Me So Hungry || This Week's Meals (TWM)

**psst... Don't forget, there's a giveaway going on a previous post.  **

**You can enter every day if you want to.  I'd go for it if I were you!**

I was stahving today, dahling.  

Super hungry.

And, as mentioned previously, I had grocery shopping to do today.  

It was a bad combination.

But before I get into the thrilling tale of how I chose my delicious meals for the week, let me tell you about my latest notch in my crunchy belt.  You know, like, cloth diapers, notch, trying out homemade deodorant, notch, etc.  This week?  I bought food from an co-op, Clemson Area Food Exchange.  Buying direct from farmers, makes my toes curl.  I then realized that I can't actually pick up my food until tomorrow around 3.  So no happy chicken eggs, no hydroponically grown butter lettuce, no locally pollinating sweet bees' honey until tomorrow.  But whatever.  I basically combined two of my favorite things - shopping online, and being crunchy.  Swoon!

Anyhow, after eating my way through the entire store, I've got the fixin's for some delicious looking meals this week.  Wanna come over?  Wanna break some bread with me?  I'm looking for some table-sharers this week, can't enjoy this food all on my own...

I've wrangled all of these meal ideas on a pinterest board, aptly named "This Week's Meals".  Because I'm clever like that.  I do this, I pin and pin and then change and decide and then pare down, until I've got everything I plan to make squared away.  Then I link to the recipes and make my grocery shopping list.  That's my magic, works every time.

This week, I've got meals with my long lost love, chicken.  WOOHOO!  Thanks to handsome's hunting prowress this year, we've been eating a lot of venison.  Mostly ground.  A lot.  Like, mucho.  And while I don't mind it and there are a lot of options out there for ground beef, I've been missing chicken in the worst way.  But tomorrow, I'm picking up 73 pounds of it, thanks to my local supplier*, and I'm going to eat chicken until venison starts sounding appealing again.

So without further ado...  February 17th edition of  TWM

• Cheesy Quinoa Lasagna Bake.  Which is mis-named.  It is nothing like lasagna.  I know, because I ate it tonight.  It is yummy, but please don't think lasagna if you're going to eat it, you'll be sad.  Unless you dislike lasagna, in which case you might be pleasantly surprised.  Honestly, I think I would have liked it more with the addition of chicken, but it seemed foolish to buy chicken when I have 73#'s of it coming home with me tomorrow.

• Chicken Bruschetta Galette.  D. E. Licious.  SO good.  I use a cream cheese pie crust from some cookbook that Handsome got for me a few moons ago.  It is so good.  I'm craving it right now.  Except for, well, you know, no chicken.  I feel like we're beating a sleeping horse over spilt milk, here.

• Chicken Tortilla Bake. Mexican + me = love.  I wonder, sometimes, if I would like the food in Mexico.  I like fake Mexican food, but I feel like its probably as close to authentic as General Tso's is to China.

• Pancetta Fried Rice. I will not be adding a fried egg.  I'm more the scrambled variety.  Again, totally not authentic.  But it better be delicious, because it took me about 23 minutes & two stores to track down "pancetta" which sounds so foreign to say.  Perhaps I should go to Italy, as well, to see if this pig meat is authentic...

• Honey Parmesan Pulled Pork.  Rave reviews.  And the roast I picked up had a sticker on it that said "Great for the Crockpot!" so I'm thinking its a match made in ma belly.  Serving this sucker up with oven roasted brocolli which is basically candy dressed in vegetable clothing.

• Healthy Sesame Chicken.  Handsome is hoping to be healthier, and Tony wouldn't like it if I was pounding the fried food after my 30 minutes with him each day (which I did do today, for at least 10 minutes today, so it's a win so far!).  This meal looked scrumptious and healthy.  Plus, I love any excuse to buy spices that I'll never use again.  Dear Sesame Seeds and Freeze-Dried Ginger, please make yourselves at home among your spice-mates.  You're gonna be here a while.

You'll notice, there's not a single ground-meat meal up there.  I'm so excited.  Except that I plan to make tacos, which do use ground meat.  Because that deer isn't gonna eat itself, and remember the .0365 tons of chicken that is moving in with me - it needs some space in the freezer.  So ya know, I'm mixing things up.  

