have a really yummy vegetable!). Anyway, cook in a pan and remove the pieces when they are almost crispy, but leave the grease.
In a separate pan, cook the Potatoes O'brien. You can cook them with a little bit of cooking spray or a little bit of oil, but you don't need to use as much oil as the package says, because you don't really need them crispy. Plus you want it to be a little healthy. (I use the potatoes O'Brien because Zane isn't a big fan of onions or peppers, and this allows me to get some onions & peppers without much fuss from him. If you'd prefer to use hash browns and cook up some chopped onions & peppers, feel free).
While all that stuff is cooking, throw the sausage links in the microwave and nuke them according to the package directions. When they are done, cut them in half lengthwise, then cut those halves again, and then slice them.
Break all the eggs in a bowl. You can add a little milk if you'd like. Beat them until they are smooth. Add the eggs to the bacon grease. If there is more than 1-2 TBSP of bacon grease in the pan, you can drain some of it. But a little bit in such a big batch will give it a nice flavor and keep it from sticking. Cook up your eggs like regular scrambled eggs.
When the sausages, eggs and potatoes are all cooked, throw those things as well as the black beans in a huge bowl and mix them up really well.
Heat a package of tortilla shells in the microwave between two damp paper towels, and pull half of them out, leaving the other half to stay warm in the microwave.
Set out that first half of tortilla shells, scoop about 1/3 cup of the egg mixture onto the tortilla shell, put about 1 tsp to 1 TBSP of salsa on top, and sprinkle about 1-2 TBSP of shredded cheddar on top. Do this to all the shells that are layed out, then fold them up like a burrito. You can fold in the bottom, and then fold the sides so you have an open-ended burrito (like the snack wraps at McDonald's) or you can fold in both the top and bottom and roll the rest of the burrito up. Wrap it in a paper towel or saran wrap or waxed paper, or aluminum foil - whichever you prefer, place them in a freezer bag, and when the freezer bag is full, seal and put it in the freezer. Repeat this with the other half of the package. The do it again until you've used up all the egg mixture. With this quantity, we've usually made about 60 burritos.
When you are ready to eat the burritos, take out however many you need, wrap each in a damp paper towel, and place it in the microwave for about 1.5-2.5 minutes. Enjoy!
We love these things! You can throw other things in there if you want - mushrooms, tomatoes, avocado, swiss cheese instead of cheddar, etc.
So, a few tips.
I have all my recipes saved in word documents, so I just print them out when I'm ready to use them. Then I go through the recipes, and write down what I need for each recipe. I will write it all down. Even the spices and sugar, and vinegar, etc. I take a look around the house to make sure I have everything, and I cross things off the list that I already have.
I do try to group things as I'm writing down the ingredients. It makes it a little easier. This last time, I determined I needed approximately 42 chicken breasts for my meals, and I found packages with about 6-7 breasts per package at Sam's for $1.77 per pound. Not bad! Then I try to list what I know I can get at different stores. I'm not going to buy spices at Sam's in bulk that I only need a tiny container for. I'll get that at Woodman's. And Aldi has limited supplies, so I know I'm going to probably have to go to three different stores. Then I try to sort the list for each store according to the sections that I am going to most likely move through the store. It only takes me a few extra minutes at home, and saves me from having to walk back and forth between the store.
It took about 3 hours for me to do my grocery shopping. When I got home, I enlisted my husband and kids to bring in the purchases while I got started right away on prepping things for the meals. I bought lots of freezer bags! I started writing my meals out on the freezer bags that I was going to prepare and freeze. I also enlisted my husband to help put away some of the food and to get all of the slimy yucky (to touch) chicken out of the packaging and into the bags as I needed. I even had him slice up the chicken for one or two recipes. He also got me some of the ingredients as I measured and chopped.
We had to take a break to have dinner, and then afterwards, it took me a couple more hours. But about 8 hours later, I was done with my planning, shopping, cutting, packing and cooking.
Yes, it was a long day, but now it will take me about 10 minutes a day to prep instead of an hour for most meals. And when we figure out which meals are hits, then next time, I will probably try to make 2-6 batches, depending on how much we like it, so I can put the same thing in each bag, and save even more time by only doing a couple different ones each month, and I'll eventually have a nice rotation. I'll still get to really cook on the weekends, but it will most likely involve multiple batches at once.
