Tag Archives: meal planning

Youth sports and the dinnertime conundrum

02/19/2018 Nichole

Soccer practice is back this week, which means we won’t be home at a reasonable hour a few nights a week for the next few months. I’m going to try not to hit the drive-thru every practice night, but history tells us there’s a high chance of cheeseburgers on a regular basis.

Here’s what we’ll be having this week:

Monday: Grilled Something Sandwiches: This’ll be some combination of cheese, bread, ham and a saute pan.

Tuesday: BFD: Ah, my faithful old eggs and veggie sausages. You’re always a winner.

Wednesday: Rotisserie chicken and salad: I said we would be having this a few weeks ago, thanks to a coupon for a free meal from Whole Foods. I never went to Whole Foods, though, so we never used the coupon. Hopefully I get over there this week.

Thursday: Tortellini: Poppy’s request. I’m not sure cheese tortellini is Lactaid-worthy to me, so I’ll probably just have a big salad.

Friday: Takeout: There’s a Thai place nearby that I’d like to try, but I’m 99.9 percent sure the kids won’t try anything there. So it might be Pad Thai or Whatever Cereal You’d Like to Serve Yourself night.

Hungry for more? Check out the Menu Plan Monday linkup at OrgJunkie.

menu plan Monday

A menu plan for a drizzly week

10/23/2017 Nichole 1 Comment

I spent the weekend between my brother’s house and their hospital, where they were welcoming my new nephew to the world. He’s tiny and adorable, and we came back home just as he was finding his voice so I’m not certain that he’s very loud but I’m betting he is. Now they’re home and working to settle in to their new normal and we’re home and settling back in to our Normal normal.

Just to prove to myself that my Normal normal is extra mundane, I’ve spent this gray and rainy morning working through the piled-up laundry and filing away printed-out recipes that were clogging the countertop. I found a couple of good ones in there that I’d forgotten about. Hopefully I won’t re-forget them and they’ll make an appearance on our table pretty soon.

This week’s menu, though, I made before excavating the counters. Here’s what we’re having for dinner this week:

Monday: Chicken Tacos: This is meant to be a Freezer Bag meal — you toss all the ingredients in a bag and freeze it and throw it in the CrockPot at your leisure — but I’m skipping the freezer step to try it out for the first time.

Tuesday: Orange Chicken: I have a coupon for a free PF Chang’s At Home meal from the freezer. I hope it’s good.

Wednesday: Undecided: I’m relatively certain I’ll be picking something up on the way home from soccer practice this week.

Thursday: Rotisserie chicken and baked sweet potatoes: Pete loves baked sweet potatoes, but we discovered a few weeks ago that a sweet potato alone left us all hungry shortly after eating. I’m adding some protein this time.

Friday: Chicken Pot Pie: I have yet to decide whether I’m going to try to use a dairy-free alternative for the gravy or if I’ll just go for it with whole milk and hope Lactaid does its thing. Have you ever tried to make a dairy-free gravy?

I just realized that we’re having chicken pretty much every day. I try to vary our proteins a bit more than that, but clearly I didn’t do a good job of that this week.

Hungry for more? Check out the Menu Plan Monday linkup at OrgJunkie.

menu plan Monday

Days of soup and babies

10/17/2017 Nichole

Rockford and I were trying to count up the number of times I’ve had trips away from home on my own in the last 12 years. It was a very small number — four or five blogging conferences, that time my nephew was born — but it’s about to get one digit larger because this weekend I’m going to my brother’s house to greet my newest nephew! I can’t wait to meet him, and the kids are pleased to get Daddy Meals for a few days.

Monday: Soy-glazed pork & rice cakes: I tried to re-create the Blue Apron recipe that we loved from a few months ago, and it was pretty successful. I used House of Tsang “Classic Sauce” in place of the soy glaze, and I couldn’t find fairy tale eggplant so I just left the eggplant out. It was a little too salty — I need to find a less sodium-packed black bean sauce — but otherwise it was a success. I want to find another use for the Korean rice cakes, too, because I love them.

Tuesday: Butternut squash ravioli: We’re trying Trader Joe’s ravioli this time, with their Autumnal Harvest pasta sauce as a dipping sauce. I’d just toss it over everything, but it’s made with cream so I can’t have it.

Wednesday: Chicken Noodle Soup: I’ve been making a lot of Crockpot recipes on Wednesdays because the alternative is picking something up at a drive-thru on the way home from soccer practice and I’m trying to avoid that as much as possible. It’s been excellent soup weather here so far this week. Hopefully the cool weather holds out until Wednesday.

Thursday: Rockford’s Choice: I’ll bet it’ll be pancakes.

Friday: Pizza: There’s a pretty fair chance they’ll get Papa John’s.

Hungry for more? Check out the Menu Plan Monday linkup at OrgJunkie.