Got any food suggestions for me, dahlings?  I'm always on the lookout for new good eats!

<3 M.

Everybody Welcome | Thanksgiving 2013

I've been prepping for Thanksgiving for about a week.  If I had started dreaming about it any earlier, I never would have gotten things done.  You know, children taught, babies bathed, etc.  I. LOVE. THANKSGIVING.  It is my love language to feed people.  Tomorrow is my superbowl.

And so I posted the menu to facebook, inviting every and any body to come partake.  And believe me, it is a good menu, meant to lure in unsuspecting folks and fill up their bellies until they can no longer move freely, and then attack them with my friendliness.

That's the basics of any good thanksgiving plan, right?

We've got 6 people coming.  Truth be told, I wanted more.  Not because those who are attending aren't good enough, I was just hoping for... chaos, I guess.  To make the holidays feel more like home.  Also, I bought a 20-pound turkey.  High hopes, you might say.  I was hoping for a find-some-extra-chairs, kids-have-to-sit-on-the-ground, adults-drinking-out-of-sippy-cups-because-we've-run-out, type of day.  The kind where there's just so many people you don't even know what to do with them all, but everyone is pleased to be together.  The fact I have 20+ people in my original family ('rents & sibs & spouses & offspring) and Handsome has 35+ first cousins may play into this idea of the ideal.

If 6 is all we get, then I'm going to love on those six as if they were 20.  And it will be a fabulous day.  And we will relive it again and again until the leftovers run out sometime in early January.  But I'm not throwing in the towel just yet.  I've got neighbors, you see.  And I don't know them very well, but we've exchanged pleasantries.  So I'm going to tape a note on their door today, see if I can't round up a few more people who love good grub and shoulder-to-shoulder holiday cheer.

If you're wondering what we're having, I've got a menu for you.  If you're trying to decide whether to make the 400 mile trek to my house, the answer is yes, and we eat at 6P.  Make it happen.

I tried to make this clickable.
I failed miserably and wasted 1.25 hours of baking time.
So if you want to know what's what, check out the pin-board that it all came from!
Please note the organization of
optional sides | necessities | desserts
I'll be eating from middle to right to left, most likely ;)

Now come, eat, drink, and let's make merry!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

<3 M.

Southern Sunday Dinner

Did you ever notice that its hard to cook for just one person?  Or even for two people, if one of those people wears diapers?  Or if one of those "people" is a dog?  Or if one of those two people is sleeping?  No?  Just me?

I've recently begun getting better at cooking, even if its just RG & I.  I've actually been getting better at lots of stuff, as I've been watching less Netflix and CBS.com shows.  Amazing what un-wasted time will do for a person ;)  But I've also been giving myself more freedom, not making such a far-in-the-future menu.  I've been trying to do more of what makes me come alive, and cooking whatever strikes my fancy appeals more to me than cooking something that I decided 6 days ago was what was going to be cooked.

And now I'm boring myself by talking about menus.  

Here's what I want to tell you: Southern Sunday Dinner is a lost art.  And I have reclaimed it.  Now, since I'm a transplant down here, I'm sure I've missed some things, like fat back (ha!  I typed "back fat".  Nope, not missing that!  Ha!)  and collards and confederate flags potatoes.  But it felt southern to me, and when I served it up at the firehouse, I was complimented as "going all 'Paula Deen' on them".  

I think it was a compliment anyhow.

And now I'm thinking about all of the recent (or not-so-recent, my lack of television watching has me behind on current events) uncomplimentary things people say about Miss Deen, and I'm sad for the butter queen.

Anyhow.

I wanted a southern dinner the other sunday, and I came up with this little setup.  And oh my, people, it was delicious.  Lawd.  I took no pictures, obviously, because I was focused on eating and more eating.  Want to know the 2nd best part (the first being the presence of bacon) about the whole thing?  I cooked it at the fire house.  Which means that I didn't have to clean up!  Its the best arrangement I've ever heard of, except for when I had a wife for 6 weeks, which we'll talk about some other time.

Without further ado, the delicious dinner that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon.  Feast your eyes, then go make them & feast your bellies.  Oh, and get ready to eat that mac & cheese for days, and be happy about it.

