Menu Monday!

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Good Evening!
I hope you've all had a great Memorial Day holiday today.  This post is out later than typical. I've had a busy weekend and no chance to blog until right now. So I figured it was better late than not at all. 

Last Monday when I blogged I wasn't feeling any creative meal planning thoughts but I'm happy to say I got past that and this blog is fairly long with a lot of pictures. I hope it helps give you a little meal planning inspiration.

 The first thing I made last week was chicken alfredo. I had some frozen boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 1 1/2 pounds, I would guess). I put those in my crockpot and poured a 15oz jar of alfredo sauce over them. I put 1/2 cup of milk into the jar and shook it up to get all the remaining sauce and poured that over it all. I set my crockpot to "high" and let this cook for about 3 hours.


When this was done I shredded the chicken up a little. I wanted to leave some meaty pieces in there. Also the sauce was a little thinner then what I had wanted. So I put a 1/2 block of cream cheese in it and a handful of cheddar cheese. I added some more seasonings at this point too. I put in salt, pepper, garlic, and Italian seasonings. 


I can't even begin to tell you how creamy and delicious this was! I was trying to decide if I should serve it over pasta or rice when I remembered I still had some macaroni salad in the fridge. I had made this the previous week and it was an Italian based salad. I had not added any mayo to it but I did had added a little ranch dressing.  I had used mostly Italian dressing in the salad and added tomatoes, olives, mini peppers and onions. 

As strange as it might sound this worked great! The flavors combined perfectly and it was sooo good.  We had this for 2 nights and I still had some of it left over. 


My hubby BBQ'd us some steak on another night, which I served with baked potatoes and a salad...


And because BBQ'ing seems to be hubby's favorite thing we had another one the next night. I had been grocery shopping that day and thought to myself, I need to take better advantage of hubby's BBQ times. So I picked up a package of bratwurst. For our dinner this night we had hot dogs on the BBQ and a salad but I also put the bratwurst on there to use later in the week. 


He also had one of the bratwursts.  To BBQ the brats I put a pot of water on to boil and added onions, garlic, and a bottle of Corona beer. I brought this to a boil and put the brats in and let them boil/simmer for 10 minutes to get them precooked. Then pulled them out...


While those were cooking I set up a little mini salad bar..


When the grill was hot hubby put the brats on and let them cook for another 10 or so minutes turning them often to get them nicely browned..



 I had also picked up a rotisserie chicken while shopping and by this time I was getting quite a bit of food in my fridge that I needed to use in some way. 


 And an almost full package of hot dogs. 
When we have hot dogs we usually eat 3 of them. And then I still have another 9 left. With all the food I had to work with I decided to do a little meal prep for my husband's work lunches. I knew this would also give me meals to eat as well (he's not always home for dinners due to his work schedule). I like to have meals ready to go in the freezer. Makes it very nice for busy days. 

 Since I mostly had meat to work with I decided what I needed was side dishes to round out my meals. I started by putting some brown rice in my Instant Pot to get cooking. I also made a cheesy potato casserole with a package of the cubed type of hash browns. 

 I added cream of mushroom soup, a little sour cream, and cheddar cheese to the potatoes. Put it all in a 9x13 pan and baked it at 350 until it golden brown and done..




Now I could assemble a few of my meals. I use these freezer containers (this is an updated version of what I have. Mine are a little over a year old now)  that I purchased from Amazon for my meal prepping. I LOVE them. They have worked so nicely for me. I find that when I can freeze individual meals it really saves food from being wasted. 




 BINO Meal Prep Containers with Lids - 2 Compartment /30 oz [12-Pack] - Bento Box Lunch Containers for Adults Food Containers Meal Prep Food Prep Containers Tupperware Set




I cut up 2 brats in slices for each container and then put a side of cheesy potatoes with it. I also cut up some chicken from my rotisserie chicken and added the cheesy potatoes to that for a side.


The next thing I wanted to try and use was the hot dogs. These hot dogs from Costco are all beef and very flavorful. I searched around and found an easy quick recipe that I decided to try. I had everything needed for it so I figured why not. It is a Hot Dog and Potato Dinner recipe from Betty Crocker. You can find the recipe HERE.  It uses a box of au gratin potatoes (mine was generic store brand) and the meal is made all in one pot. Sounded perfect to me. I was able to set 2 servings aside for hubby and still had a little leftover for me..



Now the only things left was my leftover chicken alfredo. I put that over the brown rice I had cooked in my IP, giving me 2 more meals. So all in all I ended up with 8 total meals for the freezer..




I removed the rest of the chicken meat off the chicken and made a batch of chicken stock with the bones. I also put the leftover rice in the fridge along with the chicken meat and will be using that tomorrow night to make Chinese fried rice. 
The most humorous thing about that day was I was feeling great about my accomplishments and realized that I hadn't thought of anything for our dinner that night, ha, ha! :D  So I quickly put together fish sticks (in the oven) and french fries (in the air fryer) and a salad..


That brings us to Memorial Day weekend. Hubby has to work on Memorial Day so we had our bbq yesterday. My oldest son was here with us and we had a very nice evening. Hubby treated us to burgers and as always they were great..



While my son was making his I snapped this picture. I had mine on rye bread (because that sounded good to me :) and hubby and son had theirs on buns. 



That is all for this weeks Menu Monday!  
Crystal

Comments

  1. KathyMay 28, 2019 at 9:20 PM

    You were busy! I can't imagine cooking all of that. I cook for each day and we usually eat it all that day. Very seldom do I have leftovers. And since our supermarket is only 3 blocks from my house, it's easy to go there everyday to get what I want for dinner. I wish I could get myself together to do what you do. Everything looks delicious!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CrystalMay 29, 2019 at 11:27 AM

      Hi Kathy! :) I've always been a 'batch' cooker. When I had all my kids at home I would cook lots of food for the freezer. So this is actually downsized from what I use to do! LOL.. Cooking for 10 people, 3 meals a day (that's 30 servings each day) had me cooking very differently. I also use to do "once a month" cooking. I no longer have the energy or desire for any of that but also don't like to have to cook every day so I always try and have a few meals tucked away for hubby to take to work. My grocery stores are 45 minutes away so that is why I only shop once a week. I also have had a hard time learning to cook for 2 people (25+ years of cooking for an army of people makes portion sizes difficult to judge! :D ) . As much as I've tried I still overcook and end up with leftovers. I decided not to fight it so much and take advantage of the leftovers and now I only cook 3 nights or so a week leaving me more time to focus on other things I would rather do. That being said, I haven't had a day like that in the kitchen for some time.. ;)
      Crystal :)

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 29, 2019 at 12:46 AM

    I was wondering if you microwave these freezer meals to heat? If so for about how long?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. CrystalMay 29, 2019 at 11:29 AM

      Hi! Yes the freezer meals get microwaved. I most always send them with hubby to work so I'm not sure how long he heat them up. I pack them frozen and they are partial defrosted by the time he has his lunch break. I'm guessing it probably takes 2 or 3 minutes to finish defrosting and heat up.

      Delete

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