Meal Plan Monday 3/1/10

I have to get serious about getting back in better shape, and Ken and I are going to try out P90x in a couple weeks.  So this week I'm really trying to focus on not only healthy, natural, whole food meals, but also on low-calorie, low-fat, high-protein dishes.  On top of keeping everything frugal... should be super easy! eek.
I also need simplicity right now.  So I'm looking for a few Crock-pot recipes, so I don't have to be in the kitchen, messing up dishes and trying not to burn dinner while the kids run wild wreaking havoc on the house.  Several days this week we've been busy in the evening, and then at 5 or 6, I'm rushing home to start dinner and already have starving cranky kids impatiently waiting.  So, low easy prep is important too.  Those aren't unrealistic expectations, right?
I got yummy stuff from my Organic Produce Co-op this week, wanna see?

 

The fruits and the avocados are usually used up for snack.  We've been getting cilantro for the past few weeks and I'm obsessed with making fresh guacamole with this seasoning called Herby that I bought from the family that runs the co-op. It's an organic seasoning blend made with herbs and spices, and it's got great flavors so I'm putting it on everything now.

Here's my menu plan along with explanations for what I'm thinking when I'm planning and how I try to balance cost with health.

Monday
Oven Baked Buffalo Chicken Fingers from my friend Leilani - I don't know where she got it from. :-)
with Ranch & Carrots (Kenny is crazy about Ranch dressing on everything, and so, of course, are the kids.)
Romaine Salad

Serves 6 to 8
Ingredients
1/4 cup hot sauce
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons tomato catsup
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken tenderloins
1 1/2 cups dried whole wheat bread crumbs
Vegetable oil cooking spray
Method
Stir together hot sauce, vinegar, soy sauce, and catsup in a wide, shallow dish to make a marinade. Add chicken, turn to coat, cover and refrigerate for 10 minutes, or overnight. Remove chicken from marinade and gently press it into the bread crumbs, rolling well to evenly coat chicken all over.
For Freezer: After coating chicken, flash freeze on a baking sheet, covered in plastic wrap until firm.  Place flat in a Gallon-size freezer bag.
Prep Directions: Thaw (if from frozen). Place on greased baking sheet, being careful not to overlap them. Spray chicken all over with oil and bake for 20 minutes at 375, or until cooked through and golden brown.
Nutrition
Per serving (about 4oz/103g-wt.): 180 calories (20 from fat), 2.5g total fat, 0.5g saturated fat, 55mg cholesterol, 710mg sodium, 15g total carbohydrate (0g dietary fiber, 2g sugar), 22g protein


Tuesday
Barbecue Pulled Chicken from EatingWell.com
over whole wheat buns, with pickles, sliced red onions & little bit of sour cream
Steamed Artichokes w/lemon butter
*I'm going to reserve 1/4 cup of the sauce for tomorrow's recipe .
This can be made super cheap using pre-made barbecue sauce that is often free or just pennies (how you ask?  It goes on sale for $1-$1.19 and a .35 cent coupon triples at my grocery store, which takes off $1.05, making it free - .14 cents!). The bottled bbq sauce is mostly high-fructose corn syrup and full of other yucky preservatives and artificial additives, so I prefer to make my own sauce, like in this recipe.  BUT, I'll get a few of the free bbq sauce when they're available because on a busy day, or when I haven't made it to the grocery store yet, I can pull ribs or chicken out of the freezer and a bottle of sauce, plus a bog of frozen veggies (I also get these FREE) and get a quick cheap dinner everyone loves - it's still healthier and less expensive than the alternative of grabbing fast food or eating out. Using the free pre-made stuff it would cost only $4.70 for 8 servings (just the cost of chicken @ $1.88/lb on sale).  I'm estimating about $7.50 for 8-servings for the original recipe (I don't have time to calculate the exact cost of each amount of spice :-).

Wednesday
Family Pizza Night
Greek Salad *rolled over from last week - I was busy and went with a few frozen pizzas instead!  Kenny's begging for real pizza night, so I'll be getting our favorite toppings this week.

