Meal Planning

Ever rummage through your kitchen looking for ideas for dinner and feel like you're on an episode of "Chopped"? Hmmm... half a bag of carrots, a heel of bread, a package of Ramen noodles, and two hot dogs. Wonder if I can put it all together and pass it off as some kind of Asian fusion minestrone to my family...

One of my goals this year is to meal plan better. Another family goal has been to eat healthier. I know that planning ahead will help us save money and eat healthier. Here's how the planning is going so far this week...

Looking at the grocery ad previews I see that Meijer will have boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale for $1.79/lb. That's a pretty good price. $1.49/lb would be better but I cooked the last of my frozen chicken breasts earlier this week so I need a couple more pounds for the coming week. Also on sale in Jennie-O ground turkey. We have been eating more ground turkey lately so those will be the two proteins I'm buying this week.

As far as grocery staples, this is some of what I try to have on hand at all times and what I pay:

Milk - it's like gas. I have to have it and I'll shop around for the best prices each week. Lately I've been benefitting from a price war that my local Meijer store is having with the Aldi store that's right across their parking lot. Aldi's been advertising a gallon of milk for $1.29 so my Meijer dropped their price to $1.19 a gallon. It's location specific though cause the Meijer in Carmel has it priced around $1.59. Usually, Aldi will have the lowest price on milk.

Eggs - again, like milk, it varies. It's been anywhere from 0.69 to 1.29/dozen lately. I try not to pay more than 0.99/dozen.

Dry Pasta - 0.50/lb is great price.

Pasta Sauce - never more than 1.00.

Bread - I used to never pay more than 1.00/loaf. Lately I've been paying more since we're trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup and buy more whole grain products. Still don't want to pay more than 2.00/loaf though.

Boneless skinless chicken breasts - 1.49 to 1.89/lb is good. There are so many things you can do with chicken breasts.

Cheese - less than 1.50 for an 8 oz bag of shredded cheese is good. 1.50 - 2.00 for a bag of cheese slices.

Salad mix - I admit, this is my splurge. I always have a big box of organic prewashed Spring Mix type salad greens in my fridge. I like my salad with arugula, spinach, frisee, chard, radicchio and those types of greens. It's more cost and time effective for me to buy it all pre-mixed and washed. I throw it into omelets, sandwiches, as well as salads.

Lettuce - for my husband who doesn't like my salad greens. 0.99 a head or less. It's also handy for Mexican dishes.

Roma tomatoes - 0.99/lb or less. I like them because they are pretty firm and cut up easily for sandwiches and garnishes.

Canned beans - 0.69/can or less. I have black beans, garbanzo beans, chili beans, and great northern beans for chili, soup, and salads.

Canned tomatoes - 0.68/can or less. For pasta dishes, Mexican dishes, chili.

On Sunday I cooked a couple pounds of chicken breasts. What I do it cut them into fist size chunks and marinate them in Italian salad dressing for at least an hour. After that I sear them in a skillet so just the outsides are cooked (this locks in the juices) and then I bake them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. After that, they are fine to eat as is, or you can use them for other recipes.

Lunch yesterday was this salad...

It's a handful of salad greens topped with some cut up chicken breast meat, strawberries, and goat cheese with balsamic vinaigrette dressing . Sure to rival any restaurant salad at a fraction of the price! I love goat cheese. I stock up when Kroger runs their crumbled goat cheese tubs on sale for 0.99. If I run out, Aldi has the best every day price for crumbled goat cheese. I eat this salad a LOT!

For a meatless variation (like if I'm eating as a side with a meat already) I use roasted beets. Canned beets work well too. You can also substitute other berries for the strawberries depending on what's on sale. Another favorite combination is strawberries/berries, goat cheese, and pecans or walnuts.

Dinner last night was chicken enchiladas.

So, baked chicken breasts, bag of cheese (1.27 at Meijer last month), sour cream (1.00/tub, from my stockpile), enchilada sauce (I try to stock up when they're on sale for 1.00 at Meijer and usually Old El Paso will have a coupon to go along with it but I ran out of sauce this week; thus I had to buy a can from Meijer yesterday), and the Azteca tortillas I got for 0.24 at Kroger last week.

Basically shred however much chicken you want, throw in some shredded cheese, a couple dollops of sour cream, and enough enchilada sauce to tie it all together but not make it runny.

