Shopping and Cooking for a Week at My House, Conclusion

In conclusion....

Friday Night

Lasagna

 

On Friday we had lasagna for dinner. I have step by step picture instructions to make lasagna here. I made my lasagna bigger than the one shown on that webpage.  I used an 11x15 pan instead of a 9x13.

To make a larger portion I used 10 whole wheat lasagna noodles. I buy those in bulk (a 10lb box) from Azure Standard. I added a more cheese and cottage cheese and made a bigger batch of sauce.

For the sauce I used one pound of hamburger (from my beef in the freezer), a quart of home canned spaghetti sauce and added 1 6oz can tomato paste and a 15oz can of diced tomatoes (had these in my pantry). I use to buy all my tomato products from Azure because I wanted the organic tomatoes. I always am trying to avoid GMO products where I am able to. Now that Costco is selling organic diced tomatoes and organic paste, I buy it from them. I still buy my tomato sauce from Azure. I mixed the tomato products in with my sauce and added a couple of teaspoons of Italian herbs and some water. Then I assembled my lasagna (as shown on the web page linked above).

 

I served this with a salad and regular bread. I had French bread on the menu but the day was very busy and I was heading out in the evening with my kids and I did not have time to get it made.

I took an extra portion of this meal and packed it up for my hubby to take to work.  I also pulled out a package of frozen, chopped
chicken meat to use to make him a chicken salad sandwich.  I wrote a blog post awhile back on making frugal sandwiches and you can read about that in more detail here: http://homesteadinghomemaker.blogspot.com/2010/03/trim-budget-sandwiches.html
Every few weeks I cook up one whole chicken and a roast and chop this up and freeze it for his sandwiches.

His lunches are pretty basic. I send a portion of whatever meal we are eating, one sandwich (he use to take two but now he says one is plenty), some potato chips (Kettle brand, lightly salted), fruit, and a few mixed nuts in a container for snacking and a bottle of lemonade (I make it myself and put it in cleaned out plastic water bottles).He is gone for almost 12 hours each day (or rather night, he works graveyard) so he tends to like pretty big lunches!:). On the afternoon of his first night back to work I make up 2 quarts of lemonade and divide it into 4 (he works 4 days a week) plastic water bottles and put it in the fridge for the week. I also make enough chicken salad or beef salad sandwich filling for the week so putting together his lunch each day is pretty quick.

Here is how I make the lemonade..

To make 2 quarts:

½ cup honey

1 cup lemon juice

water

I put the honey in the 2qt juice container and add just enough hot water to dissolve and melt the honey. Then I add the lemon juice and fill to the top with cold water.

If you want you can drop the honey amount down to ¼ cup.I have done this and it tastes just fine, at least for us.Some may like it sweeter.

**********************************

Saturday

Baked chicken legs, garlic roasted potatoes and coleslaw

 

I defrosted and baked some chicken legs I had in the freezer. I have some yummy mango ginger glaze that I purchased from Costco a couple of weeks ago. I don’t typically buy things like this because I work to avoid MSG (and all its various names that appear on labels), but I was really
surprised to find this sauce to be very clean, ingredient wise.  So I gave it a try and we loved it on chicken.  So I baked the chicken legs at 350 until they are done and then brushed some of this glaze on them and turned the heat up to about 400 and bake until the glaze started to brown.

While the chicken was baking in my 11x15 pan I had the garlic roasted potatoes baking right next to them in my 9x13 pan.

Here is my recipe for the potatoes..

Garlic Roasted Potatoes


Wash and chop up in bite size pieces, enough potatoes to feed your family. Put them in a baking dish and drizzle olive oil over the top. Sprinkle with seasoning salt, pepper and minced garlic. Bake uncovered at 400 for 30 minutes or longer (the time will depend on how many potatoes are cooking and what size dish they are in), until they are fork tender and ready to eat.

 

I still had coleslaw that we were finishing up in the
fridge. Pretty simple dinner.

Saturday was also a baking day at my house. My daughter Leanne baked 4 loaves of bread (which was good, we only had one loaf left in the freezer), and she baked a breakfast coffee cake
for us!

 

**************************************

That brings us to Sunday!
BBQ

 

Well my menu changed last minute. We originally were not planning on doing a BBQ for the 4th of July because hubby had to work. But my oldest son called and he and his wife wanted to come for a BBQ and light some fireworks.. So that is what we did. They actually brought most of the food with them, which was very sweet.. so the work for me was minimal and we enjoyed the food, the fireworks and sitting around the campfire.

My originally planned meal of chicken relleno casserole, refried beans, Spanish rice will be served later on this week.

I hope you enjoyed spending this week with me and cooking and meal planning. I enjoyed sharing it with you and will have to do this again sometime. :)