Keeping Up With...Food (Meal Plan for Dec 9 - Dec 15)

This will be my last week of meal planning until the new year.  As I've been saying, we have been super busy and the pace of the month is catching up with me.  Also next Friday my parents will be arriving and I'm not sure what we'll be eating that weekend with them.  Then I'm hosting Christmas Eve and my brother is hosting Christmas Day.  We're also all going out to Schmidt's for dinner for night.  The rest of the nights may be easy meals and maybe another night eating out since Red Robin has a special that kids eat for $1.99 right now and all of the kids have been asking to go there.  So with all of that going on, I'm going to take a few weeks off from planning our meals, or at least blogging about them.  I'll be back early in the New Year when I'll be back on the healthy eating train and attempting again to lose weight.

Last week we did pretty good following our plan, although we did switch a few things around to have the easier meals during the week.  We bumped one meal from last week to this week because Saturday afternoon we went out for a late lunch and weren't super hungry for dinner so we decided to have appetizers for dinner instead of cooking a full meal.  It was a great decision for a super busy day!!  This week is slightly lighter and we have a few less things on the calendar.  But we are also kicking up Christmas activities and prep so that's taking a lot of our time too.  And this is Adrian's last week of "busy" season (hopefully) so there may be a night or two that he is not home this week for dinner, in which case we will sub out pasta because I am stocked up on that.

Here's what we're eating this week:
Sunday - Steak (by Adrian) because I'll be at a party until about 6
Monday - Pork and Acorn Squash
Tuesday - Chicken and Veggies
Wednesday - Shrimp Fajitas
Thursday - Squash and Kale Pasta
Friday - Italian Wedding Soup
Saturday - Chipotle Turkey Chili

Water Flavor - I got a good deal on mint this week so I'm doing strawberry mint for my water this week.  I'll pick up a cucumber this week and do cucumber mint next week because it's one of my favorites!

Overnight Oats - I'll be doing a few batches of these tomorrow since we are completely out.  I have two more caramel turtle yogurts so I'll use those for two batches.  Then I Have some plain Greek yogurt to finish up so I'll use that for two batches of chocolate with chocolate chips.  That should be enough to get us thru the week.

Use It Up - I'm using up an acorn squash and a butternut squash in recipes this week.  I'm also using up some mushrooms I got for free and some baby arugula (for the salads on Tues) that I got a great price on.  I'm also using up most of the broth I have in the freezer and a few cans of tomatoes and beans in the pantry.  Finally, I'm using up a lot of the yogurts that I have in the fridge for my oats.  I'll keep only using what I have since I probably won't make them too often over the two weeks of Christmas and New Years.

Lunches - I'm going out on Monday and the other days will be salads and sandwiches.  I've been making sandwiches on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I have to run errands on those days and it's easier to eat them while I'm driving.