Pour what's left of your first can of enchilada sauce into the bottom of a pan. Spoon some enchilada filling in the tortillas and roll them up. Place in sauce. Cover it all with your second can of enchilada sauce, then top it with as much shredded cheese as you like. It's super easy, and no, I don't measure anything!

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30. All of your ingredients are already cooked. All you're doing is heating and melting everything together.

Serve with some shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes and sour cream.

Dinner tonight will be Neuvo Chipotle Beef with butternut squash. This has been a family favorite ever since I started making it a couple years ago. I first saw it on the Food Network Challenge when it won the National Beef Cook-Off. You can find the recipe HERE.

I am substituting venison for the beef because I found a ton in the freezer yesterday. Venison is super lean so slow cooking it like this is perfect.

When hubs hunts whatever is in season we tend to always have meat around here!

Ready for the oven

This is the butternut squash I bought yesterday. Basically cut it up to fit into a microwave safe dish, add a little water to the bottom, cover it with plastic wrap, then nuke it until it's cooked. I'll usually start out at 5 minutes and then check it and turn the pieces over or around depending on how it's cooking.

As far as the garnish, I cut up a Roma tomato and an avocado and sprinkled some lime juice over it. All out of cilantro right now and I'm NOT goin back to the store today! Lime juice and lemon juice are also refrigerator staples for me. I get them in the little plastic containers that look like limes and lemons.

Other meals in this week's line up include homemade pizza. I use THIS pizza crust recipe. I like it because you can make the crust ahead of time and stick it in the fridge. We generally do a BBQ chicken pizza with BBQ sauce, shredded cooked chicken breasts, red onions, and cheese. Also do one with a pasta sauce base, cooked ground beef or turkey, mushrooms, bell peppers, and cheese. That will be dinner tomorrow.

I'll definitely be making these Balsamic Carmelized Onion Turkey Burgers...

photo from "The Foodie and the Fix"

recipe HERE

I tried them out on my family last month and they were a huge hit. I'll have to pick up some whole wheat buns and provolone cheese when I get the ground turkey this week.

Another recipe I found last month was for pork potstickers. My kids love the Tai Pei frozen pork potstickers so I had been stocking up when they went on sale for $2 a box and combining them with a 0.50 coupon. THEN... I found THIS recipe. I spent an afternoon last month making several hundred potstickers and freezing them. We haven't bought potstickers since.

Frozen potstickers. I had three bags but we're down to this now.

J likes them pan fried. G and I eat a little healthier version by steaming them for 10 minutes. We blend up a 50/50 mix of soy sauce and rice vinegar to pour over them and they are delish!

Another thing the kids and I have been stuck on lately are fruit smoothies. I've found that basically a 1 - 1.5 cup mix of frozen fruit plus a cup of milk works well. It all started when I found a blueberry-banana-beet smoothie recipe that called for 0.5 cup frozen blueberries, 0.5 cup frozen diced beets, 1/4 a frozen banana, and 8 oz (1 cup) of almond milk. I subbed 2% milk for the almond milk and it turned out fine. I cut up and froze a couple bananas that were going brown and roasted a panful of beets and diced them up.

On the left is my last bag of frozen blueberries (remember THIS POST from June where I froze 20 pints of blueberries). On the right is my bag of frozen diced beets and the smaller bag is my frozen banana chunks.

Other quick meals will be sandwiches. I've been stuck on hummus sandwiches lately. It's whole grain bread spread with hummus on both sides and filled with sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, and red onion. Try it! Actually, when I was in high school there used to be a little restaurant in Broad Ripple called Renee's that I absolutely loved. They had a veggie sandwich there that was the same thing except they used cream cheese instead of hummus. Either way, this is a great sandwich.

The other sandwich option is grilled cheese plus whatever else you want to add. I used some leftover caramelized onions (from the turkey burgers) last week and it was fabulous. You can also try tomatoes or apple slices or bacon. Those are some of my standbys.

Final thing I think I'll do tonight is make a big batch chocolate chip cookie dough to freeze. Since I've been trying to eat healthier and lose weight I haven't baked anything since before Christmas. Can you believe it! Anyhoos, J was having a mini meltdown this afternoon about there not being any cookies in the house. She finally left to go buy some on her own. My scale says I'm making some progress so I suppose I'll indulge the family and make some cookie dough. That way they can have some whenever they want - just bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.