Saturday, January 09, 2010

The Pantry of the Everlasting Dinners :)

It never fails. You cook your family dinner and the next night there they are wanting you to do it again, lol.

I enjoy it, though, and we are really working through the bits and pieces in our pantry and freezer!

I am preparing my lunch for church tomorrow. I forgot to purchase broccoli for my casserole, so instead I am making barbecued chicken casserole, but with brown rice instead of hash browns.

While I wait for the rice to finish, I am planning my meals for next Wednesday (1/13) through the following Tuesday (1/19). (Mr. Honey-- who has made it past the one-week mark in his battle against nicotine, woot!-- is watching the football game, Aravis is visiting on AO Unlimited and Mariel and Cornflower are in bed.)

I have some blue cheese to finish, so one night this week we will have this frittata with onions, spinach, tomatoes and blue cheese. (The kids will probably have scrambled eggs.)

We have one more ham, this one is the last of our Omaha Steaks gift from my grandparents. We sure have enjoyed those meats! Traditionally, a baked ham is served with scalloped potatoes, but the potatoes are gone and I do not want any more. (We have a box of instant potatoes, but I'm pretty sure you can't make scalloped potatoes with that.) We're trying to go easy on starches. Instead, I think I will make oven-roasted sweet potatoes and green beans.

We have one more freezer bag of Mexican soup to eat this week. This time I will serve it with salad and biscuits.

I also found some sad sorry little tilapia filets that have been touched with freezer burn. I'm going to use them in a seafood casserole-- I'm taking this tuna casserole recipe and using my tilapia (which I will bake first) in place of tuna. I am leaving out the mushrooms.

We have some pinto beans in the freezer. I'm planning to make them into what is called Red Beans and Rice in Texas. (I always called kidney beans red beans, but my TX friends tell me pintos are used in Texan red beans and rice.) I'll cut up some sausage in there, too, and serve it with raw apples and/or carrots.

We had turkey hot dogs and carrots and celery sticks for dinner tonight, and still have another meal's worth of dogs in the freezer. I wanted to do something different with them, so I think I will cook them with barbecue sauce (we had three unopened bottles of barbecue sauce in the pantry) and serve boxed macaroni and cheese (my kids' favorite kind) and broccoli on the side.

That does it for protein sources already hanging out in my kitchen-- except for a partial bag of dry garbanzo beans that we use for math manipulatives. ;o) For this last meal, I'm going to purchase a roasting chicken, which Mariel loves. She loves to eat it, she loves to roast it, and she loves getting the guts out and rubbing the bird with seasonings. I am blessed to have a child that likes getting her hands messy. (That means I don't have to do it. ;o) I want to serve it with potatoes, which means I have to use the instant potatoes in the pantry. We are not fond of instant, so I'll make gravy, too. And we can use up the spinach I got for the frittatas in a salad.

I posted my meal ideas for this past Wednesday through next Tuesday here.

Grocery list for next Wednesday:

Spinach
Tomatoes
Sweet potatoes
Green beans
Celery
Garlic
Peas
Broccoli
Apples
Eggs
Milk
8 ounces grated cheddar (it is actually cheaper this way at Kroger)
1 lb kielbasa-type sausage
1 roasting chicken
2 boxes Kraft macaroni and cheese
Peanut butter
2 loaves bread

I generally do menu-planning a day or less before going to the store, so this is way in advance for me. These plans may change!

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