Menu Plan 2/28-3/6

Monday- Friends- Bring bean dip and chips

Beans, Cheese, Sour Cream, Franks Hot Sauce, Tortilla chips

Tuesday- Hubby has Night Duty, Probably just cold cereal

Wednesday- Grilled cheese Sandwiches and Roasted Asparagus

Bread, butter, cheddar cheese, canned soup, asparagus, e.v. olive oil, salt, italian bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese

Thursday- Tortellini with crescent rolls and steamed zucchini

Frozen Tortellini, sauce, pillsbury crescent rolls, zucchini, butter, salt and pepper (if you'd like to make your own crescent rolls try these)

Friday- Hobo Dinners (I will try to post this! Super easy and yummy!)

Ground Beef, green beans, potatoes, carrots, corn, butter, salt and pepper

Saturday- German Pancakes with Fruit

eggs, milk, flour, salt, butter, peaches, pears

Sunday- Family Dinner

My menu plans are a lot different these days, but if you are looking for some really simple dinner ideas, quick and easy dinners are all I am doing these days (and probably for the next few months!) I thought I'd post my weekly menus and when I can I will post a recipe if I don't have it on my blog yet! Slowly but surely I'll get better. Sorry my blog is pretty lame, but hopefully you'll enjoy the recipes already on here and I can't wait to start cooking and sharing again!

My Story

Sorry that I dropped off the face of the planet!!! :) If you'd like to read my story I wrote about what is going on and why I have been gone for so long here on my family blog. It isn't written well because I still am having a hard time thinking straight and it's hard for me to put a sentence together. The bad news is I'm still not cooking (hopefully soon!!) but the good news is, I am pregnant with a little boy and the sickness will be over at some point. Then I will be able to get back to cooking and blogging! :)

Menu Plan 10/25

Menu Plan

Monday: Gnocchi with Alfredo and broccoli

Gnocchi, flour, butter, milk, white cheeses, broccoli

Tuesday: Bean and Cheese Quesadillas with salad

Re fried Beans, shredded cheddar cheese, tortillas, butter, salad, dressing

Wednesday: Meatball Grinder Pizza w/ salad (something new we are gonna try I made a list of fun pizza ideas and this is the one hubby chose)

ground beef, crackers, egg, pizza crust: flour, water, sugar, yeast, salt; marinara sauce: garlic, basil, 35 oz peeled tomatoes, extra v. olive oil, salt & pepper, shredded Parmesan cheese, salad

Thursday: Breakfast for Dinner with Fruit

Eggs, Bacon, toast, fruit

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: Pasta, sauce, and Bread sticks with green beans

Pasta, Sauce, cheese, green beans, bread sticks: flour, water, sugar, yeast, salt, Parmesan, garlic salt, butter

Sunday: Family Dinner

White Sicilian Pizza

I found this recipe on browneyedbaker and had to try it!

It was really good!! When I was younger my mom would make pizza without sauce for me... cuz sauce was yucky! Now I like it as long as it is smooth with no chunks in it and I still don't put very much! :) Oh and instead of tomato slices I just used pepperoni because we like our pepperoni pizza around here, and tomatoes...not so much!

The crust is thin and flaky almost like pie crust, you make it like you would a pie crust then add yeast with the water.

Crust

2-2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for kneading

1 TBS sugar

1 tsp salt

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, chilled and cubed

2/3 cup warm water

1/2 tsp instant yeast

Preheat oven to the highest that it can go, mine was 525 degrees. Preheat your pizza stone with the oven if using a pizza stone.

In a mixing bowl combine the flour, salt, and sugar. Using a pastry blender add the butter into the flour mixture and work it in until it resembles coarse sand. In a large measuring cup combine the water and yeast. Add water to flour and mix with a fork until evenly moistened.

Turn onto a floured surface and knead until it is smooth and comes together. Split the dough into two equal balls and let them rest under a damp kitchen towel for 30 minutes.

If using a pizza stone, flour your pizza peal and shape the dough on that. If your just using a pizza pan then you can do it on parchment paper. Shape one piece of the dough into a 10 inch circle. Cook for 5 minutes. Repeat with the other piece of dough. I only made one pizza and froze the other dough (I froze it AFTER I cooked it for the 5 minutes, so now I'll just take it out of the freezer top it and put it in the oven for 5-10 mins!)

Take your crust out of the oven and brush with olive oil and top with cheeses, seasonings, and pepperoni, or whatever else you choose.

Toppings

Olive Oil

Shredded Provolone

Shredded Mozzarella

Grated Romano

Garlic Powder

Dried Basil

Dried Oregano

Salt and pepper

Pepperoni

Return to oven for 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted and starts to brown. Mine only took 5 minutes.

Tortilla Soup

My husband LOVES tortilla soup!

On our 1 month anniversary when we were first started dating I tried to make it for him from a recipe I found online. I, being the picky person I am, had never tried tortilla soup and didn't know what it was supposed taste like. It had very little flavor and had a bunch of big chunks of veggies in it. I didn't even taste it and my hubby politely thanked me and suggested we fix it up a bit :)

So when we were in Texas with his parents, we went to this restaurant where he likes it best and the following recipe is what we came up with!

Tortilla Soup

1 cup shredded/cubed chicken, previously cooked

1 can fire roasted diced tomatoes

1 can white hominy

1 cup black beans

3 cups chicken broth

Cumin Powder
Chili Powder

Ground Cayenne pepper to taste (add more if you like it spicy!)

dash of garlic salt 

couple dashes of onion powder

1/4 cup sour cream

shredded cheddar cheese

Drain the cans of tomatoes and hominy and pour into a 3 or 4 qt pot over medium high heat. Add the chicken, black beans and chicken broth. Add in chili powder and cayenne pepper, I add quite a bit, just do it to the flavor that you want it. Just a dash or two of garlic salt and three dashes of onion powder... just add a little until it tastes good :) Take off of the heat and add the sour cream. Top with more sour cream (if you'd like), shredded cheddar cheese, and baked corn tortilla strips!