The Best Chicken Ever (I subbed greek yogurt in for sour cream, but either way!)

SIDE NOTE: This photo below was also one of the ones to choose from on the recipe's website.  Because who doesn't eat their chicken with a side of trumpet??

 Bacon Mac & Cheese

Use that bacon grease.
Don't be scared.
Oh, and save some for the next recipe, too!
Its called "having the same flavor profile" for your dishes,
not "overkill"
Trust me, I'm a professional.

Lemon & Garlic Green Beans

(via)
I didn't serve mine with the lemon slices, because RG ate them.
And because weren't fancy, just hungry.

You're welcome!

<3 M.

Menu, Men-me

I went shopping today while hungry.  I know, bad form.  And yes, everything looked so. dang. good.  But I only took 2 optional items, so I'm saying it wasn't a terrible venture.

Optional items, you ask?  See, here's how I do grocery shopping:  

• I meal plan.  3-7 meals, depending on if I'm feeling frisky or not.
• I look at the recipes for the meals, and write down all of the stuff I don't have, grouped by department in the grocery store (dairy, produce, meat, etc.)
• I shop, mainly sticking to my list, but grabbing one or two optional items as the mood strikes me.  Today my optional items were Jif Hazelnut spread (coupon, bonus!) and some knock-off Butter Keks (that were actually the name-brand butter keks, but they're (a) less amazing and (b) more expensive, so I like them less on principle).  Sometimes I buy fancy cheese.  

If I wouldn't have made this meal plan/menu before I went, I would have just grabbed stuff willy-nilly, gotten completely overwhelmed, traipsed back and forth across the store 7-8 times, forgetting things, and still need to go back later.  So for me, taking the time to decide what meals we're having this week is sooo worth it!  I also hit up the local (or not-so-local, if you look at the stickers on the cantelopes that say "Peru") fruit stand before I went to the big store, and my goodness, the selection was incredible!  So I might have snagged some "optional" green beans, too, but I just wrote them on the menu and cheated that way.

And here's the plan! If you can't make it over for dinner, you may as well feast with your eyes, right?

Feeling Hungry

There's an aspect of buying meat from a guy with a chest freezer in the bed of his truck that no one tells you about [I feel as though I've waited all my life to write that sentence!] - a serious decrease in meal planning.  When I was in the new-baby-induced stupor of the first month, this was welcome.  What are we eating?  Some defrosted meat and... well, whatever.

But now?  Now that the truck meat is almost gone?  Now that #RG has slept through the night for 6 nights in a row? [This is our current record.  We've done this about 4 times.  If she STTN tonight, we'll have a new champion - 7.  I may have just ruined it for myself, but I hate The Jinx and would punch him in the face given the chance, so... I'll take my chances.]  Well, now I'm feeling frisky, at least in the cooking department.  So I'm making a menu.

Whats that?

You want me to share it with you?

Well, if you insist :)

Thank you, 2P&tP.
Thank you.

• Garlic Chicken & Gnocci Pesto with Oven-Fried Broccoli.  If I may confess: I don't know how to spell broccoli.  I'm getting the hang of it, but I'm never sure if it's two c's or two l's.  Its two c's, in case you have trouble with that, too.  Also, everything in this meal is BOMB PHENOM DELISH.  BPD.  The chicken is just sauteed in butter & garlic.  The gnocchi is prepared like this.  The broccoli, well, it's my mama's recipe, and I'm gonna share it with you.  You might not be excited; you might think that broccoli can't change your life.  You'd be wrong.
• Grilled Steak Salad.  Gotta use up the last of the truck steak.  Also, don't forget the french fries.  You'd regret that for foralways.
• Pulled Pork Tortillas with peppers and Pan Fried Sweet Potatoes.  I've never had sweet potatoes like this.  Honestly, unless they're deep-fried and covered in powdered sugar & honey, I'm more of a regular potato girl.  But H loves them, so I'll keep trying 'em in different ways.
• Grilled steak & veggies with Zucchini Cornbread Casserole.  Seriously.  This casserole.  Its so good.  SO good.  I eat the leftovers for breakfast.
• Leftover Chinese Fried Rice.  Basically, its "clean out your fridge" rice.  The week's leftovers, some vegetables about to go bad, and boom.  20 minutes later, you've got dinner.  Cheap and filling, just how I like my meals.  Now if only I can remember to make the rice beforehand, since old rice works best.  Or maybe, I'll use this fancy recipe...