Thursday

Sweet 'n Sassy Flank Steak from Jo Jo Ba on Sparkrecipes.com
served over Wilted Spinach
Frozen Garden Vegetable Medley (Free last week @ Kroger's with coupons)

Perfect recipe for this week!  Flank Steak is on sale, this is made in the crockpot, and it uses the sweet potatoes, pineapple, onion (I'll be using red, not white) & spinach from the co-op, plus I have all the other ingredients on hand, and am already making BBQ sauce for the Tuesdays' dinner.
Flank Steak (also called London Broil.  Or maybe it's just similar to London Broil.  I don't know if they're the exact same cut, but I know they're pretty much interchangeable in recipes) is on sale at Randall's this week for 1.88/lb (usually $5.49, so big savings!)  I'll buy enough for this recipe but I'll also buy several extras and mix up a couple marinades (can be seriously simple: a packet of onion soup mix with tomato sauce, a cup of salsa with some garlic, lemon & soy sauce, whatever) and put the Flank Steak into a Ziploc Freezer bag with the marinade and then freeze.  Then I've got easy inexpensive marinated meat for another time.  Flank Steak/London Broil is a stringy, generally tough cut of meat - so it's inexpensive and it works great for the crock pot b/c slow cooking it all day makes it really tender.  You can throw veggies in the bottom of the crockpot, put your marinated Flank Steak on top and in 5 or 6 hours dinner's done.

Friday

Spicy Garlic Lemon Shrimp from epicurious.com
Quinoa Pilaf from Tyler Florence, Food Network
Steamed Broccoli
We like the big shrimp (like 16-25 ct), so I usually buy them when they're on sale around $4.50-$4.99/lb.  They're on sale this week and I still have a 2 lb bag in my freezer from the last sale.  I have to have pretty substantial sides when I cook shrimp because I need something to help fill everyone up before they each scarf an entire pound of shrimp on their own.  We're big shrimp lovers.




Breakfast:
Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal from one of my favorite blogs 5DollarDinners.com
I'm going to use Steel Cut Oats, instead of quick oats.  Steel-cut oats are better nutrition-wise, of course, the trade-off is that they take longer.  BUT, you can put them in boiling water for one minute and then remove them from heat and leave them to soak overnight, then bring them back to a boil in the morning, and continue the above recipe just like you would with quick cook oats. 

Snack:
Easy Zucchini Parmesan
I have one Zucchini from the co-op and saw this idea, that might make a great snack for the kids. I'm hoping I can trick Lincoln into eating veggies this way.  Picky little guy won't touch anything green lately! I'm going to add some garlic & Herby Seasoning, and use olive oil instead of the butter spray.

Grandma's & Linc's Birthday Parties

Still catching up.... Lincoln had his FIRST birthday in November! So cute, and possibly my last "first birthday" ever... :-(   Sooo, November was a bit crazy for us.  Linc has started getting sick just weeks before, so we'd been dealing with lots of doctor appointments and they decided Linc needed to have an upper endoscopy & biopsy, and they suspected Celiac Disease.  The biopsy was done the day before his first birthday!  The procedure went well, and when the GI Doctor came out to review the procedure with us, he showed us inflammation and damage on the lining of his intestines.  He said Pathology would have to confirm the results, but what he saw, combined with Linc's clinical history and symptoms is the same as what he would see with Celiac Disease.  He said we should go ahead and start the gluten-free diet and then await the Pathology to confirm.  So....  Linc's first birthday treat was gluten-free coconut cupcakes (made with coconut flour & iced with gluten-free, dairy-free frosting.) Oh, and we found out a week later, after fully realizing how crazy the gluten-free thing was going to make our lives, that it wasn't actually Celiac Disease (turns out he has an Immune Deficiency, you can follow the link to find out what it is)...  so for his Second Birthday he'll have a full gluten cake!  But, I thought the cupcakes were pretty good (ok, the frosting was weird, but the cupcakes weren't bad at all - sort of like a coconut muffin)  Cousin Max spit his right out and wouldn't touch it again... haha.... but Linc gobbled them up & Kaden asked for more for days!!  Because of how much we had going on at the time, we just did a small party with family.

