Calendar of Eats

It’s so secret that I love to cook.  I like being able to make my family dinner on a (somewhat) regular basis.  With my crazy work schedule, that takes planning.  See, on any given week, my schedule could look like this:

Sunday:  7:30a-5p
Monday:  1p-10:30p
Tuesday:  OFF
Wednesday:  4:30a-2p
Thursday:  1-10:30p
Friday:  OFF
Saturday:  7:30-5

So you see how challenging dinner making can be?  On days I’m off or early, it’s not a big deal as I’m at home for dinner.  On days I close (work til 10:30p), it’s a little more tricky.  I have to plan meals that my husband can make like a casserole, crock pot meal, or something that’s already cooked and just needs to be reheated.

I used to have a spreadsheet that listed the day of the month, my schedule, and what meal I would make.  This was a pretty good system, but I could only plan a couple weeks at a time because I needed my work schedule.  I only get it a couple weeks in advance, you see.

For some reason, I got away from this meal plan.  I think it was because every day was a free for all.  By that I mean I didn’t have a set cuisine type for each day.  I just filled in the meals with what I had a taste for.  This is a fine way to do things, but I found myself always picked the same meals.  Meatloaf, beef stroganoff, and sloppy joes were big hits and always found their way into the plan.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a new way of meal planning.  With this new way, I took a calendar and assigned a cuisine or meal base to each day of the week.  It looks something like this:

I wasn’t sure how it would work out, but I quickly found myself actually following the plan!  I would grocery shop for the week on one of my days off, then prep any meals I needed to.

The nice thing about this meal plan is I can switch days around if necessary.  For example, you’ll notice in the first row I had Steel Drums Chicken on Monday and Chicken Spaghetti on Tuesday.  Steel Drums Chicken has to be grilled and Chicken Spaghetti is a casserole.  Since I closed on Monday, it was easier for Jeff to reheat the casserole than it was to watch the baby and grill chicken.  Who are we kidding?  Jeff doesn’t grill.  Well, not much anyhow.

One thing I have run into, oddly enough, is having too much food!  If you look at my original post, you’ll see there are no days for leftovers.  My plan, initially, was to have the leftovers for lunches or to only make enough for one meal.  Well, some days I don’t want the same thing I had for dinner.  My plan for August incorporated a leftover day.  Know what happened?  Yep, we ran out of meals for leftover day and I ended up having to order pizza, something I was trying to avoid with this whole plan!

It’s a work in progress.

For the most part, however, the meal planning has been a great project.  It has allowed me to make some of Jeff’s favorite meals (read: meatloaf) as well as try out some of my pinned and cookbook recipes.  I have more cookbooks than I have shoes.

I am still perfecting the system.  I am trying to get healthier meals included instead of just ones that sound good (like Paula’s Glazed Bacon Wrapped Chicken which we had last night…YUM!).  I am also trying to put the meals I make into My Fitness Pal so I can just add them when I eat them.  That is a big downfall for me…eating dinner and then not logging it because I don’t want to put each ingredient in my log.

Some of the meals I have tried out with this new meal plan are Chicken Stir Fry, Swiss Burgers with Caramelized Onions and Balsamic Glaze, and Pulled Chicken Quesadillas.  What are some meals you have pinned or bookmarked lately that you most want to try?

 

Take Out Fake Out

Who doesn’t love take out?  It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s delicious!  Jeff and I love take out, especially when said take out is Chinese food.  YUM!  Our favorites include General Tao’s chicken and Sweet and Sour chicken.  Healthy…

I love stir fry, but more often than not, when I make my own it’s lacking.  Therefore, when I chose to make Chicken Stir Fry for my meal plan, I opted to seek out a recipe to follow.  In the past, I would head to allrecipes.com first, but now, I hit up Pinterest.  The pin with the most repins was this recipe.

It looked delicious, but I was skeptical because a lot of times the recipes I pin don’t taste as good as they look. That was not the case this time!  It was oh-my-gosh delicious.  You may notice there are some different ingredients in this recipe (like sesame oil and oyster sauce).  Don’t be scared.  If you like Chinese food, chances are you’ve eaten them before.

Take a chance and try this recipe.  You will love it, I promise.  I made it for dinner on Wednesday night and Jeff already asked me to make it again for dinner.  That’s a win in my book!