What are you eating?  Oh, and I'm gonna go shopping at our new Publix for the ingredients, because their produce section & I are having an affair.  Seriously.  Its so beautiful.  *swoon*

<3 M.

(Not Thanksgiving) Menu Plans

As previously mentioned, I'm not cooking a Thanksgiving dinner this year.  In fact, until a few days ago, I was without any Thanksgiving plans whatsoever.  Now though, I've been rescued from the holiday-less spirit by some friends.  Wanna know what they asked me to bring?  DESSERT.  Yep.  Which means I get to break this no-baked-goods fast on my own terms!  I've got some ideas, too.  They mostly involve some type of fruit, just so I won't have to feel guilty while eating them.  Ideas like:

Orange Muffins From Annie's Eats
I'm thinking they'll be nice & refreshing!

Banana Pudding Poke Cake from Hungry Little Girl
Banana Pudding just might be my Mister's favorite dessert.
I hope he doesn't mind the liberties I've taken with it...
I hope he doesn't take liberties with the dessert, too.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cookies from Sweet Treats & More
I'm thinking I might go with a plain 'ole cream cheese glaze, too.
Maple, well, it has it's place.
I'm just not convinced that it's on top of these cookies ;)

I'm also thinking some apple slices and warm caramel dip, likely of the normal pantry variety.  See, all sorts of fruit and whatnot!  It was dangerous territory, I'll tell ya, venturing into pinterest to find the right desserts.  I barely made it out with my sugar level intact.  I had actually convinced myself, at one point, that toffee wasn't a candy, and that maybe homemade caramels wouldn't count as cheating.  I tell you, my willful ignorance knows no bound.

In addition to the sweets I've now planned out, I took some time to menu plan for this coming week, too.  Actually, I made up my menu first, which included a plan for fried rice on Thursday.  Then I remembered that Thursday is Thanksday, and that I needed to get the desserts nailed down.  But either way.  I've got my menu.  Wanna see?

Food Food Food

I'm hungry.

SURPRISE!

Ha ha... yeah, no, seriously, I'm hungry.  There's a baked potato in the oven, just waiting to be topped with broccoli and cheese for lunch.  I'm pretty pumped about it.  But the 32 minutes left on the timer are just a little too much for me to handle.  If I leave in the middle of this post, it'll be to grab a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch something healthy.  Yeah.

How cute is this??
From this awesome Etsy seller

Anyhow, pictures of food always make an hungry situation both better and worse, and so that's where I went.  I've just found out that my 10-day test starts tonight at 5PM, so I thought a little advance menu planning would be helpful.  I'm also supposed to be studying for a quiz, so any form of procrastination is welcome.

Handsome wants me to be cooking both cheaply and healthily.  In a household where beans are only welcome in the chili some of the time, this is a bit of a challenge.  But we're trying.  Here is my imaginary menu for the following week, in case you were dying to know!  And I'm still keeping my menu on a pinterest board I named "This Week's Meals".  If you use mostly online recipes, this is a great way to keep them all in one place!  [Super-cool Keri gave me the idea... I think.  Either way, she's super cool.]

Tuesday Things

Don't worry, it's still Cake Week 2012.  I still made lemon curd last night, and lemon meringue frosting this morning.  I still substituted like a madwoman in order to bring about the Petite Lemon Layer Cake without having to make a trip to the store.

Mine does not look like this.
But it tastes like this.
And that's even better.
Original recipe here

I also left my camera at home, and don't have the pictures to show you yet.  So that post will come later.  Right now, I'm starting to feel the need to think.  To tell you other things, more than just about sugar & butter & cream.  Those things are all good, in moderation excess.  But there's more to life, and more to me.  

Instead of telling you about cakes and whisks and what-to-do-when-you've-used-all-93-glass-bowls problems, I wanted to tell you about my garden.  I love my garden.  I'm so excited about what's already come up, and what is yet to go in!  But, again, the whole camera thing... I could rip some pictures of my favorite plants off the interwebs, but then I'd never show you my actual pictures.  And that would be a travesty.

