Lately I’ve had folks asking about my menu plans and how I cook. I’ve written about it before so if this is a repeat, or you’re not interested, just skip over this post.
We rarely eat out, we prefer to eat at home. I try to do a lot of my cooking on one day. For a while, I did it on Monday but now I mostly do it on Sunday because I didn’t want to give up one of my sewing days cooking. Some weeks, the menu doesn’t lend itself well to the all day marathon of cooking. This week, everything is so easy that I didn’t do much yesterday. Some weeks it hardly takes me any time to cook. Some weeks it takes longer but it’s always my choice. I always look at the grocery store ads and try to incorporate fresh things that are on sale — such as broccoli, spinach, kale, etc. Other things that are on sale, such as chicken or roasts or canned goods, I stock up on those and freeze what needs to be frozen and stick other things in the pantry so that I rarely buy anything that isn’t on sale.
If you look over my menu, be thinking about how you would fix all this and save time. Mostly I cook things that can be used in several dishes. Here are the things I will do on this week’s menu:
- Spinach – We’re having Spinach Salad twice so I will wash the whole bag and cut the stems, them put it into a zipper bag. We will use part of it for each salad, as well as putting it on our sandwiches instead of lettuce.
- Spaghetti Sauce – There’s always leftover and this is what I cook down and use as pizza sauce.
- Eggs – The Spinach Salads each include boiled eggs, I use boiled eggs in my tuna salad and in the potato salad so on Sunday, I boiled a dozen eggs — 3 for each salad, 3 for the tuna salad and 3 for the potato salad. They will be cold and ready to peel when I am ready to use them.
- Chicken – For the grilled, I will grill more than we need because we have it for lunch. For the roasted chicken, I will roast a whole chicken and use part of it in a chicken salad on Monday of next week.
- Broccoli – I will steam twice as much as we need and the leftovers will be used in the cream of broccoli soup.
- Mexican Lasagna – It has black beans, corn, ground chicken, pasta — it’s a meal in one dish. All we need to add is a salad. Because we love borracho beans, I’ll serve them also . . yes, I know . . that’s two beans.
My main goal is to cook a few things that can be served as leftovers. If you don’t like “leftovers” per se, then divide the dish into two dishes. Take the hash brown casserole for example. Don’t bake the whole thing in one dish. Put half in a smaller dish. Bake it for Thursday evening. Put the other half in another dish. Stick it in the fridge and bake it for Saturday evening.
All this cooking may seem like it takes hours and hours but it doesn’t! You know that I only have 24 hours in my day. I spend a whole lot of hours in the garden, as well as a lot of hours in the sewing room. I don’t spend a ton of time cooking but we always have fantastic meals!
My menu for this week is:
Sunday:
Spaghetti & Meatballs
Spinach Salad
Garlic Bread
Monday: (Make White Bread)
Lunch:
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Tomato Soup
Dinner:
Grilled Chicken
Steamed Broccoli
Potato Salad
Crusty Bread
Tuesday:
Lunch:
Chicken Salad (using leftover chicken over spinach salad)
Spiced Apple Rings
Dinner:
Mexican Lasagna
Borracho Beans
Broccoli Slaw
Wednesday:
Lunch:
Tuna Salad Sandwiches
Cream of Broccoli Soup
Dinner:
Pizza
Thursday:
Lunch:
Mexican Lasagna
Salad
Applesauce
Dinner:
Pineapple Grilled Chicken
Hash Brown Casserole
Green Beans
Rosemary Focaccia
Friday:
Lunch:
Leftover Pizza
Dinner:
Hilah’s Shrimp Tacos
Guacamole
Leftover Borracho Beans
Saturday:
Roasted Chicken
Leftover Hashbrown Casserole
Mustard Greens
Lambert’s Rolls
The way I cook won’t work for everyone and please don’t try to make my methods work for you unless it looks like something you would enjoy doing. If eating out several times a week fits your lifestyle or if you don’t like to cook . . don’t feel bad. For us, we almost always leave a restaurant saying “Dinner at home is so much better and so much less expensive!”
Helen says
I remember you trying out preparing several salads at a time and putting them in a jar and vacuum sealing it. If I recall correctly it worked quite well, so is it something that you do now?
Rosie Davis says
Judy, what’s Borracho beans?
Beth says
Soupy pinto beans/.unmashed refried beans. Also called charro beans depending on the Mexican restaurant
Mary Jo says
I would love to be able to cook every night again. But since my husband and I both seem to have so much going on, I probably don’t cook more that once a week some weeks and on some weeks I cook 4 or 5 times. Friday has always been date night, and Sunday lunch we usually go out after Church with a group of friends.
Debbie in Alaska says
When my kids were growing up I lived by a menu plan…the kids could always check the menu instead of asking me throughout the day what was for dinner. I got out of the habit when my kids left home and I see how well you do it with just you and Vince…thanks for the reminder…much better than eating out all the time.
Dar in MO says
Judy, I love how you plan ahead and have leftovers for lunch a couple of days later. I have a slight problem. My DH is a refrigerator raider. WHenever I have a few leftovers to save for another meal later, he sees them and they are eaten by the time I plan to use them. Unless it’s in the freezer, it will be gone!! I need a lock on the door that opens with a key — and I’m the only one with the key!!
Sandy says
Judy…You mentioned kale. How do you cook it to make it edible?
Ranch Wife says
I cook like that too. It took me a little while to reconfigure things once the kids left home, but we are settling into our empty nest. Cooking like you do, leaves more time to sew!
Michelle says
do you have trouble getting the shell off the hard boiled homegrown eggs.? Any secrets to make it easier