Meal Planning

I try to plan my meals ahead of time. I try to go through my recipe cards & pull out a decent variety of chicken, beef & seafood dishes, plus a couple veggie recipes & maybe a dessert. I try to mix old standbys with new things.

And then I try to actually make those meals.

I’d say I have an average 65% success rate.

Some weeks I am 100% on it. I make everything on the list.

Those are the weeks I don’t specify the veggies.

Then there are weeks where I thought I wanted to cook these meals but it turned out I just wanted to eat them and since I can’t eat them without cooking them & I don’t really want to cook it looks like it’s spaghetti with Ragu sauce & Pillsbury’s Texas toast for supper one night, followed by cheese sandwiches & Campbell’s noodle soup, followed by take out pizza, followed by actually making one of the meals, followed by “you know what? eat whatever you want” for supper because I am still exhausted from standing over the stove for 15 minutes the night before.

Summer is a problem for me because I like to cook one pot, long & slow cooked roasts & stews & things and when it is 98 degrees outside you do not want the oven on for 2.5 hours braising pork roast.

I don’t cook in a crock pot. Everything I make in a crock pot with one exception turns out tasting watery & like it’s been sitting on a steam table for too long.

The exception is the most delicious hot chocolate in the world. It’s the only reason I continue to give the crock shelf space.

So I am left struggling with stovetop meals.

Having slacked off all of July I decided it was time to refocus & actually make the 11-14 meals I chose in a two week period instead of over 6 weeks. I decided to just try a week’s worth, complete with vegetables, to get back in the swing of things.

This is what we are having this week:

Zucchini & leek frittata with spinach salad

Triangle sandwiches with more spinach salad

Steak sandwiches with pea soup

Turkey Saltimboca with roasted cauliflower

Chicken cutlets with toasted ravioli & raw carrots

Fish Meunier with stir fried garlicy broccoli

Tacos

This is in no particular order & tonight we have to go get Mayhem’s football equipment at 6pm so probably we’ll hit a drive through for supper, pushing at least one of these meals off the list. I’m guessing the chicken & ravioli because it’s the most complicated & uses 2 skillets.

So I am already failing one day into it.

I really need to look at the calendar before I plan meals.

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