P.S. I eat it ALL except for the tomatoes! I really have come a long way with my picky-ness :)

Baked Corn Tortilla Strips

3 corn tortillas

salt

cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut each tortilla in half, then into little strips. Spray with cooking spray and sprinkle with salt. Bake in oven for about 10 minutes, flipping half way through (I didn't time it so just check them, bake until crispy)

Menu Plan 10/18

I make a menu for every week, which saves me time and money when grocery shopping! I started coupon-ing about a year and half ago and found that it doesn't really save money unless you have a plan for the things that you buy! I just wanted to share with you guys my menu plan for this week!

It is always horrible when you have a busy day (everyday!!) and 5 O'clock rolls around (or 6 O'clock!!) and you realize you should have started dinner already, or at least thought of what you want to make. Having a menu plan gets rid of the stress of moments like that.

It'll keep you from picking something up from a fast food restaurant, starting something and realizing you don't have some of the ingredients you need, or, if your like us, eating cereal for dinner!

This week the menu is as follows:

Monday: Grilled cheese Sandwiches with Chicken Alfredo Soup (Campbell's :) )

Bread, butter, cheddar cheese, 2 cans of Chicken Alfredo Soup

Tuesday: Bacon Potato Torte with Broccoli

2 pie Crusts: flour, salt, 2 sticks butter, water; Potatoes, Bacon, half & half, cheese, salt & pepper, egg, Broccoli

Wednesday: Leftovers (Hubby has to work until 9 pm)

Thursday: Tortilla Soup* with corn bread

Shredded Chicken, diced tomatoes, Hominy, Cheese, chicken broth, Black beans, sour cream, corn tortilla strips, cayenne pepper, chili powder, garlic salt, onion powder, butter, sugar, 3 eggs, milk, flour, corn meal, baking powder, salt

Friday: Chicken Enchiladas* (leftover corn bread)

Tortillas, shredded chicken, cheese, green enchilada sauce, cream of chicken soup, sour cream

Saturday: White Sicilian Pizza* with salad

Dough: Flour, sugar, salt, butter, water, yeast; olive oil, shredded provolone, mozzarella, grated Romano, garlic powder, basil, oregano, garlic cloves, slat & pepper, pepperoni, salad, dressing

Sunday: Family Dinner

(Every Sunday we have "family" dinner, with people who are all family... except for us... well not technically anyways, but lucky for us they've adopted us!)

*Recipes to be posted, if I in fact get around to making them! :)

The Menu Plan is not a no fail plan, but it definitely helps things run smoother. Some days we don't get home with enough time to make what is planned (or I just don't feel like it!) so we throw something quick and easy together. I assign days to meals but usually depending on how the day goes and how much time I have I switch it up, but I know that I have all of the ingredients for all of those meals!

What I do is look through my pantry to see what I have, look through the grocery store sales- pretty much I only go to Publix cuz it is awesome! (I use Iheartpublix.com and southernsavers.com for easy deal hunting, they do all of the work, it's great! ) Then start thinking of meals I can make with things I have on hand or that I can get the ingredients for cheap.

I keep my pantry well stocked with things that I know I am going to use by getting about 3-6 weeks worth of that item when it goes on sale, depending on how many coupons I have for it.

I write my menu plan in my notebook (yes, I'm THAT kind of person, you know, the kind that has like a bazillion notebooks- ok so only 3 5 subject ones right now, but I pretty much write everything down and make list after list to keep organized!)

I write down the full meal I want to make, then on the next line write all of the ingredients I'm going to need (shown above!) I then go through all of the ingredients and write down at the bottom of the page a grocery list!

This week all I have to get is a can of Hominy! Two of the meals were supposed to be made last week, but things got a little crazy because my baby girl either got the measles or had a really bad reaction to her MMR shot :( ! So I already have a lot of the ingredients that I needed. Life is Crazy all on it's own, might as well try to be prepared for the things we can be!!

Nourish the Children

As I have mentioned before, I am a distributor for Nu Skin Enterprise. We have a program called Nourish the Children that is feeding starving and malnourished children around the world.

It is simple to buy a VitaMeal for donation. When you purchase and donate VitaMeal through Nourish the Children, ownership will be transferred to reputable humanitarian agencies to distribute the food to important projects around the world. US distributors and customers can also purchase VitaMeal to donate to their favorite US charity, soup kitchen, or project. This is a great way to address hunger at the local level. One bag of VitaMeal feeds a malnourished child for one month and only costs $22 per bag.

We not only create these meals to donate, but we also go to some of the poorest countries and teach them to be more self sufficient. It truly is an amazing program that I encourage you to read more about it by going to http://rmlaw.millionsofmeals.com/?gwpID=USW9289703

I would really appreciate it if you could help me get the word out so we can reach our goal to exceed 200 million donated meals by the end of 2010!!

Nu Skin is an anti aging, skincare, and nutrition company. "Nourish the Children may be 5 percent of what we do, but it is 95 percent of who we are"-Blake Roney, NuSkin Chairman of the Board.

"We are deeply troubled that every day children around the world are dying from malnutrition. Nourish the Children unites Nu Skin with our extensive worldwide distributor force in nourishing the world's hungry children. Our joint mission is to be a powerful force in saving children's lives.".

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