Last week was the first week of our meal planning strategy. When we plan, I get out a regular sheet of paper and write Monday through the next Monday on it. We already have the first Monday planned, but I still include it so I can don’t have to have two papers stuck to the fridge with magnets. We all sit down for a family meeting and everyone adds their input. Last week some things had to be rearranged because we had people over a couple of times for dinner, and some meals are easier for a larger crowd than others. Am I right?!
Under the meals we decide on, I write a list of ingredients we need to get at the store to be prepared for that meal. Of course I try to plan a lot of meals around what we already have, or I should say what I THINK we already have(my memory is already starting to fade)! (*Added Note* If you look at Karen’s comments under Part two of the goal setting post, she includes a GREAT idea of planning your meals around the weekly sales at the grocery store. This is GENIUS! Not only can you try to get some meals planned with items already owned, but the rest can be sale items! We will be implementing this from now on. This will change the day of our family meetings, since store circulars come out in the middle of the week. Back to your regularly schedule post) So the next day when I go to start getting dinner ready, I got out the crock pot and headed to the freezer just to find we didn’t have a pork roast like I thought. FAIL! On the first day I failed! Frustrating!
Well now what? Here’s where the “make it up” comes to play. We did have some chicken so I threw that in the crock pot. Then I started going through the cupboard to see what else I could throw in there. I found a couple other things to throw in for flavor between the pantry and the refrigerator. I have seen a recipe for Italian Chicken, but because I am naturally a lazy person I didn’t want to look it up, so I decided to make it up. I threw in some Italian seasoning, cream cheese, cream of chicken soup, a dollop (I get unique word points for that!!) of sour cream, a splash of milk and a prayer it would be edible! I let that go on high for about 4 hours (oh, did I forget to mention that I forgot about even making dinner until 12:30pm, hence the high setting. I usually like to do my crock pot meals low and slow.) While I was throwing this all together I thought that if we were to put this all over rice that would bulk it up a bit! So when dinner time approached I made some rice.
When my husband got home and we all sat down for dinner, I did not mention that this was a Frankenstein dinner. I served everyone up, we said the prayer of the on food (in my head there may have been some extra pleading for everyone to eat it) and we began to eat. Well, actually I waited until my husband had taken a bite and didn’t spit it out before I took a bite. After a few bites he mentioned it was so good, and thanked me for making it, so then I told him about the mishap with no pork and that I had to make it up tonight. He laughed and said that he wondered why we were already not going by the plan we made yesterday. He then may or may not have proceeded to tell me I was a food genius and that I should always make it up! 🙂 OK he didn’t use those words, but he did say I did a good job, it was great!
Any Frankenstein meals going on at your house? While you thinking about meals, I’d love to hear some of your favorites, because we are having a hard time coming up with some!! Thanks!
angiek says
My boyfriend who I live with does most of the cooking He makes meals up all the time.Most of the time they are really good every once in a while one is not so good.