Spaghetti & Lentil Sauce??

It has been a wee bit to long since I posted last. I sort of fell out of my schedule. Getting things back under control now though.

Last night we had roasted potatoe slices with a chicken stirfry. Yum.

I had forgotten to take meat out last night. So when supper came around tonight I was a little stuck. So I decided to make spaghetti and sauce. I wanted some sort protein in there along with something with a bit more substance, so I threw in a can lentils. I was not sure if the kids would eat it, they had seen me put the lentils in. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that they all loved my spaghetti and lentil sauce. My son even decided to take it for lunch tomorrow. Wohoo! One for mom!

I had mine with rice noodles

Zacks Version with “Shaky” cheese

I spent some time tonight making breakfast. So tomorrow they will be getting bacon, boiled eggs & banana chocolate chip muffins. mmmmm!

Roast Beef…mmmmm

So I am getting a little behind here.

Last week was a bit of a bust, I have to admit. We were invited to Grandma’s for supper, which was fantastic. It threw my plan off though, but eh, these things happen. As I said at the beginning, I knew that it would not go perfectly. And that is just fine. I confess that we did go out for supper on Thursday and a couple times on the weekend when we were  away. We are home now though and back on track. I did not write out my plan for this week as I have before. I am keeping track in my mind….

Anyway, Monday we had taco salad. It is something my family loves. Z and J helped out. Z cut the veggies and J cooked the hamburger, such good helpers!

When I was a kid we called taco salad “mountains” and that name has been passed down to my kiddies. They are usually pretty excited to eat mountains. I think we call them that because we always unintentionally put to much food on our plates! Mine was so good that I ate most of it before I remembered to take a picture. So here is Z’s. He was late to the table and therefore had to wait longer for me to take a picture.

 

 

Then on Monday night, after we were done enjoying our delicious supper and while the boys did up the dishes. I prepared a roast and some potatoes for the next day. I place the roast in a crockpot with a mixture of beef broth, mushroom soup and onions. This went in the fridge over night. I then peeled a bunch potatoes and put them in a sealed container and in the morning before I headed off to work, I cut the potatoes and put them in the crock pot with the rest of the delicious smelling food. I turned it on low at about 8am and when I got home at 5pm it was perfect! I then removed all the potatoes from the pot, after I took out the roast, and I mashed them. There was enough juice with the potatoes from taking them out of the crock pot, that I just added a little skim milk to the mashed potatoes. I then took the juice from the crock pot and made a gravy from it, by simply adding a flour mixture and letting it boil in a sauce pan.

 

It was so good and everyone in my house loves mashed potatoes. I just hate making them. I don’t mind them when they are this full of flavor though. YUMMY. There was enough left over that I was able to take some for lunch at work and we had leftovers for supper before we headed to TKD.

My plan is still working, just hit a little bump last week. I am liking this cooking at home. We sit down to a meal, I talk to the kids, find out about their day and just generally enjoy that time.

Tomorrow is going to be roast turkey breast. Mmmmmm.

Meatballs.

My family loves meatballs. I was reading an article in Real Simple recently. In the magazine it talks about meatballs, mmmmmm. So that is what we had.

Plans did change though. Instead of  taco salad yesterday, we had meaballs. I prepared the meatballs yesterday, instead of Saturday. Just the way things turned out. I knew that my plans won’t always go 100% snag free, but I am prepared for that.

So I made my meatballs. Some turkey and some beef. I have a couple picky palates and so I try to make it less of a fight. Therefore, one package of beef and one package of ground turkey. All I did was put in two eggs, a cup of oats, a little sea salt, a little pepper and a little bit of flavor, veggie seasoning by ClubHouse. Yummy. Everyone loved it, even my daughters bestest friend!

I served it with whole wheat spaghetti and raw veggies, because raw is the only way veggies seem to be eaten around here! Which is just fine, at least they eat them.

 

Then I had enough leftover for tonight. I did more traditional style spaghetti and meatballs. I cut up celery, onion and green pepper and sauteed them. I then opened a can of tomatoes with italian seasonings and I can of tomatoe paste, and mix them together. Then I dumped the tomatoe mix, along with the sauteed veggies on top of the meatballs in a pyrex dish and threw them in the oven until the meatballs were cooked through. My family also loved these. I have just a little leftover for lunch tomorrow.

 

I like how this is all working still. I bought groceries on saturday and it cost me just over $100. Beautiful! We did go out for lunch yesterday, but it is kind of a family tradition with grandma and grandpa. Perhaps next time we will have them over here for lunch.

Hot Sandwich.

I want to call them panini, but they weren’t really. They were just sandwiches thrown on the grill. I need to remember to use my George Foreman grill more often for these types of things!

The kids each made their own sandwich, with all the ingredients they love. Then I threw them on the grill and pressed them. They were so tasty! We used turkey, ham and roast beef deli meats. Put on some lettuce, tomatoe,  a slice of bacon each and a little tiny bit of cheese and voila…hot sandwich. AJ and Z used mayo too, I had a tiny bit of sea salt and J and G didn’t use any sauce at all.

Tomorrow nights meal plan has changed. We are going to use up the rest of the sandwich stuff up by making sandwiches.The family all { L O V E D } this, so we will do it again. Tomorrow is also grocery shopping day. I hate grocery shopping, sure is easier though with a plan in place, and I am wagering a teeny, tiny bit less on the expensive side and less waste too. No more gross broccoli stinking up the place.

Until tomorrow! It’s been a slice, *wink, wink.

Leftover night. Next weeks meal plan.

Tonight was leftover night. The rest of the sheperds pie was polished off and there is just enough of the chicken taco stew for my lunch tomorrow! How fantastic! And we were more than on time to J’s archery class. Is this for real?