 

  

Frammy gave him this soft snuggle bear, who says The Lord's Prayer when you squeeze his hand.  This is Linc's favorite snuggle EVER.  Every time he goes to sleep, he wants his "Snuggle Buddy", and it calms him right down when he's upset about going to bed.  SO cute!

And Grandpa Willie gave him his first.....  Hooters shirt... bwa-wa-wa.... something I've ALWAYS wanted him to have.. haha.

 

Cousin Max (who always wears his cowboy boots & hat!)

  

Linc & his Piggy Bank from Frammy (which came with an official Savings Account)

And because the kids aren't spoiled enough.... the Grandparents brought presents for Tayla & Kaden, too...

 

Aunt Tumma & John

  

 

And a few days before that, Grandma (my mom) also had a birthday.  My sweet, sweet little brother Ian & sister Summer decided to make a cake for Mom's birthday.  They went all out with a FOUR LAYER strawberry & chocolate cake..... very impressive.... until they realized they needed to drive it to moms house, and those layers weren't very stable.  Here's the masterpiece cake after it finally arrived at Mom & Dad's house....

Cracks me up.  I couldn't stop laughing.  And the best thing about this cake was it was a crumbly mess, so no one would even notice if you just walked by and picked out a little piece.  I mean, not that I did that or anything.  Just saying. :-)

Here's Dad cooking the Birthday Dinner (and being a goofball) 

Linc trying to sneak off without being caught

Marme (My mom's mom)

Grandma with Kaden and the BEAUTIFUL birthday card he made just for her

  

The Bakers & their Masterpiece - with all 40-something candles! Thought we might burn the house down! Ha!

 

Catching up... November 09

I'm catching up on editing old photos (now that my computer is back!) and have months of adorable shots I never got to share!  I'd never let you miss out on these fantastic beautiful kiddo shots!  So, now for your viewing pleasure, we'll start with the first of three months of catch-up photos.....

We love family pizza night.  The kids have a blast making their own pizzas with all their own toppings and we usually watch a movie.  I think I was working this day while dad was home with the kids.  When I came home from showings, everyone was eagerly awaiting the pizza festivities and they'd used every sheet and blanket in the house, to do this to the trampoline....

Daddy and the kids had made a huge tent out of the trampoline and wanted to go "camping" in the backyard.  The kids were SO excited.

So we made our pizzas.

Then we took the pizzas out to our "tent" to eat. 

 

  

 

We played games...

and Tayla read bedtime stories.

 

I thought we would play in the tent then move inside for bedtime, but the kids really wanted to sleep in the tent.  So, we cuddled up under lots of blankets and all of us slept under the trampoline all night.  Before falling asleep I wondered if the sprinklers were set to go off that next morning... fortunately, we did not get a shower on our backyard camping trip!

A couple weeks later the kids & I went to Dewberry Farms with Tayla's Girl Scout Troop.  I planned to go, do the camp fire thing, hit a couple activities there and then get home as soon as possible (Ken works weekends, and keeping up with all three kids in big crowded places on my own can be daunting sometimes!) But we had SO much fun, we ended up staying until it closed down!  I did, however, lose Kaden.... twice.  This is why I avoid crowded places - one of these days I'm seriously going to put that sweet wild child on a leash!

Here's Tayla roasting marshmallows.

 Her Troop (and Tayla posing, of course)

 

I love these pictures! The kids all had such a blast!

 

 

So I have Linc in the stroller, and I have Kaden next to me.  I tell Kaden to stay "right here" and play on this big dirt pile next to me.  I take this picture of Tayla on the zipline, and then turn to the dirt pile to get Kaden..... and he's gone.  No where on the dirt pile.  I look at the Rope swings next to it, he's not there.  And then I freak out.  The place is pretty big and it's pretty busy b/w the regular Saturday visitors and all the Girl Scouts in the city.  After a frantic minute, I see him.... on the corn cob train.... ALL BY HIMSELF!  He saw the train from the dirt pile and just hopped over there and loaded up by himself! 

