Meal Plan: February 2013

Everyone has a hard time figuring out what to cook.  I was talking to a co-worker this weekend and she told me that, while she was going back to school, she asked her husband to cook dinner on Thursday nights as it was her busy day.  He replied that he would cook, but she needed to tell him what to make.  She exclaimed that that was the hardest part!

I completely agree.  I love to cook, but sometimes I just really don’t know what to make.  My husband is no help because he never has any ideas for me.  I asked him the same question each week.

What do you want for dinners this week?

He responds one of two ways:

Meatloaf. 

Or

I don’t care.  Whatever you make.

Ugh!  Finally, I got smart.  A few years ago I started meal planning.  I must say…when I do it and stick to the plan, it really makes a difference in my day!  I don’t have that dreaded feeling hanging over my head of what to make.  I typically am more prepared and have the ingredients on hand.  I don’t have to try to figure out how to pick up the ingredients I’m missing and still make it home in time to have dinner on the table by 6p (Jake’s dinner time).

I realize many of you feel the same way, which is why I’m hopefully starting a new series on this blog.  I’ve tried in the past to post menus and failed miserably, so take that as your warning.

Jake eats most anything we eat aside from fish, shellfish, and nuts of any kind (though I did slip and give him some peanuts with my Thai food the other day.  Whoops!).  Some of the dishes are spicy (like the Cajun Chicken Alfredo and the Spicy Chicken Tortilla Rollups).  I figure I’ll just make a couple without the spice or he will have leftovers that day.  In any case, this may help lots of you moms out there!

I also plan to lighten up some of the more calorie dense meals to make them more Weight Loss Goal friendly.  Stay tuned for more on that later.

Here’s the key to reading the calendar.  The light green recipes are from my Pinterest account.  The light blue ones are either from my blog or from my personal collection of recipes.  Here are the links to the recipes you can find online:

Burgers
Cajun Chicken Alfredo
Chicken Bacon Ranch Mac & Cheese
Chicken Cassoulet
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Chicken Taco Chili
Cilantro Lime Chicken
Cream Cheese Chicken
Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps
Forgotten Chicken
General Tso’s Chicken
Honey Garlic Pork Chops
Meatloaf
Mexican Lasagna
Mini Corn Dog Muffins
Mushrooms Pizza Bites
Pad Thai
Pizza Casserole
Pork Chops au Poivre
Proscuitto Panini
Quick Coq au Vin
Spaghetti with Chicken and Thai Peanut Sauce
Spicy Chicken Tortilla Rollups
TJ (Trader Joe)’s Chicken Satay with Coconut Rice
Ultimate Chicken Fingers

You probably notice there isn’t any room for leftovers.  Most of the time, we either eat the leftovers for lunches, or I try to make a single night’s portion instead of a whole family’s worth.  The food gets eaten, don’t you worry.

I hope you guys enjoy this post!  If this is something you enjoy seeing, please let me know by leaving me a comment on my blog.  You can also show your support by liking my Facebook page!  I’d love to hear from you!

Coming Clean

My house, while cute, has a lot of potential.  We’ve revamped the outside and worked a little on the inside, but now it’s time to start the bigger projects.  Originally our first room to get an overhaul was supposed to be the kitchen, but my husband texted me the other day asking me what I thought about adding cabinets to our laundry room.  I have been wanting to do that for a long time, so I said sure!

My brother-in-law is a civil engineer who spends a lot of time designing things on a computer program.  He was the one who helped us create the plans for our patio project.  Anyhow, he came over the other weekend, took a bunch of measurements, and drafted a couple laundry room plans for us.  Then, he and Jeff headed to a cabinet store to get more ideas.

Today, I believe the work is going to get started.  We are basically revamping the entire room.  Here’s what it looks like now:

See?  Lots of potential.  His job is to add cabinets, counter tops, and more storage.  My job is to make it pretty.  That’s where you guys come in.  I need some help.  I’m not horrible at decorating, but I’m definitely not the world’s best.  Not like Supermom!  Here’s what I know:

I want dark wood cabinets and neutral counter tops like this:

So my question is…what color should I paint the walls?  Do I go with a neutral color like Oat Cake?

What about a teal like Mermaid Treasure or Gem Turquoise?

A purple like Twilight Pearl?  (Is it bad that I especially like this color because it has “Twilight” in the name?)

Or how about a yellow like Lemon Tart?

I honestly have no clue what I’m going to do or what will look good.  What do you think?  What color is your laundry room?  Oh, and Supermom, what brand of paint is your favorite?  I’m always up for suggestions.

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?

 

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!

