Meal Plan Monday

It has been a while since I have done a meal plan Monday.  With the holiday’s I was rather busy with getting ready for those as well as Sweet Pea’s birthday, which is on Christmas Eve, you can imagine how busy an already busy time of the year is for us.  While I did try to keep up with our meal planning I wasn’t the greatest.

At the beginning of January CJ and I decided to make a conscience effort in making all our meals at home with an occasionally treat every now and then.  To give you a bigger picture of what our habits were CJ would often eat out 3 meals a day, usually bringing dinner home with him, and occasionally I would get us a coffee breakfast treat or lunch out for Zach and me.  July was by far our worst month where we spent a little more than $1,200 eating out.  That is about the same amount as our monthly mortgage for our home.  I was astounded by this number and knew it needed to come to an end.  So far for January we have only spent $215.00 on eating out, that being mainly CJ eating out for breakfast and lunch at the beginning of the month and one dinner for the 4 of us.  I have gotten into a much better routine in the morning and for the last two weeks or so I have been packing CJ’s lunch and making more of an effort to not give in to the “treat” lunches for the kids and me. There is still major room for improvement but this month is the longest amount of time in a row that we have had home cooked dinners every night.

When CJ and I first started dating it used to be a fun date night for us to go to the grocery store and buy everything we needed for the week, or even stock up at Sam’s Club and meal prep at home.  But for this reason or that we have gotten away from that but are making more of an effort to focus back on those roots we started so long ago. We have turned what used to be our favorite kind of date night into a family outing.  Z-man loves holding the list, helping put things in the cart as well as on the conveyer belt when it is time to check out.  And well Sweet Pea is just excited when she gets a snack during the shopping trip for now. I load up our grocery rewards card with their digital coupons and bring along any paper coupons we happen to clip that week, shop according to what is on sale for that week, and have recently started using the Ibotta app to earn cash back on things we are buying anyway.  All of those savings really add up quickly and plus we earn gas points.

What are some of your favorite money saving tips for the grocery store? Leave them in the comments I would love to hear them!

Here is this week’s menu.  You will notice I don’t plan out lunches as during the week while at home we typically eat leftovers and CJ and Z-man when at school take sandwiches so since that is a constant it takes that one meal a day out of my planning which makes it that much easier.  Also, I am trying to challenge myself to try one or two new recipes each week so we don’t fall into a rut and get sick of the same things all the time. The new recipes I am trying this week are highlighted to take you to the link where I found them.  

S u n d a y

                Breakfast – Breakfast Sandwich

                Dinner – Steak, baked potato and veggie

M o n d a y

                Breakfast – Pancakes with fruit

                Dinner - Parmesan chicken bites, salad and rice

T u e s d a y

                Breakfast – Eggs with yogurt

                Dinner – Taco’s with corn and beans

W e d n e s d a y

                Breakfast – Waffles with fruit

                Dinner - Pork chops, salad and rice

T h u r s d a y

                Breakfast – Blueberry muffins with yogurt

                Dinner – Creamy garlic chicken, potatoes and green beans

F r i d a y

                Breakfast – Eggs with fruit

                Dinner – Pizza with salad

S a t u r d a y

                Breakfast – Omelets with toast

                Dinner – Burgers with macaroni salad and fruit

Sausage Tortellini Soup

Happy New Year  y’all!  I have to be honest here for a minute.  I have wanted to write something for the blog all day but have been struggling to come up with the words.  I think mostly I was over tired from a long night with a sick husband, a coughing preschooler, and a teething toddler.  Momma needed a nap!

I have since had said nap and feel like I can now think clearly and coherently enough to share my thoughts with you.  This isn’t going to be a post about resolutions or how to organize your house in 2 hours.  It won’t even be a post of “How to lose those holiday pounds in 2 weeks!” Not that there is anything wrong with those kinds of post, they just aren’t me as I did not make any resolutions this year.  None at all!  What I did do was choose a word that I want to focus on, that I want to center me in all I do and let it consume me instead of all the outside bull crap that others can sometimes intentionally or unintentionally project onto you. And that word this year is; Joy, Anyway, I digress!

I remember growing up our local grocery store, Nob Hill Foods, would put recipes on the front of their ads and then have all those ingredients on sale for that week so people would want to try them.  My mom was always looking for a good deal to stretch the grocery budget and also for new recipes to subject… I mean offer… yeah offer… to my dad, sister, and I.  Most were hits but if I remember correctly there were a few misses but by golly if there wasn’t a hot meal on the table each night after my parents both put in very long days at the office.

This recipe I am about to share with you is one of those said recipes from the grocery ad all those years ago.  Well, technically it is a combination of TWO of those recipes.  How that happened was when I was living on my own and had just started dating CJ I wanted to impress him with my culinary skills but couldn’t remember either of the recipes in full separately and accidentally combined them.  The result was absolutely delicious and I have never made it any other way, or the individual recipes again, and Sausage Tortellini Soup was born.

Here is what you will need;

  

1 pound Italian Sausage

1 package Tortellini

2 – 32 oz containers Beef Broth

1 jar marinara sauce

1 -2 zucchini (sliced) depends on size

Italian seasoning (about 1 tablespoon)

Minced garlic (about 1 tablespoon)

Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

1 – Remove sausage from casing and brown in a pot.  Drain fat.  Return to pot and add minced garlic and sliced zucchini.

2 – Pour in beef broth, marinara sauce, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.  Let it come to a low boil.

3 - Stir in tortellini and cook according to package directions (just don’t drain.) Once the tortellini is cooked through you are ready to serve.  I like to serve this soup with crescent rolls on the side; I usually sprinkle a little Italian seasoning on crescent rolls prior to baking.

