Last week was an odd week, cooking-wise. I ended up not making most of what was on my plan, but still cooking each night. Or rather, cooking part of what was on the menu plan. Take the ham steak and hash brown casserole for example. We ended up having the casserole, with eggs! It was a mood thing. Not sure I am joining to buy another ham steak again, maybe it's a mood food or something, but for whatever reason it's been in the fridge for a couple of weeks and I still have yet to make it. I think I need to make it for one of our breakfast dinners, so that's my plan!

What I didn't get to (besides the ham steak): Asian-Style Grilled Tilapia, Chicken Melt on a Bed of Spinach, and the Chicken Tortilla Bake.

I also have a strange hankering for baked apples. Now, usually I would just toss them in the microwave but Steph has been a bad influence on me! Now my first thought tends to be can I make it in the crock pot? So I had to wander over to see if she had made these this past year, and she had! So, one night this week we will have baked apples - crock pot style. This is still keeping in plan with my 'eat smarter' plan. It's not a 17 layer cake with ice cream (oh my, bad visual on that one, sorry folks). It's still a sweet, but not a totally bad one - depending on how much brown sugar one uses (and I tend to hold back on sugars a bit, both Jeff and Emi like their sweets not so sweet, so that helps me too).

CrockPot Stuffed and Baked Apple Recipe

They are all going back on this week's menu as I have all the ingredients on hand.

Here is the plan:

• Sunday: Chicken Tortilla Bake (requested) – one-pot meal!
  

• Monday: Breakfast! Ricotta Pancakes adding a cup of pumpkin and a teaspoon or so of pumpkin pie spice, 1/2 teaspoon each of nutmeg and ginger - omitting the blueberries, honey, most of the sugar and will use half the vanilla. Ham steak (question of the week, will I really use this? The death date is 2/01/09 so I still have a few weeks, haha!), eggs (if Jeff wants any).

• Tuesday: The quiche was such a hit last week (even Emi ate it!) that it's back on the menu again. Does this count as two breakfast dinners? :) Not sure what all I will add to the quiche but it won't be bacon (I don't cook bacon!). Probably onion and spinach again, as it's rare not to have some on hand, cheese of some sort (whatever's on hand) and if there is any ham left over I will chunk that up and toss it in here. Yummm, this sounds good already!
• The other thing I am going to do with this is to make two. Not that much more work, we all love it and it's an easy lunch for taking to work or nuking at home.

• Wednesday: Chicken Melt on a Bed of Spinach, wild rice, vege for Emi (will offer the spinach, the other vege can be an extra if she likes the spinach)

• Thursday: Leftover Buffet

• Friday: Asian-Style Grilled Tilapia, wild rice, miscellaneous vege

• Saturday: Free Nite
• We tend to go out one night a week. Scratch that. Trying to not go out as much. But I am going to keep this as my ‘whatever night’ as we still will probably need a night of not making dinner for various reasons. I am factoring this in my menu plan each week, but it won’t necessarily always (or often) be on a Saturday. We may use this as our leftover night if there are any by this time.

P.S. Don't forget to head on over to Laura's at I'm an Organizing Junkie for more MPM!


Original Post: Menu Plan (Jan 11 - Jan 17)