Garage Overhaul

We have a bad habit.  We tend to bring stuff home and, if we can’t find a place for it or we’ve used it and no longer need it all the time, we get rid of it.  And by get rid of it, I mean we banish it to the garage or basement.  Over time, our garage looked like this

and this

and this

and this.

To be fair, a lot of those items were on the shelving units in the back.  I got started before thinking, “Hey, this would make a good blog post!”

I had been planning to work on the garage for weeks.  I took some vacation this week to spend with Jeff and get some projects done around the house.  Early Thursday morning, I got started.  At first, I had no clue where to begin, but after a while I got into a rhythm.  At least it was a gorgeous day out!

After I had worked for a few hours, Jeff and I ran to Lowes to pick up some supplies.  There were several items we kept strewn around on the garage floor I thought should be on the walls, so we were in the market for some sort of organizational system.  At our condo, we installed wire shelving on one wall and a pegboard on the other, so we could hang various items like hammers, screwdrivers, etc.  Jeff received a large tool box for Christmas one year, so the small items were taken care of, thankfully.

There were a few different organizational systems from which to choose at Lowes, but we ended up going with the Kobalt K-rail system.

(source)  **BTW, there are no good pictures of the K-rail system online!

We didn’t pick up any of the cabinetry, but rather focused on the rails you hang on the walls.  There are several hooks you can get to hang your stuff.  I knew I wanted to hang the ladders, the lawn chairs, and a couple more things, so we got hooks for those items.  I also picked up a brochure listing all their products just in case I needed to reference it later.

When we were checking out, our cashier asked us if we’d received a myLowes card yet.  Nope.  What’s that?  It’s basically their version of a rewards card, though I don’t think you get rewards with it.  It’s a way you can keep track of your past purchases so if you don’t have to remember what color paint you bought back in 2007 to paint the bedroom or which organizational system you bought in 2012 to redo your garage!  I think it’ll be handy down the road.  If you have a Sephora card, you may be familiar with the process.  Sephora keeps track of all your past purchases for you just in case you forget!

We came home with our loot and I recruited Jeff to install the rails.  He was less than enthused.  He showed me how to install the first one and after that I took over.  I proceeded to install 2.5 more myself (he had to help me with my first one) and hung what I could with the hooks we purchased.

I’ll have you know, not only did I hang most of the rails myself, they are all level!  Bonus points!

Afterward, I realized I had a lot more that I wanted to hang, so I made a list of items, consulted the brochure for the best hook for the job, and went back to Lowes.  The items weren’t exactly cheap, but they were good quality.

I am a firm believer that you may have to pay a little more upfront if you want a good quality product that lasts.

After the second Lowes trip, we had to pick Jake up from daycare.  We returned home, had dinner, played with him for a bit and then, once he was in bed for the night, I returned to my task at hand.  I spent another three hours outside finishing everything up.  I put away all the little odds and ends in bins, hung the rest of the K-rails, and swept the garage.

Isn’t it crazy how a little cleaning and organization can change the look of things? (Some items are still being dealt with, but will hopefully be out of the garage soon!)

Before:

After:

We are very pleased with the results!  Jeff was even able to get his second car out of the garage for the first time in months.  (We have a pile of dirt in front of the garage door.)

My next project is the basement and it’s going to take quite a while.  I ended up moving all my kitchen items we had stored in the garage down to the basement and now I have to figure out what to do with them.

Question:  How do you store your kitchen equipment (examples: ice cream maker, bread machine, rice cooker, etc) you can’t quite fit in your kitchen?

Note:  Though it may seem like Lowes paid me to talk about their card and the Kobalt K-Rail (only available at Lowes), they in fact did not.  All opinions are my own and I purchased all products myself.

My Interest in Pinterest

If you are online even a little bit, chances are you’ve heard of this little website called “Pinterest“.  It’s a virtual pinboard for all the things you come across online that you like, are interested in, or want to remember.  For me, it’s a great place to store all the neat ideas I read about from my bloggers I follow.

I typically read my blogs through Google Reader and when I come across something I want to try, I star the blog post.  It then moves into a folder called “Starred Items”.  Once every few months or so, I’ll go through the folder and look at the starred items.  More often than not, I can’t remember why I starred the post in the first place!  Pinterest takes the guesswork out of this method.  Instead of starring the post, I can “pin” the picture I want to remember to one of my virtual pinboards.  Then when I’m on the website I have snapshots of things I have found interesting in the past.

For example, if I’m looking for a yummy treat to make, I would navigate to my “Sweetness” board and see this:

When you click on one of the pictures, it takes you to the page on pinterest.  One additional click will take you to the webpage you can find the item in question.  Genius!  You can also keep track of items you see while online shopping that you are interested in buying!  So many options at your fingertips!

