Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan for Jan 7 - Jan 13)

Last week our menu plan pretty much kicked butt!  We loved everything that we made.  I made everything on the plan.  We used up a lot of things that we had in the fridges that needed to be used up.  I stayed under my calorie goal every day except for New Year's Day which was my plan.  It was pretty much the perfect week.  Unfortunately this week all of our activities start back up and we will be busy again.  I'm hoping to keep up with my cooking still, but also have everything ready for either pasta or sandwiches if we need a quick meal one night.

Shrimp Tacos

I used my new instant pot just about everyday and everything turned out amazing.  We agreed that the ribs were the best we've ever made.  The boys loved my second try at mac & cheese and are already asking for me to make it again.  This week I backed off a little, mostly because there were a bunch of veggies I need to use up and none of them sounded good in the instant pot.  I will be doing my first batch of hard boiled eggs in it this week.  And I'll be making chili on Sunday because we need something quick and warm and we love chili!  And there is a good chance I will make the mac & cheese again for the boys.

Ribs & mac & cheese in instant pot

One quick note, you may have noticed I switched the way I set up my week.  I was doing Mon-Sun and that made sense for a while.  But now we have a super busy Sunday schedule so most weeks I will be doing my menu planning on Saturdays.  So I'm going to switch this to reflect Sun-Sat.  I'm also trying to eat a larger variety so this helps me ensure that I'm getting at least one day of each: chicken, beef, pork, seafood/fish and vegetarian.  The other two days are wild card for whatever we feel like or whatever I have on hand.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Chili
Monday - Pork Vegetable Soup with Salads
Tuesday - Taco Tuesday!
Wednesday - Spicy Chicken Fried Rice (cauliflower for rice) with Baked Wontons
Thursday - Honey Cilantro Lime Salmon with Asian Salad
Friday - Hummus Roasted Chicken with Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Saturday - Southwestern Quinoa Skillet

Water Flavor - Orange.  I still have a lot more than I thought I did of these oranges so this will be my flavor for a while.

Overnight Oats - I am basically using my normal recipe for the base and adding the flavors that I want.  This week I did peanut butter with chocolate chips, chocolate with peanut butter chips, blueberry lavender (using a flavored yogurt I got for free) and apple pie (with applesauce & cinnamon).

Use It Up - I went thru my garage fridge and found a few veggies that need to be used which will go into the soup on Monday.  We also still have a lot of hummus so I'm trying to find creative ways to use that up.  And finally we have some sweet potatoes left over from Thanksgiving in the garage that I want to use up.