How We (Are Trying To) Do Meals Around Here

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I had fallen off the Homemade Dinner bandwagon. And landed HARD. It was so easy to shirk on making dinner-- I work in a grocery store, for goodness' sake, so there is always something to nibble, just a checkout line away! In the past, I had a system down, in which I made the same dish on the same night of the week: Meatloaf Monday, Baked Potato Thursday, etc. But after about two months of eating the same seven dishes incessantly, and convinced that my husband wasn't thrilled with the arrangement anyways, I needed a break! Then other things happened, and I never got quite back on the square-homemade-dinners bandwagon.

Needless to say, though, this blew the weekly grocery budget off the charts.

The clincher came the other night, when my husband announced that we have a slow leak in the bank account that was directly linked to our poor dining out habits. and THEN he said, "Remember when we used to have the same meals every week? That was sure great!" My jaw hit the floor!

After I put myself back together, I set to work on a new dinner schedule. But this time, the dishes of each weeknight are revolving around ingredients or a type of dish-- not just one particular dish... Although we did keep Baked Potato Thursday, because that's just spud-tacular!

(Sorry; couldn't resist!)

So here's my menu breakdown:

• Monday: casserole/pasta dish
• Tuesday: bean dish
• Wednesday: soup
• Thursday: baked potatoes
• Friday: free (whatever sounds good or is on sale for the week)
• Saturday: freezer/pantry item
• Sunday: spaghetti (or ravioli, etc.)

So this week, it's:

• Monday: Beef Carrot Casserole (my mom's recipe!)
• Tuesday: 3-Bean Casserole
• Wednesday: Lentil Soup (my mom's recipe again! I was feeling a little homesick when I made the list, with Thanksgiving coming and all. :-P)
• Thursday: Baked Potatoes
• Friday: Ham/Veggie Linguine
• Saturday: Chicken Pot Pie (based around some cooked cubed chicken in the freezer that needs to be used)
• Sunday: Spaghetti

It was nice to have a good, homemade meal every night this past week! Really, the hardest part of making a dinner is planning it all out. Give me the recipe and the ingredients, and getting a dinner on the table is a delight!

Well, I have to go-- it seems that a certain casserole is ready to come out of the oven!