This is a fairly easy recipe that comes together quickly for those busy nights or just a cold night when you are looking for a fast dinner to serve tour family!  It makes a good amount of soup, if I am remembering correctly from when I was growing up it made enough soup for the 4 of us to have dinner a couple times or for my parents to take some as leftovers for lunch that week. For my little family it will stretch a little further. 

I hope you give this recipe a try and enjoy it as much as my little family does.

Until next time my friends!

Meal Plan Monday

Lately we have been trying to get back on track with cooking more at home.  With what CJ does for a living it leads to us often eating out because of the inconsistency of his schedule. But now that the weather if colder and he is home at a more decent hour most nights we have been able to focus more of our energy cooking at home.

I know some people are really into couponing as a way to save money but for us we aim to avoid a lot of the processed foods so coupons don’t really help us much.  But that being said there are a few things that I like to utilize to help us save money. One of our local grocery stores has a savings card that you can load digital coupons on.  I occasionally will look at those and if I see something I know I will need I will add it to the card so when I am paying for my groceries it is automatically deducted on my total bill.  Also, this same grocery store sends us coupons in the mail based off our most purchased items which is awesome!  For example this last batch I received in the mail has 4 free items in the pack two of which are salad mix and frozen veggies which we eat a lot of. So, I pack those along with us and it helps us save in the long run. 

Another way of spreading the savings is they offer a gas reward system so for every dollar spent in their store you earn 1 point.  For every 100 points you get you save $0.10 off a gallon of gas. You can use up to $1.00 of gas points at a time. For us it helps especially now that I don’t work and we only have to fill up the car every 3-4 weeks.

Another money saving tip that I learned a very long time ago from my mom is shop the ad, base you weekly menu on what meat/protein is on sale for that given week.  Stock up when possible on things you know you will use often and have a longer shelf life for your pantry. Doing this will make the weekly shopping easy to stay on budget for that week knowing I can base most of our meals on what I have stocked in our pantry.

Alrighty then.  Now onto the menu for this week, we are trying something a little different and are meal planning not just dinners but also breakfast and lunch.  Lunch is usually the same unless it is a special occasion or a holiday. 

Monday

            Breakfast –      Cereal with fruit

            Lunch –           Mac & Cheese, Nuggets, and Yogurt

            Dinner –          Chicken, Rice Pilaf, and Salad

Tuesday

            Breakfast -      Eggs, Fruit, and Toast

            Lunch -           Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner -          Taco Salad

Wednesday

            Breakfast -      Pancakes, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -            Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner -           Ravioli with Marinara Sauce, Salad, and Bread sticks

Thursday

            Breakfast -      Sausage Bread

            Lunch/Dinner -Thanksgiving

Friday

            Breakfast -      French Toast, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -           Leftovers / Sandwiches

            Dinner –          Make your own pizza

Saturday

            Breakfast -      Omelet, Fruit, and Yogurt

            Lunch -            Leftovers

            Dinner -           Chicken, Rice, and Veggies

Sunday

            Breakfast –      Pancakes, Fruit, and Eggs

            Lunch -            Leftovers

            Dinner –          Crock-pot Roast, Smashed Potatoes, Veggies

Dinner Diaster

I promised you that I would share easy dinner ideas with you.  Well, let me save you from a dinner time rush catastrophe!  CJ has been asking for lasagna recently and normally I would make it from scratch.  Not to say I make everything from scratch because let’s face it ain’t nobody got time for that noise! I am all about boxed cake mix for just about all things, I doctor it up to make it taste more homemade (i.e. put a box of pudding in to keep it extra fluffy and homemade-esque.)  But lasagna is one thing that I normally take the time to make from scratch. 

With that said lately with two little ones and one more on the way I just was looking for EASY. So, while at the grocery store this last weekend we picked up a Stouffer's lasagna.  It looked good and would “save me time” so in the cart it went. 

Cut to Wednesday night, CJ wasn’t going to be home until after 7 pm and it was 5:30 and Z-man and I were hungry, border line HANGRY so I thought we would do the lasagna.  Well that little sucker takes 80 MINUTES to bake.  Yes EIGHTY FREAKING MINUTES!  Well if nothing else dinner would be hot when CJ got home because planning on something simple I hadn’t pulled anything else from the freezer.

We have also hit a phase with Z-man where he is refusing to eat anything that I make for him if it isn’t nuggets, mac and cheese, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  It is phase that makes me want to pull my hair out daily and rock in a corner telling myself over and over “It will be ok.  It will be ok. It will be ok.”

An average dinner conversation goes as follows;

Z-man: “Umm… I think I don’t like this (insert anything other than the three above named items)”

Me: “Well this is what is for dinner and this is what you will eat”

Z-man: “Well, I am not hungry then”

Me:

Super fun right?  Nope not at all.  But to be fair most of it is our fault.  For a period of time the cheaper the meals could be the better for our budget as fund were beyond tight for a while. But now that we are in a better place financially and starting to get back into our old routine of more wholesome eating it is a challenge to change those habits with Z-man.

Sweet Pea on the other hand will eat anything we put in front of her and is happy the whole meal. Oh, Lord, please don’t let me mess up with food with her too! 

But, back to lasagna night, Z-man pulled his new super fun “I’m not hungry.”  And this night we said “Well, if you don’t eat it now you will have it for breakfast. Or lunch if you don’t eat it for breakfast.”  By the grace of some higher power**ahem** us threatening no birthday party**ahem** he took a bite and SHOCKER the kid freaking loved it! I know crazy right! Who would have thought that I would put something eatable in front of my child?

CJ had two helpings and I thought it was gross and vowed to never take the “easy” way out ever again.

This semi disaster could have ended so much worse but going forward I will stick with what I know will be quick during the week and save the new more time consuming things for the weekend when CJ and I can tag team with the kiddos. 

See ya later friends!