Menu Monday!

Good morning! I hope your week is getting off to a great start. I'm doing better at remembering to take a picture of my meals during the week! Makes for a more interesting blog post, at least I think it does. :)

So with that, here's a recap of last week's meals...

I had a few variations in the plan but it all worked out in the end.  We started the week off with spaghetti and meatballs..

 

It was very good. I didn't end up using canned spaghetti sauce. Instead I used a can of diced tomatoes, sauteed onions, and spaghetti seasonings as well as salt and pepper and all the normal stuff.  The meatballs were already cooked and frozen from Costco. While I was cooking my noodles and getting the sauce together I cooked the meatballs in my Instant Pot for 5 minutes. I put a steamer basket in the IP, added about 1 1/2 cups of water and set it on "manual" for 5 minutes.  It all came together very easily.  I also served french bread slices with this but didn't get that in the pic. 

Our next meal was a change up from the plans I had.  It was about as simple as it gets..

 

I still had a small serving of my chicken soup from last week. Not enough for another meal so decided we'd have hotdogs and a salad and a little soup to finish that off.  Worked out perfectly.

Wednesday was the busy day I shared about on Friday's post. I had a rotisserie chicken, pre-made scalloped potatoes and an Asian chopped salad.  All courtesy of Costco.  

 

We enjoyed this for 2 nights. The rest of the chicken and the bones were put in the Instant Pot and turned into chicken broth. 

On Friday we finished off the last of the spaghetti and meatballs.

On Saturday I made a pot of meatless split pea soup in my Instant Pot.  I also was going to make a small meatloaf. Instead I formed the meatloaf mixture into patties and fried them up. We had this with a salad. 

 

 That was delish and we had the rest of it on Sunday night.

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Now onto this week...  

When I started this series originally I would post a list of my weekly plan with no specific day of the week. Then I switched it to a Monday to Sunday format. What I'm finding is that it's difficult to plan every meal exactly on the days I intended. Things come up, plans change, I switch things around during the week, I have more leftovers or repurpose my leftovers into different meals and so on. So I'm going back to posting my basic 4 meals that I plan to make in the week and the following week I'll post the pictures and share how things turned out.

So with that in mind, here are my planned meals this week..

Taco pie with cresent rolls – I have a tube of crescent rolls in my fridge that needs to be used up. I've made this recipe once before and we both enjoyed it. It's simply a Pillsbury recipe. I'll add a salad and maybe some tortilla chips & salsa to go along side.

Pork chops, brown rice, gravy, salad – I had this on the menu last week and did not get it made. I'm using some chicken broth that I made over the weekend from my rotisserie chicken for the gravy (and the pan juices from baking the pork chops). I love rice and gravy together so this is a favorite meal of mine. 

 

Sheet pan chicken and butternut squash – I love the concept of sheet pan dinners but don't make them often enough. I have a butternut squash that needs to be used up and figured this would be a great way to do that. I don't have a recipe I'm following as of yet. I was thinking of maybe for the chicken a balsamic vinegar type sauce (made with the vinegar, olive oil & honey – still working on the details and will update what I do next weeek). It will all be spread on a sheet pan with the cut up squash and then roasted. Salad and french bread will be on the side. 

 

BBQ – Hubby said he'd like a bbq again this week so that is the plan. Usually it's steak, potatoes of some sort and a salad.

That should do it for us for the week!

Crystal