Since I'm stuck at the office busy working, I'll just throw some awesome links at you today, give you a taste of what life will be like when I truly come out of this sugar coma I keep throwing myself in.

TCofTFW: Seriously, I wasn't even hungry last night, and I still couldn't stop eating chocolate bars.  So I thought, I'll have some strawberries.  And then the alien who lives in my brain and wants to give me Type II said "And I'll dip those strawberries in melted chocolate."  I'm ash-med to say, I obeyed like a little drone.  And I kind of liked it.

.....................

I've re-written something pithy there about 4 times.  The cake at the edge of my desk keeps distracting me.  So please pretend that I said something so witty, you almost want to tell people about it later, except that it's weird to talk about internet life with people in real life (anybody feel me on this?).  *cue laughter*

And now, my list.  Things I like, things I've found, things I'm planing to eat.  An eclectic list. 

Menu for Yanks

My dear, dear in-laws are coming to visit.  In a magnanimous stroke of luck, Handsome managed to get 4 days in a row off, I'm on spring break, and it's supposed to be 80+ the entire time.  It's basically going to be the best visit EVA.  If I know my FIL, we'll do plenty of work in the back yard (yay! hopefully a garden to show you soon!) and if I know my MIL, we'll find some time to look for antiquey things, crafty things, and buy-able things ;)

While they're here, I want to spend as little time doing boring things as possible.  So I got my grocery shopping out of the way, and I'm going to put our menu up on here.  That way, I can just pop on over to this link and figure out what our food is supposed to be for the day!  Genius, I tell you, it sometimes strikes me.

So here's my list:

Dinners:

• Crispy Pesto Gnocchi & Garlic Chicken
• Bourbon Chicken and Vegetables
• Burgers & 3-cheese Potatoes on the Grill (and some Broccoli, too!)
• BBQ Grilled Chicken, Zucchini Cornbread, and Green Beans
• Mexican Stuffed Shells, maybe some Polenta (found it on sale today!)
• Tomato Tortellini Soup

Breakfasts:

• Cheddar/Bacon/Scallion Scones
• Overnight Maple & Brown Sugar Oatmeal

Extras:

• Irish Cheesy Beer Bread
• French Vanilla Ice Cream

Are you eating anything yummy this weekend?  Tell me, please!  I love to find new foods!

Drooling just a bit,

TFW

Menu SLAM!

WhamBamThankYouMa'am, this is our menu for the week.

There's not really a whole lot extra exciting about it, except that it all looks delicious(!!!) and no, I'm not typing this while hungry.  And, besides my little addiction (can a person wear out a link?  I'm sure trying to!) that I'm going to be feeding (haha... feeding... get it? Because my addiction is food... get it?) about 2.4 seconds after I hit "post", it's all new stuff!  I love new stuff!  

ASIDE: Speaking of new stuff, I just ordered the makings of two lovely new duffles, one of which will go on sale in my shoppe, and the other one just might turn into a giveaway on here sometime soon... keep watch!

In addition, I wanted to throw some not-food pictures on here, too, to tell you about my life lately.  So, food, links, recipes, and photos.  What more could a person want?  That's what I'm here for.  I'm a giver, I can't help it.

Handsome & I have been playing solitaire lately.  Together.
Yes, this is mind bottling, and ruins the whole concept.
We're 2 - 0.

Monday:  chicken & gnocchi minstrone soup.  Locals, gnocchi is on sale at Food Lion for a buck '74.  In case you're wondering.  Also, I totally butchered that recipe up thar, and left out the peas, beans, and mushrooms.  It's still delicious.  Also, 8 serv./ 6 pts.  Boo Yah!

Technically, I made the soup yesterday (Sunday).  But we ate it for lunch today.  And dinner.  And lunch tomorrow... meh.  Details.

Don't Be Hangry!

I just saw the word "Hangry" and I love it.

pillow available here.

And while I'm not quite hangry, I am hungry, and unable to get me some food before my meeting at 1:30.  So, I went with the best form of torture substitute, pictures of food!  The pictures quickly led to a menu that I truly believe I will make next to nothing from, but it's a place for ideas to be born.  So here's my pretend, let's-not-get-hangry-menu.  I'm trying to pick health y -ier options, in honor of the new year and the already taxed waistband.  Enjoy!

