Menu

Our menu plan lately has been a loose suggestion rather than a tried and true plan.
By the time I get to Baking Day (Thursday) night, I am tired of being in the kitchen and the trend has been that we go out to eat nearly once an day from Thursday through Sunday - especially if Diva isn't home.  Yikes!  
That's neither helpful for the wallet nor the waistline.

The bizarre thing is that I have food in the freezer like casseroles and soups that I have made from scratch but if I don't remember to thaw them, they take forever to reheat.  So we go out.

This is a lazy new and not very good development since moving to Beloved Bayou.

It's funny how logic becomes my logic.
For example, my logic dictates that if I don't bring processed (read:  quick & easy) foods into my home, we will not eat them and therefore, will be smug healthy.
What happens in real life is I don't feel like cooking, or we have a really busy schedule, there is nothing that can be thrown in the oven quickly, so we end up going out to eat - which is somehow better.
Except it's not.

We end up spending more money and consume more calories by going out to eat; but, at least, I didn't feed my family frozen taquitos from a box.  Wait, what?

In my head, it was okay to spend more time and money to go out and eat processed food that someone else bought because I wasn't the one buying and preparing it in my home.
>Sigh.<
I know, totally illogical and impractical.   I am, and will always be, a work in progress.

I had a bit of an epiphany this weekend and decided it was far better for me to have a few go to items on hand so I have portion control and can boost the nutrition factor with fresh sides.

The moral of the story is this:  Mommas, if you need to have a frozen pizza and fish sticks on stand by for peace of mind and more importantly, peace at dinnertime, then own it ladies.  Don't be shamed into not doing what you've got to do for peace in your family.*

Diva said Thursday morning that she was looking forward to pretty much vegging out the duration of her long weekend.  Instead, she had a highly scheduled and coordinated visit to Marshall which included her going to her old school, spending the night with a friend, spending the night with my parents, going to our old church, and going to Six Flags with her old youth group.  She was much happier with how her weekend turned out.

Engineer and I spent the weekend just running errands and hanging out.  By Sunday morning though, he said we may have to adopt since we won't know what to do with ourselves once Diva is out of the house in a few years.  Let's not think about that yet please Engineer.

This week's menu is a little different.  Instead of pinning myself down this week to a few meals, I went ahead and made a 2 week menu using recipes from my Maw-maw's recipe box.  It gives me more flexibility to be able to cross off what we've eaten and see from what I have left to choose.

Sunday - Taquitos, Salad, Guacamole, Chips & Hotsauce
Monday - Baked Potatoes, Baked Beans, & Green Salad
Tuesday - Lee's Hot Tuna Buns, Classic Potato Salad, & Creamy Italian Salad
Wednesday - Enchiladas, Beans, & Rice
Thursday - Mushroom Risotto, Garlicky Greens, & Baked Cheese Puffs
Friday - Fish Sticks, Slaw, & Pea Salad
Saturday - Leftovers
Sunday - Nutty Cream Cheese Chicken, Apricot Salad, & Green Salad
Monday - Tuna Casserole, Steamed Carrots, & Green Salad
Tuesday - Sausage, Cornmeal Pancakes, Eggs, & Applesauce
Wednesday - Chili, Mexican Cornbread, & Salad
Thursday - Broccoli Rice Casserole & Wedge Salad
Friday - Marinated Chicken, Pea & Bean Casserole, & Salad
Saturday - Leftovers

*This whole thing might just be another facet of my logic trying to justify the purchase of funnel cake corny dogs.

This is part of MPM.