Once a Week Cooking in 2 Hours

If you read about my once a week cooking experiment last year and wondered if I've kept up with it, well, I haven't. I never tried it again after that one time. It would be rough for me to do that much cooking on a weekday (I work full time), and my weekends have been fairly busy with other things. But a couple weeks ago, I decided to try it again.

This was my dinner menu plan for the week:

Potato Bacon Corn Chowder

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

Chocolate pancakes with strawberry topping (for Valentine's Day)

Salmon patties, macaroni and cheese

Pizza casserole

Chicken Fried Rice

Dinner with friends

I didn't make every dinner ahead of time since the others were quick ones anyway, but I was able to get two main dishes ready to bake and two others ready to assemble. Before I started, I listed all the tasks I would need to complete and then ordered them in a way that would keep things moving. I forgot a few things initially, so this probably would have taken much less than 2 hours if I'd been more efficient. I also didn't menu plan based on the idea that I would be cooking ahead of time. Next time, I would choose more meals that are easy to prepare ahead of time and that share common ingredients (two dishes with pasta, two with beef, etc.).

12:50 - I start cooking the rice and heating up the skillet for the bacon.

12:58 - Cover rice to simmer; still cooking bacon

"Can I have some?"

I start putting together the enchiladas (with chicken I had cooked previously). Then I remember I need to be cooking hamburger and pasta for the pizza casserole and get that started.

1:44 - Enchiladas are ready, except for the sauce. The tortillas are falling apart (they were a little old), so I switch them to a smaller dish to keep them together a little better.

1:56 - I remember I have laundry that needs switched to the dryer.
Nathan steps in to work on browning the hamburger.

After the hamburger is done cooking, I make the sauce for the enchiladas.

2:22 - Enchiladas are done and I start assembling the pizza casserole.

2:33 - Pizza casserole is done!

2:34 - Oops! I forgot I needed to cook onion for the chowder.
I chop one up (sniff, sniff) and cook that.

2:49 - And we're done! Chicken enchiladas, pizza casserole,
rice for fried rice, and bacon and onion for chowder.

I try to pretend the kitchen doesn't exist for a while,
but Nenya is happy to begin cleanup for me.

Shared at Works for Me Wednesday.

This Week's Menu Plan

Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

Now that it's been over a year since the first and only time I posted our weekly menu, I decided it was time for another look at what we eat around here.

We've started exercising after work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which means the dinners for those days need to be either something I can throw together in minutes or something I can make ahead of time. 

Breakfasts

Me: Plain yogurt, fruit, whole wheat bagels

Nathan: Cold cereal (He doesn't want to eat anything else. I buy mostly healthier ones, with the occasional Reese's Puffs so he still loves me.)

Lunches

Leftovers or whatever else we can find to pack

Dinners

Monday: Baked Oatmeal

Tuesday: Crunchy Garlic Chicken (My new recipe for the week. I always try at least one.)

Wednesday: Sour cream chicken enchiladas (adapted for anti-spicy folk)

Thursday: Tomato Tuna Pasta

Friday: Baked Potatoes

Saturday: Dinner out

Sunday: Crock pot cheesy chicken and rice

Snacks

I made some trail mix for us to take to work to keep us away from the vending machines.

Although we're still not eating super healthy around here, we are slowly moving away from processed foods to more natural ones. Now if only I could get some vegetables in my husband! If anyone has ideas on how to get him to eat more than a few bites of veggies a day, I'd love to hear them.


More menu plans at Organizing Junkie.

Some Days

Budgets are wonderful things. Menu plans are too. They allow you to save money and have some order and control in life. But some days, not everything goes according to plan. Some days work is a little rough. Some days when you finally leave work, it's snowing, and it takes an extra 20 minutes to get home. Some days this isn't a problem because you planned on your husband cooking dinner that night. However, some days, your husband's car won't start during his lunch break, and although he gets a ride back to work, no one is able to take him home. Some days he has to stay at work for almost an extra hour while he waits for you to pick him up. Some days by the time you get home and get settled, it's already 6:30. Some days you decide that, despite the fact that you've already gone $2 over your eating out budget, you just want to have Arby's for dinner. Some days, you do. And some days, you don't really regret it.

Budgets and menu plans are wonderful things, but having a little flexibility in life is pretty nice too.

What's for dinner?

"What do you want for dinner?"

"I don't know. What do you want?"

For the first couple months of our marriage, we didn't have the whole eating dinner together thing figured out. In fact, since Nathan was working until 7:00 or even later, sometimes I was too hungry to wait until he got home to eat. Once Nathan got an 8:00-5:00 job and I grew tired of the daily "What's for dinner?" discussion, I decided to try menu planning.

The challenge in menu planning (and part of the reason we had such a difficult time figuring out what to eat for our meals together) is that we don't exactly like the same foods. When I was single, I would often have a meal of just brown rice and a salad. I didn't eat very much meat. Nathan, on the other hand, only likes five kinds of vegetables, and lettuce is not one of them. Rice is fine with sauce, but he doesn't like it dry. As a bachelor, he would cook meals like lasagna or chicken alfredo. I just can't eat anything that heavy on a regular basis. I wanted to cook healthy meals for us, but I found it nearly impossible to find any healthy recipes that Nathan would actually eat. I would look through cookbooks saying, "Nathan won't eat it, Nathan won't eat it..."

The compromise I came up with was to have meat with every almost every dinner but to try to cook it in a way that is flavorful without being super fattening. Also, I make sure to serve it with fruits and vegetables so we don't fill up on just meat.

I plan out what we're going to eat for dinner for a week at a time. I generally just plan the main course rather than the full meal and just make sure we have enough to eat with each meal. Each Friday, I plan what we'll eat for Saturday through Friday of the next week. Then I go grocery shopping.

Here's the menu for this week, the sixth week I've tried menu planning.

Sunday: Barbecue chicken. We ate this with white rice, green beans, and biscuits with pumpkin butter.

Monday: Lemon tilapia. The recipe I'm using is for lemon-chili tilipia, but I'm leaving out the chili powder since Nathan doesn't like anything spicy. (I can always add some to my serving.)

Tuesday: Scrambled eggs with ham and cheese and blueberry muffins.

Wednesday: Leftovers. We're in a Financial Peace University class right now that meets at 6:15 every Wednesday, so dinner has to be quick.

Thursday: Pasta and meatballs. I'm using this recipe but leaving out the cayenne pepper.

Friday: Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

Is it super healthy? Not really, but Nathan is willing to try new things and take "baby steps" towards healthy eating and I try to eat more fruits and vegetables than I do meat.

Anyone have some healthy yet tasty recipes without vegetables?