Chicken Stir Fry
(from blogchef.net)

1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs (cut into 1” pieces)
¼ cup honey
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh ginger (minced)
2 tablespoons fresh garlic (minced)
½ teaspoon sesame oil
1 pinch ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons oyster sauce

Combine chicken, honey, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, ginger, garlic, sesame oil, and black pepper in a large resealable bag.  Squish chicken around to ensure even coating.  Put in fridge and let marinate for at least 1 hour or up to overnight.

When you’re ready to cook, heat a wok (or large skillet) to high.  Add the oil and let it heat up.  The original recipe called for the entire bag’s contents to be poured into the wok, but I drained most of the liquid out.  It seemed like a LOT of sauce.  I also used more like 1 TBSP of oil, but that’s up to you.  It worked fine for me.

Stir fry your chicken until your chicken is thoroughly cooked and your sauce has reduced slightly.  It should take about 8 minutes.  After that, turn off the heat and add your oyster sauce.  Stir to coat.

I made a batch of jasmine rice to have with the chicken.  Normally I would add veggies in my stir fry, but in this case, I didn’t.  I will next time and use the excess liquid to cook my veggies in.  I think that would be yummy.  Speaking of liquid, the sauce you make is a little overpowering on it’s own.  I suggest making the rice because it helps balance the flavors and tone the dish down a bit.

I’m trying to resist making this again for dinner tonight.  The fight is not going well…

Pin-spiration

I heart Pinterest.  There are so many recipes, crafts, and ideas on that website that you could probably spend several hours looking through things.

Oh wait.  I have.

So, one day, during a massive Pinterest surfing session, I came across this post.  I loved it.  Steph of Modern Parents, Messy Kids has a goal to organize her entire life.  Part of this goal is to create a meal plan that is easy to plan and easy to follow.  Her friend Mel came up with just the type of thing she was looking for.

Basically, Mel breaks down the days of the week into categories (i.e. Meatless Monday, Pasta Tuesday, etc) and then fills in each category with meals.  What a great idea, I thought!  During one of the many midnight feeding sessions with Jake, I started to plan out what my calendar would look like.

Finally, last Thursday, I put my plan in motion.  After a little thinking, I came up with my categories.  They are a little more generic than Mel’s, but that’s OK with me.  It’s what will work for my family.  My categories are:

Sunday-Cookbook Recipe
Monday-Chicken
Tuesday-Pasta/Vegetarian
Wednesday-Beef/Pork
Thursday-Pinterest Recipe
Friday-Fish/Seafood
Saturday-Grill

I (of course) created an Excel spreadsheet, which made it super easy to fill various recipes in.  I knew I wanted to make our favorites once a month, so I immediately plugged in meatloaf, Dad’s spaghetti, Pantry pasta, grilled chicken, Sloppy Joes, and Beef Stroganoff in the spreadsheet.  Then it was simply a matter of filling in the rest of it.

I wanted to include two columns for new recipes (I am a food blogger after all), so I chose a column for cookbooks and one for Pinterest. Here’s what the final spreadsheet ended up looking like:

(click on spreadsheet to see it bigger)

You may notice there are no spots for leftovers, which means I will most likely be cooking every day.  I would love to cook every day, but with my work schedule, it’s just not always feasible.  This is just a work in progress, so I’m using the month of July as a trial.

I am also implementing a planning tool that Kath talks about in this video:

She uses Google Calendars to help her plan her meals and, more importantly, helps remind her of things she needs to do ahead of time.  I’ve started this with my own calendar and hopefully it will work out!

The last and final tool I started using was a board on Pinterest I labeled “Top 10″.

I wanted a place I could quickly refer back to the recipes I chose to try from my Pinterest boards.  This will also make it easier to mark as “Completed” once I have made them.  I’m such a dork, but I love things organized!  That’s probably why I have 33 Pinterest boards…

Only time will tell if my new system will work out.  I am hoping to do a follow up post in August with very positive news!  Stay tuned!

Blog Love: Warm Potato Salad

Pinterest is evil.  I can’t even tell you the number of recipes, craft projects, and gift ideas I have pinned in the last few months.  The bad part is, for ever one pin I complete, I pin 10 more!  At this rate, I will never work my way through all those pins!

Carolyn and I did come up with the idea of making a “Ten Pins to Try First” type of board, so I could always have an idea of what I was really looking forward to trying.  I haven’t done it yet, but if I had, I would have had this recipe on there for sure.

I love potatoes and I love salad.  What I don’t love is potato salad, mostly because of the mayo involved.  When I saw this warm potato salad recipe floating around on Pinterest, I knew it was a must try.  I mean bacon, caramelized onions, and potatoes.  What’s not to like??