• This hungry girl loves her some salsa.  And when I can control the amount of cilantro, all the better.  I'm a cilantro-sprinkler, not over-loader, just in case you were wondering.
• I'm determined to use our awesome, got-it-on-super-sale grill more, and in it's honor (with a nod to the chicken breast sale this week), I'm thinking about Beer Lime Chicken, Honey Mustard Chicken, and Orange Rosemary Chicken.
• After receiving a super cool and SA-WEET! slow cooker for Christmas, I can't not use it!  So it's going to whip up some Chicken BBQ, once it gets done with the chicken stock it's currently making.
• Also on the brain, breakfast goodies (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), pasta options (1) (2), and homemade crackers, for something new.

Do you have food on the brain?

NomNomNom,

TFW

(Un-)Inspired Food Choices

I'm just not feeling it today.  It could be that having my tooth removed yesterday (don't feel bad I didn't tell you, I didn't even tell myself until I was already in the chair) has dulled my appetite.  Or it could be the frugal miserly side of myself rearing her ugly head and demanding that no more monies be spent.  Or, heck, it could be pure laziness; I doubt it, but it's possible.

Either way, I'm not feeling like menu planning/grocery shopping/cooking much of anything at all.  Two things I am on board with are these:

Mac-n-Cheese Wedding Cups

and these:

No-Bake Cookies

But that hardly constitutes a balanced diet.  Doesn't mean I'm not going to make them this very afternoon before I go grocery shopping, but it does mean my Mom would be ticked if that was all I fed my family for the remainder of the week.  Especially Duke, she's concerned about him.

So I turn to the place where all of inspiration happens.  The place where dreams are given a picture, and where ideas are shared freely and with encouragement: Pinterest.  Here's what I've come up with:

Food to Eat (& photograph)

I need to come clean about something.  I didn’t finish my book.  The cookbook-thing that I told you about months ago, well, I never finished it.  It was 11:45 on the night before my coupon went from “free book” to “$25 off a book that surely costs more than $25.”  I was furiously typing, and talking to Handsome about how I just needed to get a few more recipes typed and then I could do the book.  And Handsome says to me, “You’re a wonderful person, and have no timing/procrastination issues at all.”  Okay, that’s not really what he said.  What he said was something along the lines of “You don’t have pictures of the majority of your recipes.  You should have pictures.  You want pictures.  Don’t publish a crappy book just because you’re late.  Take the hit, end up paying more for it, but make a book you can be proud of.”

That man, I’ll tell you what, he’s brilliant sometimes.  And if he’d lose the mustache, I’d tell you I absolutely love love LOVE his face.

Anyhow, we had that conversation months upon months ago, and guess what?  I still don’t have pictures for the majority of the recipes in the book I seem to be trying my darndest not to finish.  And I still have to type of some of my recipes.  Have I made those things?  Oh, heck yes I have.  Did I photograph any of them?  One.  Last week.  Have I included any of those photos in the book yet?  Not a chance.

So starting this week, *SWEEPING PROCLAMATION*, I’m only going to make cookbook recipes!

Actually, what I mean by that is I’m going to make 3-5 cookbook recipes a week.  I’m going to photograph what I make.  And I’m going to type 5-7 recipes a week.  Typing, cooking, and photographing, thus will be the sum of my days.  Here’s what most of the pages of my book look like right now:

Top Left: MeatLoaves
Top Right: Red Enchiladas
Bottom Left: Steak Bites
Bottom Right: Tacos

If I were working from this, we see that I need to type these 4 recipes, and also make & photograph one of them.  I choose… Notmeatloaf.  You’ve never heard of the dish “Notmeatloaf”?  Let me assure you, anything that is “Notmeatloaf” is wonderful.  Why is something that is not “Notmeatloaf” in my cookbook?  Handsome l-o-v-e-s notNotmeatloaf.  So, as you young grasshoppers will learn, and you old grasshoppers know, in marriage, you make sacrifices.  Him, he works 3 jobs and goes grocery shopping with me for company.  Me, I make him meatloaf on a semi-annual basis.  Because that’s love, ladies & gents.

