Menu Plan Week of 4/27/2009

Monday - Ground Beef Stroganoff
Tuesday - Black Beans & Rice
Wednesday - Chicken tenders, french fries, and salad (an American Idol night tradition)
Thursday - Spaghetti, Salad, and Corn
Friday - Pork steaks, peas, and some sort of potatoes
Saturday - Chicken breast with Mushroom rice and broccoli

Breakfast for hubby is sausage biscuits that I make on the weekend and freeze for quick heating. I generally eat some fruit or cereal or sometimes a pbj.

Lunches are leftovers for me. Hubby has potted meat and other quick foods that he keeps in his vehicle since he drives all over the city.

Thoughts on my meal plan...

So far, the whole knowing what is supposed to be for dinner is great! We've had to make two changes primarily because we had a few meat items in the freezer that needed to be used. I ended up making a rosemary pork and potato crock pot meal on Monday to use up two smallish pork loins. Today I'm substituting deer sausage chili for dinner. Wednesday is my day off from my part time job so I am able to spend more time cooking. The only problem is that I will have to run to the store and pick up some more canned beans because in a fog of Fibro issues I forgot to soak beans last night. Oh well, FMS is like that.

All in all, I'm happy. I've cooked 4 nights in a row. My kitchen is clean and I am content. If hubby cooks, he makes a mess and will not clean up as he goes. In his defense, he was a professional chef and had a galley hand. He learned to depend on others to clean the kitchen behind him. Since we do not have kids in the house, I end up having to clean and I hate that!

Some People

How horrible is it that we live in a world where my husband can be working in a gated community, with his work van in the driveway, and have his van broken into and his Tom-Tom stolen?

My beloved husband needs this to navigate his way around town so we will be forced to buy a new one. I'm crushed though as money for this sort of item just is not in the budget. I'm grateful that my dad is going to allow hubby to borrow his TomTom indefinately. I just hope we can find the money for a new one soon.

Even worse, he waited 45 minutes for the police who NEVER showed up. Yeah, I'm feeling a bit bitter right now. However, I'm going to look at the bright side and be happy that his DVD player & MP3 player were both left untouched in the vehicle.

Navajo Fry Bread

Below is the recipe for the Navajo Fry Bread I made. This was very good but very heavy on the tummy. It did not set well with our bellies! I made a few with cinnamon and sugar and the rest were made traditional style with taco ingredients on top.


Navajo Fry Bread

4 cups flour
1 Tbsp. powdered milk
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
11/2 cups warm water
Oil for frying
Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly. Add water. Knead until soft, then set aside for one hour. Shape into small balls. Flatten each ball into a circle with or rolling pin or by hand. Fry in a skillet half-full of oil until golden brown on both sides.

Menu Plan Week of 4/19/2009

This menus is including a few things we may not have eaten in the same week (i.e. pork on Monday and Friday) but I had a few things to get out of the freezer. I think we will be back down to at least 3 bean/rice type meals per week. Of course, all meals will be made with enough for left overs to be frozen using our vac sealer.

Monday - Rosemary Pork loin (crockpot) with apple sauce and a salad
Tuesday - Red Beans & Rice
Wednesday - Chicken tenders, french fries, and salad (an American Idol night tradition)
Thursday - Spaghetti, Salad, and Corn
Friday - Pork steaks, peas, and some sort of potatoes
Saturday - Chicken breast with Mushroom rice and broccolli

More thoughts on Food

Today I made the trek to Aldi's and spent a whopping $42.48 there. We were down to a small amount of cash so this was the best I could do. It was sad to see that I'm spending about 30% more on food this year. Anyway, this got the needed ingredients for our meals this week but very little stock up foods.

Hubby got an opportunity to help out a neighbor. She paid him $40 for his services. So while he cooked dinner on the grill, I went to Kroger and got a few things. For $42.94, I got a cart full of frozen veggies! I filled one of the huge re-useable Aldi's bags. We now have 2o bags of veggies ranging in size from 1 to 3 pounds. We also have a huge bag of frozen french fries, a few Cadburry eggs (on clearance) and 2 2liters of generic pop (for hubby). Oh yeah, and a big jar of apple sauce for me.

This means we have all of the ingredients for our meals and plenty of extras. This makes me very very happy and much more secure feeling.