The recipe comes from Ingrid at The Cozy Apron.  It’s such a delicious recipe and really not too hard to make.  I started with my caramelized onions and while that was simmering, I baked my potatoes and fried my bacon.  The rest was simple!

After your bacon is cooked, you make the warm bacon vinaigrette and then it’s as easy as tossing everything together.  I served our potatoes with some burgers from Dorothy Lane and, I must say, they made a perfect pair!

Jake kept me company while I cooked dinner.  He’s my little sous chef!

Jeff offered to grill the burgers.  What a great guy!  I could get used to this!

So, head on over to The Cozy Apron and show Ingrid a little blog love.  Try her Warm Potato Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette.  I promise you won’t regret it!

What pins on your pin boards are you most looking forward to trying?

Pinterest Recipe Challenge, Volume 2

Since the last time I posted a Pinterest Recipe Challenge was so successful (with myself at least) I thought I would do another challenge.  Honestly, this is more to remind me which recipes I chose to make when I get to the grocery store!  Ha!  More often than not, I’ll pick a few recipes to make, shop for the ingredients, and by the time I go to make the recipe I forgot which one I picked out!

Here’s the next batch of recipes on deck:

For those of you wondering how my last batch of recipes turned out, please see below!

Chicken Adobo:  This was really good!  I added a little extra brown sugar  in at the end because I thought it needed to be a tad sweeter.

Parmesan Chicken Bake:  I wanted this to be really good, but it was just OK.  The croutons on top worked to make the crust somewhat crispy, but if I had to choose, I would make the real dish instead of this one.

Frito Pie:  This was really good too!  My only problem?  I made it waaaayyyy to spicy because I added canned chipotles in adobo and added too many.  Oops!

Balsamic Parmesan Roasted Green Beans with Mushrooms:  Confession…I haven’t quite made this yet.  I do have green beans in my fridge so that I can hopefully make them in the next couple days.

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings:  OK, so here’s the deal.  I made this dish…and then got the stomach flu.  The thought of this dish kinda makes me queasy…  It’s too bad too because from what I remember it was pretty tasty!

Nutter Butter Bars:  I haven’t made this one either because I keep forgetting to pick up Nutter Butters!  I may have to get some of those from work tomorrow…

Have you made anything recently (from pinterest or not) that you have loved?

Pinterest Challenge for March

Do you ever log in to Pinterest and feel overwhelmed by the amount of recipes, crafts, or outfits you’ve pinned?  I know I do.  In fact, for a while I was avoiding Pinterest partly because it was too much, too fast!  Well, that and because I had a baby that was taking up 99.9% of my time.

I use Pinterest predominately for finding awesome recipes.  There are so many people out there that blog about food, not to mention all the professional recipe websites, that I can easily find handfuls of recipes to pin each day.  The problem with that is I pin way more than I can make in a given week, month, or even year!  In fact, when I do my menu planning, my Pinterest has so many recipes on it, I more often than not find myself bypassing Pinterest and looking at Allrecipes instead.  My cookbooks are angry at me for this reason as well.

I made a resolution with myself to cook at least one new recipe a week for the month of February.  I failed miserably. It’s time to try again.  I am going to try to cook one new thing each week from now on instead of limiting myself.  My mom did it when I was growing up and I believe it is a good practice to get into.  This way, I may find a go to recipe like my Brown Sugar Meatloaf (which came around the last time I resolved to add new recipes into my repertoire).

I spent a good amount of time on Pinterest this morning and have found the following five recipes I am going to try to work into my cooking between now and March 31.

In the spirit of sharing, I challenge all of you to make the same recipes so we can compare at the end of March.  I’m always interested in how people changed the recipe and what side dishes they chose to serve alongside.  If you would like to take pictures of your dishes and email them to me, I will feature you in my conclusions post.

1.  Chicken Adobo by Crepes of Wrath

2.  Parmesan Chicken Bake by Food Wishes

3.  Frito Pie by Steamy Kitchen  *I will probably make this with ground turkey*

4.  Balsamic & Parmesan Roasted Green Beans with Mushrooms by Kalyn’s Kitchen

5.  Slow Cooker Chicken & Dumplings by Polish the Stars

BONUS RECIPE CHALLENGE:  Nutter Butter Bars by Keep It Sweet

For those of you who don’t share my same recipe tastes, I would be interested in hearing which dishes you’ve tried in the last month or so that you just loved!  I’m always looking for those recipes that will stick with me for years to come and I find suggestions from others are a great place to start.