Okay, not that we’ve had all that lovey-dovey talk, I feel properly chastised and am convinced that I should make Handsome some meatloaf this week.  There we go, the beginning of my dining menu.  And now, since I’d hate to start one more thing and not finish it, here is the rest of the menu for the Magagnotti household.  You see anything you like, you call me up, I’ll set you a place.  Also, we’re going to be eating a lot of pantry items in this week’s menu.  Its because I’d rather moved canned green beans in my stomach than in a box, and we’re supposedly moving sometime next week.  You might think that a person should know for sure, if she is moving out of her house within the next 10 days.  Me, no, I like to play it by ear.

Menu Challenge 4 Me!

We're back.

*smile*

*frown*

We're back down here in the loverly South, and I'm more than a little conflicted about that.  Most likely due, in no small way, to the fact that there's no food in my house to eat.  At least, not breakfast food.  I've heard about these places, called Su-pear Mar-Keats, places where there is food for the buying, but I'm not sure about them, so I'm going to stay home and starve.

Actually, I'm headed out to do the food shopping here in just a little bit, but first I had to make a list of what we're going to eat this week.  Menu planning, you know.  The fun stuff!  Handsome has been asking me to make him healthy meals lately.  And I have been, but I haven't really been paying a ton of attention to it, and I definitely have not been keeping track of how many WW points each serving is.

I mean, thats hard.  And not something that I want, so it was easy to ignore.

Notice the past tense, there.  WAS easy to ignore.

During our trip home, Handsome experienced some new found freedom, with regards to his face.

That's right.  This is 8 days growth.  He didn't shave, not a once.

Let me just say, I'm not a fan of the bearded man.  Not mine, anyhow.

Dinner Inspiration & Giveaway & Winners

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WINNER:  drummmmmrolllllll..... Miss Hannah!  Congrats Miss Hannah, you'll be receiving your new picture frame within two weeks!  Thank you for the suggestions, you appear to know more than you think you do about feeding people!
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We’re out of food.

Not in the actual, “Cockroaches would starve here” way, but in the “I can’t think of anything to cook anymore” sort of way.

I hate that feeling.

I’m on track to come in at/under the new grocery budget, which is exciting to me.  I wrote the cheesecake that I sent to the fire station off as a “gift”, so I actually probably have about $20 less than what I’m pretending I do.

ASIDE: Did you know that cheesecakes cost that much?  Ridiculous.  And here I always thought I had cheap tastes.

Anyhow, there’s so much room left in the budget because I haven’t gone grocery shopping for about a week and a half.  And I just don’t want to.  I can’t seem to get up the get up and go to go and shop.  (If that sentence made any sense to you, perhaps you’ve been here too long.)  I’m not inspired, mostly because I just haven’t taken the time to get that way.

Did you know that inspiration often takes effort?  That’s the way I’ve found it to be for me, at least, and I’ve heard from some other people that they often have to grease the wheels before they have an epiphany.  Usually, my inspiration for dinners comes from (1) sale notices in the newspaper (or the online version) or (2) perusing online food blogs/recipe sites.  But I haven’t really done any of that.

And I’m feeling tired.  It’s a 5-day week at work, and you know how those effect me.

Dinner Plans

After no small amount of research, I've gotten my dinner plans for the next week or two nailed down.

You may notice a distinct "lightening" of the recipes listed here.  Since Handsome and I are doing WW, we're trying to keep things healthy and what not.

Also, I ran yesterday.  Just want some credit here.  Ran for a whole 28 minutes.  Ok, I walked for about 2 in the middle, but other than that.  It might be a personal best for me.  Aren't you proud??

Ok, below are the recipes and the links.

I know this stuff is about as boring as salt, but I was wondering if there was anything that would make this more exciting for you?  I maybe could post pictures of how the meals turn out.  Or... I don't even know.  Probably not.

And on to the excitement.

Menu Planning

Get ready.  This will be exciting.

Are you prepared?

C'mon already, prepare yourselves.

Ok.  Here's the plan for today's post: Menu Planning!!  *Cue Music!*

I'm going to pick out the meals for this week, and then write them down.  Might even include ingredient lists.  Or recipes.  Ready or not, here I come!