I sort of did not expect this week to go as well as it has, I am somewhat in shock. Usually I plan and I have all these good intentions and they all just fall apart and I am left frustrated.

The difference this time? I did not put a lot of pressure on myself to do anything fancy or required an overly large amount of work. This has in turn freed up time for me when I need time freed up. For instance, on Wednesday, I have a bit more than an hour turn around time between work and leaving to get to taekwon-do. Why didn’t I do this sooner?

Last night I made bread (in my breadmachine), another batch of muffins and another batch of protein bars. Did I mention that the protein bars kind of taste like cookies? Super yum! And so the kids have breakfast for a few more days. And I have some healthy snack choices at work. I need to go pick up some more fruit though, the kids really eat through it like crazy.

I think part of my small success this week was partially due to my very loving husband, who has been on board 100%. He likes home cooked meals, a lot! And so he is willing to visit with me while I do my thing in the kitchen and he is willing to help out when I need it too. Another contributing factor to this success, I am planning supper ONLY. I just plan to have leftovers and whoever wants to take them in their lunch can or I have planned leftover night. The kids make their own lunches and I always keep a decent stash of breakfast foods, so no thinking there either.

So what is my plan for next week. Funny you should ask!? Here it is:

THIS WEEKS FOOD MANAGMENT PLAN:

Saturday ~ Pita pizza’s, everyone can choose their own toppings and we will use up the meat from panini’s on friday.

Saturday is prep day. I am going to cut up a bunch of veggies to be ready to go either in meals, kids lunches or just for a healthy snack. I plan to make ahead meatballs for two meals next week.

Sunday ~ Taco Salad

Monday ~ Stir fry perogies – saw this in a magazine, you fry up perogies with some veggies thrown in the pan with a little olive oil…mmmm! 

Tuesday ~ Spaghetti & meatballs with spinach and herbed tomatoes and a little parmesan cheese to top it off

Wednesday ~ Leftovers

Thursday ~ Turkey breast, homemade fries and veggies. (they liked it last week!) I will have the potatoes pre-peeled and the turkey pre-cut. The kids can just slice the potatoes on the fry maker. Then they can throw the turkey breast and fries on a pan and in the oven. Voila! 

Then we will be spending the weekend with my mom. I will have to do up a meal plan again on Thursday for the following week to stay ahead of the game! Tomorrow night the kids will make their panini creations and I will put the sandwiches on the grill for them and then we will be off to youth for the evening.

Have I mentioned that I love this new plan??

So far so good. Really good….

….mmmmmm!

Tonight was Chicken Taco Stew. Soooo good. I threw it all in the crockpot and cooked it overnight. Then this morning I put it in the fridge on a hot plate to cool and when I got home we just put a portion in a bowl, heated it and ate! I threw in a few taco chips on top and the kids ate it like it was dip for chips. This worked so well! I had supper done, my taekwondo bag packed and had time to put this post up all before 6:15. I got home just after 5 and I will be leaving in 15 minutes. This means I did this all in just under an hour and a half. I feel like I have a accomplished something! I feel like this is going to work.

Yesterday after school, I had Z, my twelve year old, turn on the oven and put in the sheperds pie and when I got home, I took it out and we ate! Wohoo! This is going so well. I won’t make this sheperds pie again. I love it, and AJ loved it….the kids had other feelings about the weird orange “potatoes”. It was worth a shot!

Then the baking I did on Monday has lasted a couple of days. I made protein “cookies”, don’t tell my kids they are good for them. They will likely stop eating them. I also made pumpkin muffins which my son loves and those have been going over well for breakfast. My daughter has a muffin and a yogurt and some fruit for breakfast. And the boys have it with just fruit, not big on the yogurt.

So far, so good! Have I mentioned this is working great!

Chicken, homemade fries and veggies.

The first night of my new way of doing things went well!

I made chicken with a little Mrs. Dash chicken seasoning and my daughter and I made homemade fries together. I had boughten a french fry maker a while ago, so we put it to good use tonight. I put olive oil and sea salt on them. We then threw all of that (chicken and potatoes) on a baking pan and cooked them all together. The potatoes were really good with that little bit of chicken flavour! Then I also cooked up some frozen mixed veggies.

My family must have REALLY been missing home cooked meals, because they downed it pretty quick. I only got to take a pic of the leftovers that are going in my lunch!

The other thing I spent a bunch of time doing today was baking and preparing meals and a my meal plan for the rest of the week. I am collecting recipes and putting them into a recipe binder. All the recipes that my family enjoys, that are quick and easy and that we can use lots! The dependable ones, will all be in one place, no more searching through 5 cook book for “that recipe they liked that one time!”

Dinner Time!

I am a wife and mother of three and I work full time. Supper is a challenge!

We have our weekly routines with different activities on different nights, and then have added extra school things and a husband being away on occasion and evening meetings for different reasons, who the heck has time to cook!

The purpose of this blog is to help me reach my goal of making supper almost every night.

Currently we spend too much money eating out. We have three children and so feeding five at a restaurant cost around the $75 mark. Multiply that by say 5 times a month (minimum) and that equals just under $400. That is if we only go five times and if my husband doesn’t have a beer or two or me some sort of drink. We have in some months spent over $600 eating out!

I also spend too much on groceries! I rarely go with a list or have planned out what we are going to eat. I am sort of a fly by the seat of my pants sort of a meal person. This is going to change! My pocket book will love me more!

I want to start using simple recipes, my crock pot and have at least one night a week that my children do a supper!

And I am going keep track of all that I am doing. Maybe share some good recipes I come across, that the family has liked and some pictures of the latest tastings.

So here it goes! Tomorrow is the first day!