Meal Plan 5/2/16-5/8/16

Breakfast:

• Chocolate chip muffins
• Make sausage biscuits for freezer (I buy 1 lb roll of sausage and form into patties and use my biscuit recipe)
• Biscuits from freezer with butter/jelly
• Pancakes
• Pinapple/Bananas
• Pineapple is on sale for .97 and Bananas for .33/lb this week! =)

Lunch:

• Salad with lettuce, cucumbers, granny smith apples, bacon, and cranberries
• Leftovers
• Yogurt

Dinner:

• Spaghetti sauce from freezer with noodles, breadsticks, and ranch potatoes
• Pizza with pepperoni and canadian bacon, with peas
• Baked teriyaki chicken made with chicken breasts (new recipe trying out), with steamed broccoli

Snack:

• Smoothie popsicles with bananas and blueberries
• Oats and Honey Granola bars

Dessert:

• Puppy chow

Meal plan 4/25/16-5/1/16

Breakfast:

• Bread pretzels (from freezer)
• Banana muffins (from freezer)
• Make breakfast burritos and buttermilk pancakes for freezer for future use

Lunch:

• Salad with green leaf lettuce, ranch chicken, avocado, crushed tortilla chips, ranch, salsa 
• I'm pretty excited that avocados are .17 each on sale this week!  I price match and then only have to shop at one store (Wal-mart) (for the most part).
• Leftovers
• Yogurt

Dinner:

• Shredded BBQ chicken (from freezer) on baked potatoes, topped with cheese, served with green beans
• Frito pie with Gram's chili, topped with cheese, served with peas
• Grabbing a few bags of fritos on sale this week for 1.67 each
• Chicken parmesan nuggets served with steamed broccoli 

Snacks:

• Oats and Honey granola bars 
• S'mores snack mix left from last week
• Smoothie popsicles made from my smoothie recipe, this week with bananas and blueberries

Dessert:

• Butterfinger cookies (from freezer)
• Chocolate chip cookies - see below for a time saving/frugal tip

Frugal tip - Cookies:

• I make double batches of dough (or triple sometimes).
• I make the dough like normal, and then roll the cookies into balls like I'm going to bake them. 
• Then I put 12 cookie balls laid flat into a sandwich Ziploc bag and stick the bag in the freezer, laid flat.
• When I'm ready to bake more cookies, I just pull out a bag and they are ready to go on the preheated stone by the time the oven warms up!
• This helps save money by stretching a batch of cookies (and it also helps us not to overindulge with just the 3 of us =)).  It is also a huge time saver!

Meal Plan 4/18/16-4/24/16

Breakfast:
Banana muffins, Bread pretzels, Cereal with almond milk

Lunch:
Leftovers, Yogurt, Salads with carrots, cucumbers, fajita chicken, and Nannie's dressing

Snacks:
Yogurt Smoothie Popsicle's made from my smoothie recipe, Smores snack mix

Dinner:
1) Pulled pork on buns, with green beans.  I will freeze half of the pulled pork after making for an easy meal in the future.
2) BBQ Beef and crescents from freezer, with roasted carrots
3) Pepperoni pizza, with peas

Dessert:
Chocolate covered ritz

Frugal tip:
Freezing Meat

I like to stock up on certain meats when they're on sale and freeze in ziplocks of 1 lb portions (using my kitchen scale).  I try to defrost the meat 24 hours in advance by putting it in the refrigerator.  If I am in a hurry or don't plan, I use warm water in the sink to defrost it.  Here's the meats I do this with and the prices I look for.

1) Ground beef (I try to get 90% lean or higher): $3.50/lb, freeze in 1 lb portions in ziplocks.

2) Boneless, skinless chicken breasts: 1.99/lb.  I cut off the fat and then measure into 1 lb portions into ziplocks

3) Sausage links: $2.50/14 oz.  They usually come in the 14 oz size.  I don't have to do anything to these since they are already portioned and vacuum packed.  I just stick these straight into the freezer and defrost when needed.  I use this for things like jambalaya.