Side Jobs = Full Freezers

Hubby had a side job today that netted a nice chunk of money. Since things have been SO tight for us lately (to the point of having to choose what bills to pay on what payday), we have been scrimping on our groceries. I swear that this has cost us more in the long run. Between running out for one particular item and ending up with 4 or 5 things and eating out because it is quicker than getting what we need. Well, you get the picture. Anyway, today we spent $170 on meat. Yes meat. That was for 50 pounds of beef (steaks, round, chopped, minute steaks, etc). That price includes the nearly 10% sales tax that we Tennesseans must pay on groceries. Broken down, it is roughly $3.15 or so per pound. Now, if it were all ground beef this would not be a good deal but for the cuts of meat we received, it is quite nice. This amount will last our little family of two for about 6 months (I will keep track). Outside of our AngelFood packages, this will be all of the meat products that we purchase.

Since we brought in all of this food, we cleaned out the freezers. I am SO VERY ASHAMED of the amount of food we lost simply by being careless in the past. I am resolved that this is not going to happen again. The silver lining to this sad tale is that my dogs and my friend's dogs will all be eating well for a while.

We have 2 frozen turkeys out there that we bought in November. Those I will be cooking over the summer months, most likely out on the smoker to keep the heat down in the house. We have two upright freezers. One is full of meats. One holds the frozen veggies and the turkeys. The next big payday (hopefully soon if it will get HOT outside), we will buy a big buggy full of frozen vegs. I don't eat many canned vegs because of the sodium and my allergies.

I also want to start making planned left overs and freezing them for a second meal later in the month. Since I have FMS, many times I cannot find the energy to make dinner. I'd like to have a ready amount of heat & eat meals available so that we won't be hitting up the dollar menu at some crappy fast food place.

That said, I am making up a menu plan for each week. I've decided to join in on I'm an Organized Junkie's Menu Plan Monday starting this week. We've got our meal plan all planned out for the week. I will be going to Aldi's tomorrow afternoon to get the few items we will need for the upcoming week's plan. Check back on Monday to see what we're eating for the week!

Thoughts on Simplifying

This year Project Purge has been more about getting rid of the big things as opposed to the smaller and less noticeable items. Sure, I've had the large amount of bathroom items (41) or movies (26) that have left in one fell swoop but the majority of items are going one at a time in a bigger way that is causing me to stop and take notice.

On the first Saturday in April, we ripped the carpeting out of our bedroom. This was a spur of the moment thing fueled by an obnoxious odor that only got worse the more I shampooed. We discovered that the previous owners may have used the corners as restrooms while being forcefully evicted from the home. My pet had an accident in that area and as soon as I began to shampoo, the odors started.

Anyway, as we removed the carpeting, we also removed items from our bedroom. I gave a dear friend a huge trunk we were using to store blankets and moved the blankets into a tote that fit under the bed. I removed a lot of miscellaneous clutter from our bedroom as well. The eucalyptus swag above the bed and the basket of fake greenery are both gone. They were dust collectors and we have allergies. They had to go! This led to rearranging wall art and purging a few older framed items there as well.

That night as I climbed into bed in my bedroom that actually had wall space visible, I realized how much I liked things simple. The next morning, I cleared all of the stuff off of my dresser except for one lovely faerie. Everything else was gotten rid of or in the case of my large jewlery/chest, moved to another location. Empty space is making me happy.

A few days later, I removed the huge laundry baskets and got one smaller one. This gave us more space. I looked around and realized how nice my bedroom looked. Even with the paint splattered parquet floors, even with the blase paint color, even with my mismatched furniture, the room is calm. I love it!

The attached bathroom got a makeover on this Saturday. We were given a small rolling cart like one would use in a kitchen. One wheel was gone so we removed all 4 casters and made it into a small cabinet for my bathroom. This allowed me to move the larger unit out of the bathroom (an old entertainment center). I was able to reorganize the stuff and actually ended up with more counter space! It's a wonderful thing!

This means two larger pieces have been removed from my home. Two items. That isn't much really but it is HUGE to me!

Wow!

Today the lovely Bunnykissd gave me an award today. My lonely little blog has NEVER gotten an award. To be honest, I'm not sure how many people actually read it on a regular basis!

“This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY-nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers.”

Thank you, my friend!

The recipe for native american flat bread turned out quite well, however, we learned that our family simply does not eat fried foods. These made us sick because of the oil content. Oh, well, on to new and exciting things.

Next up, a post on simplifying life.

Attemping A New Recipe

I am not a bad cook; far from it actually. I tend to cook items I've made before. I'm quite good with a recipe and will follow it once before adding/subtracting items to make it suit our family.

Lately I've been interested in native foods. My husband is 1/8 Native American and I have a smidge way back in my history (I have a great great great grandmother named Princess Cornblossom). I wanted to attempt fry bread. The recipe is inexpensive (flour, baking powder, salt, milk) so I figure if I mess it up, there is little financial loss.

I will follow up to this post with my results.