Menu Plan Monday: Week of January 4

I know this is a little late, well maybe a lot, but one of my goals for this year is to not only purposefully meal plan, but to start doing posts each week to give you new and different ideas. This is a way for me to make myself more accountable, well along with my sweet friend Christina. She is going to help out and post some of hers here to.

With that, I would LOVE to hear about your meal plans for the week. They don’t have to be in great detail, if it is just a few things you had, please post it in the comments below, especially if you used items that were recently on sale to make it. It will help us all, and will be a great resource to have on each of my posts.

For those of you who have never meal planned before, get ready to really take a lot of stress off and to save a significant amount of extra money. I have always meal planned “in my head”, because I am one of the rare ones who loves to cook. For me part of the fun is the trip to the store and the actual cooking process. It has wained a little now having small children, it is just a little more difficult, you know the 5:00p loud, fussy, crying hour? But, I try to do most of the prep ahead when they are taking naps or at Mother’s Day Out, and I am enjoying it more!

One thing you will see is that I don’t do a breakfast and lunch meal plan. Breakfast around here is usually cereal or oatmeal, by my families choice. They just don’t prefer hot breakfasts, unless it is Saturday morning with daddy’s pancakes! And, lunches are leftovers or sandwiches, nothing real big. But dinner is very big around here, we all sit down together (with the television off), thank the Lord for our meal and talk about our day.

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So, here goes for this week…

Sunday: Turkey, Cheddar & Spinach hot pressed sandwiches (I just used what we had on hand and made something a little different with it)

Monday: Pot Roast with carrots, onions & celery, mashed potatoes, green peas and homemade bread (I actually used a deer roast, which tasted exactly the same as beef roast, yum!)
** Whenever I make a roast, I make a larger one and use the meat for meals throughout the week like french dip sandwiches, beef empanadas (great to freeze), or stroganoff. I will post about this soon!

Tuesday: French Dip with French Fries and a salad

Wednesday: Bacon Spinach Salad & Homemade Wheat Bread (I cook a pound of bacon, previously frozen and eat what’s left for breakfast the next day or use for BLT’s)
** Salad ingredients: fresh spinach, shredded monterey jack/mozzerella cheese, cherry tomatoes, crumbled bacon, red onion slices and boiled egg with either hot bacon dressing or poppyseed.

Thursday: Barbecue Roasted Salmon, sauteed spinach and Knorr pasta side with homemade wheat bread (This is my husbands all time favorite!)

Friday: Cheese Pizza on sale at Costco (This is our weekly pizza, popcorn and movie night. I get or make a pizza, my hubby makes homemade popcorn and I either get a movie from the library or we use a free Redbox code or just pay $1.)

Saturday: Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde, Black Beans and Spanish Rice ( I will roast 2 rotisserie chickens on Saturday to make this and use the left overs for next weeks meal plan.)