Meal Plan 10/25

The weather has decided to behave a bit more fall-like. (Good job weather!) I'm excited to start cooking healthy versions of heartier meals. Thought it'd be best to slowly ease into it so my jeans will still fit next week.

• Pierogies full of mash and cheddar topped with sauteed broccoli & onions and possibly a little crumbled bacon
• Taco Soup
• Bean burritos with my homemade refrieds
• Tomato soup and grilled cheese
• Fried rice
• Ham sandwiches on Pain a l’Ancienne with potato salad (ended up having breakfast instead of the weird grilled cheese/potato salad combo)
  

What's baking this week?

• Banana Snacking Cake - Had some bananas begging to be used rather than composted. Thought this would be a good alternative to all the banana bread we've had lately. Could stand a bit more spicing up, but tasted fab with the reject meringue frosting (see below).
  
• Vanilla Cake with Italian Meringue Frosting - Made this for a birthday over the weekend. Pretty yummy. Had a few issues with the meringue frosting, but nothing major.
  
• Strawberry Fruit Leather

Meal Plan 10/18

Looks like this is the week for comfort food. After a quick, wild and restaurant-a-licious trip to Indy to visit some amazing friends that live far, far away, I need it something fierce.

• Chicken Noodle Soup
• Pizza
• Asparagus Noodles - sauteed asparagus with homemade noodles, super yum!
• Grilled Cheese with Potato Salad - weird combo, but sounds good together for some reason
• Carne Asada
• Spaghetti with homemade Pain a l’Ancienne - the bread is the only reason I'm agreeing to another week of pasta
  

This week's baking list:

• Granola
• Blueberry Muffins
• Something else yeasty
  

Meal Plan 10/11

The temps are rising. Again. It's mid October, right? At least the humidity is gone.

• Grilled chicken & broccoli
• Soup of some sort - probably homemade chicken noodle
• Bean burritos with my homemade refrieds
• Cold Sesame Noodles
• Visiting friends for the rest of the week

A few notes from last week:

• The Korean meatballs were really good. A bit garlicky, but tasty.
• The yogurt worked and was gone by Wednesday. I followed the recipe I posted last week and it took quite a bit longer to turn into yogurt than the recipe said, but it was cold (outside & in the house) that night, which might have slowed the process. Making another batch as we speak with a different technique - just to try something new.
• Ended up making Basic Banana Bread and it was a huge hit.

Back on the meal plan train

I've been making a mental meal plan for the last few weeks. It works. Just not quite as well. Our schedule has recently been turned upside down making it so we can only do dinner as a family on the weekends. In order to make my crazy weeknights a little easier to manage, my plan is to prepare the more complicated meals on the weekend and to have a few quick & easy options as well.

While pouring over recipes online, I came across a link for two free trial issues of Cooking Light. Just received my first issue this week and am super excited to try some of the amazingly photogenic recipes.

Oh, and in unrelated bizarro news, the oven is working. No shit. It started working when the weather cooled down. Clearly, the thing needs to be replaced for being moody, if nothing else.

• Korean Meatballs
• Something on the grill
• Minestrone (using chicken stock from the crock pot) and rolls
  
• Tomato soup & grilled cheese - trying to find a yummy recipe for this one because tomato soup is one of the few things I don't make from scratch
  
• Breakfast
• Pasta for the kids, something else for me because I've had my fill for a while
  
• The stinker boy's choice because the girlies will be spending the night away from home

Other stuff I plan to make this week, assuming the oven cooperates:

• Yogurt - yogurt is one of my favorite a) snacks and b) ingredients, so I'm really hoping this works
  
• Banana Bread - haven't settled on recipe yet, but they all look good
• Blueberry Muffins - white whole wheat flour works well in this recipe, usually add a bit more yogurt to compensate for the www flour

Dinners I want soon and will forget unless I do this:

• Taco Soup - I loosely follow this recipe and toss in what I have on hand
• Turkey Meatloaf
• Spicy Shrimp Noodle Bowl
  

We have a bike rider

I sorta kinda feel like a loser parent for this. But, what am I supposed to do when the kid doesn't care to learn how to ride a bike until she's 9? As a reward for her hard work she got a new bike courtesy of some lovely grandparents. Don't have video of that. But I do have video of this...

Bike Rider from Autumn Hutt on Vimeo.