Meal Plan 4/11/16-4/17/16

Breakfast:
Chocolate chip muffins and Banana muffins

Lunch:
Leftovers, yogurt

Dinner:
1) Tacos with chips and salsa, served with peas
2) Baked honey garlic chicken with rice, served with broccoli
3) Spaghetti made with Italian sausage, served with breadsticks and corn (I've got some breadsticks left from a previous batch in the freezer, so I will just defrost those.)

Snacks:
Peanut butter granola bars and Ranch oyster crackers

Dessert:
Aunt Smokie's Brownies

Frugal tip:
Cheese
This past week I stocked up on cheese (208 oz!).  I suppose you could say this is one of the frugal things I do.  I like to get the block cheese (cheddar and mozarella), shred it with my kitchen aid mixer (with shredding attachment), and then freeze it.  I try to look for the cheese under $3/16 oz.  Then, I shred it and mix in 1/8 c of flour per 16 oz of shredded cheese to help it from clumping up.  I then place the cheese into 8 oz portions into sandwich bags and freeze flat. When I need cheese, I just pull a bag out and put it in the fridge to defrost.

Meal Plan 4/4/16-4/10/16

Breakfasts:

Cinnamon Sugar Muffins and Chocolate Chip Muffins, defrosted from the freezer, and fruit.

Lunches:

Leftovers, Yogurt.

Snacks: 

Oats and Honey Granola Bars - These are absolutely delicious.  They have been my go to over the past week when I get hungry.  I will need to make another batch mid week or so.

Dinners:

1) Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken over baked potatoes, and topped with cheese.  Served with Green Beans.  I will freeze half of the chicken once its made to have at a later date as an easy meal.

2) Chicken Fajitas with Bell Peppers and Onions.  Served with chips and queso.  I will make the queso with velveeta and salsa. 

3) State Fair Subs.  Served with Peas.  These should be fairly easy since I'm buying the french bread.  Sometimes I make it but that is more labor intensive.

Also, I have been working hard at organizing my recipes online so they are easy for me to link to and also to find when I am away from my beloved recipe book. All of my recipes (including the ones above) can be found here.  I'd love to know if you make a recipe and how it turns out.  Just shoot me a comment below!

Meal Plan - 2/8/16-2/14/16

Hi Everyone!

I hope you've had a fabulous week.  I made some updates to last week's meal plan blog post on reviews of the new recipes or ideas, so go check that out!

Here's the plan for next week:

1) Freezer Meal - Slow Cooker Barbeque.  I made this a while back and froze half of it or so, so we need to use that up.  So this will be a nice easy meal.  I'm going to make some tasty sweet dinner crescents to go with it. (Note: These rolls freeze very well so I will probably freeze half for later.)

2) Baked Potato Soup and Basic No Knead Bread - meatless meal for either Wednesday or Friday.  (Ash Wednesday is next week.  Can you believe it?!)  I'll leave out the bacon on the soup.  I'm excited about trying the bread, which is a new recipe for me.  I had it at my aunt's house and it was delicious.

3) Cheese Pizza - another meatless meal for either Wednesday or Friday.  I will use my regular pizza recipe but not put any meat on top.

4) Make up some of my grandma's house dressing and eat that on salads throughout the week for lunch.  I've been adding some lunch meat or whatever meat I have with some lettuce, tomato, and shredded carrots, and that makes a tasty lunch.

5) Need to make up some more chocolate chip muffins for the husband's breakfasts.

6) Last but not least, we decided to have some friends over for the Superbowl.  So, I decided I'm going to have fun with it and make some yummy things.  I've never tried these pretzel bites (though I have made regular pretzels before), but they sound delicious.  And then I'll make up some of those crescent wrapped smokies.  Should be yummy!  And then we will have some other easy snack foods to go with it.

I hope you have a blessed week!  Please comment below if you have any good recipes for me to try!

Nannie's House Salad Dressing

Nannie’s Vinegar and Oil Salad Dressing

1 clove minced garlic

2 T cider or red wine vinegar

1 t sugar

1 t salt

1 t dry mustard

½ t pepper

6 T canola or vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake well.  Refrigerate.