 

Mr. Independent!

So when I finally settled my nerves and stopped the heart attack that was coming on, we loaded everyone up and had some tokens left that we just HAD to use up.... so of course we stopped in the Sweet Shop and got some homemade fudge.  mmmm... 

And just because it's so cute...  We got home one night from visiting family & when I got home and went to unload the kids from the car I melted when I saw sweet little Lincy-Lou, all snuggled up with his Buddy-Buddy in his car seat!

Oh my goodness!!  He's so cute! Stay tuned for more...

Meal Plan Monday

We're going back to a Cash Budget again (thanks to Dave Ramsey, we're debt free except the house and building our 6-month emergency fund!).  So I tried to set the budget amount on the low side, but didn't limit it too much , since I'd not been couponing or stockpiling lately.  Since this is the last week of the month, and we spent extra last week (for Crab night, sooo worth it!), I'm down to a very small budget left, so I'm trying to use what we have on hand and prepare seriously frugal meals.  Also, the store sales aren't very spectacular this week, so there's not a lot of the whole food we eat at a good sale price, and my Organic Produce Co-op is every other week and this is the off week.  So, I'm making due with what I have on hand.

Monday

Rub Grub Pork Chops
Kale, Olive Oil & Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Mixed Vegetables (Frozen)
*This is rolled over from last week.  I was tired, and we had lots of leftovers Saturday.

Tuesday

Veggie Burgers w/ Fixins (Cheese, romaine, onion, tomato, pickles)
Sweet Potato French Fries
*HEB has combo deal for Morningstar Veggie Burgers, get Sweet Potato Fries Free.  So I'm getting 2 of each and will have an easy dinner for $6.61 plus fixins, that I already have on hand for other meals. Tuesday is busy and it beats the fast food/pizza I might order otherwise!

Wednesday

Whole Wheat Pizza
Greek Salad
*I have everything for the crust in the pantry.  For toppings, using Red Peppers, on sale this week, and then leftover meats and veggies and banana peppers. I'll chop up a head of Romaine lettuce and put the extra in a ziploc to make my own bagged salad to use throughout the rest of the week. We have leftover feta & olives.  Yum!

Thursday

Shepherd's Pie
*I have made this recipe before (one of my favorite freezer meals) and I LOVE the carrots mixed in with the potatoes.  But we always have leftover mashed potatoes, so I'm going to use the leftover Kale & mashed potatoes from Monday in place of the mashed potatoes & carrots in this recipe, and I'll throw in whatever extra veggies I have in the fridge or freezer.  I would normally triple this recipe for the freezer, but I'm on the super tight budget this week so I won't be cooking extra.  Plus I have frozen veggie coupons that I know will go on sale soon so I can get them for free.  I'll stock up and make three of these then.  This is a great one dish meal and it's loaded with veggies, so I don't feel guilty about not adding any sides!

Friday

Chicken a la King
served over Frugal Mini Popovers or Pillsbury Biscuits, depending on how the day goes.
Salad (all ready from Wed)
*I don't usually buy Pillsbury biscuits b/c I like to stick with whole grains - but I actually got PAID  75 cents to buy 6 packages of these this week.  So for that price, I'll keep some one hand for quick easy meals! This A la King recipe freezes well too, so I might double it and freeze the extra in a ziploc. With the Pillsbury Grands it will make an easy last minute meal.

Saturday

Chicken Curry
over Saffron Rice (taking the easy way out here - just packets of rice with seasoning I already have in the pantry that were free with coupons)
Roasted Vegetables with Soy Sauce & Ginger (which I plan on prepping the night before or that morning)
*I love Curry, and I have all the ingredients on hand, although I'll be using chicken breasts instead of thighs.  Ken doesn't usually like Chicken Curry, but a friend made her version for our freezer swap once, and he loved it.  It used coconut milk, and she topped it with toasted coconut, and it was so yummy.  So I think we'll like this version.