Here are some of my favorite pins since joining Pinterest:

Obviously, seeing as I follow primarily food blogs, most of my boards will be full of food images, but as you can see there are no limits to the kinds of things you can pin!  One of my friends has kids and is constantly pinning things to do with her children.  My sister has very eclectic tastes and has boards covering everything from inspiration to travel to stylish things.   Carolyn and I have very similar tastes so I feel like I copy her quite often by repinning things she has found an interest in.

That’s the other great thing about Pinterest…you can share your interests with friends and family!  They can follow you and see what you like.  In my opinion, this tells you a lot about a person.  Plus it may just make buying that one of a kind Christmas present that much easier!

The one downside?  You have to be invited to use it.  Luckily, I’m here to help!  If you’re wanting to join, let me know!  I’ll gladly send you an invite.  If you’re already a member and would like to follow my boards, click on the red “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on the left side of my blog.  I love sharing and would love to see what you’re “Pinterested” in too!

Life Changing Organization

I’ll admit it.  I’m kind of a messy person.  When I was growing up, I used to leave a “trail” behind me.  I like to think of every piece of clothing, toy, or dish as a breadcrumb so my mom could find me.  You know, just in case the evil witch was hungry again.

As the years passed and I moved from my parents’ house to my apartment I shared with Carolyn, I became better at picking up my mess, but still not great.  I think on more than one occasion I walked into my bedroom with a pile of stuff in the middle of my floor after Carolyn decided she wanted to clean.  I probably piled stuff in her room too when I was in a cleaning frenzy though, so it was all good.

Then I moved in with Jeff and the poor dear never knew what hit him.  For the first year or so, we argued about my messes and about how I would leave piles of stuff throughout the house.  It wasn’t trash, mind you.  It was mail, magazine articles, photographs, just to name a few things.  I would pile them up instead of having them strewn around the house.  I figured if I had everything in one big pile it would be better than having twenty small piles, right?

Unfortunately, one of the places all my stuff seemed to end up was the kitchen table.  I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe because it’s the perfect height for me to place my bag.  Maybe because I wanted to make sure Jeff saw the mail I picked up (though sometimes he’d have to dig down about eight layers to reach it).  Maybe because it was one of the first stops on my way to the rest of the house.  Who knows.  Again, unfortunately, things haven’t changed:

I try to keep the table clear.  Sometimes I go a whole month with nothing on it.  Then the above happens.  And then I have to spend a good chunk of time multitasking between watching Ina Garden make a “perfect” Thanksgiving dinner to share with her gays and her “fabulous friends” and sorting through the last month of my life that has ended up on my dumping ground dining table.

One of the main things that collect around my house are magazines.  And magazine articles.  And coupons, but that’s another story for another day.

In the past month or so, I decided the amount of magazines in my life was ludicrous and needed to be changed.  Some days I felt like they were all caving in on me.  I figured one day Jeff was going to come home and I would be buried alive beneath mounds of Real Simple and Food Network magazine.  The pages of Glamour, Coastal Living, and Good Housekeeping would be covering every inch of my body and he’d have to dig his way down just to rescue me.

You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not.  (This, my friends, is way better than it used to be.)

Today my magazine cluttered life changed thanks to this piece of machinery.

I am not a hoarder, but I will hang on to magazines (especially ones I haven’t read) just in case I need an article found in the pages.  Who remembers which magazine held that sweet potato recipe they saw months ago, though, really?  I started tearing out pages of magazines that held all sorts of precious information I just knew I would need one day.  Most of my clippings were recipes, but there were some exercises, household tips, travel ideas, and decorating inspirations included as well.

After clipping said articles, I loaded them into my scanner and sent the .tiff files to my computer.  I absolutely adore my printer/scanner/happiness maker.  Jeff pointed out I could feed the articles in through the slot at the top, which meant I didn’t have to sit next to the machine and swap out the pages one by one.  FANTASTIC!  Another wonderful thing about my machine is it’s wireless, so I didn’t even have to have my computer connected to it.  I tell ya, I love technology.

After an hour or so, I had all my articles scanned, labeled, and sorted into folders in my computer.  Tonight when I was making my Weekly Menu, all I had to do was pull up the files on my computer!  I also found out my computer will let me view the files in full page mode so I can browse my folder for meal inspiration in the future!  My mound of magazines is slowly dwindling, my list of recipes is growing (in a controlled, orderly fashion), and my heart is happy.  It’s been a good day.