Basic Weekly Menu Plan

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Get the pictures, meal makeovers, nutrition data, dietary exchanges and point values for the menus.

 

Monday Recipes

Notes for Monday:

1. Tonight's salad uses leftover flank steak from last week. If you do not have any, try using a package of deli-style roast beef (I like the flavor of the Oscar Mayer). If you did not marinade the meat last Friday, make sure to plan ahead today to leave enough time for this step.
   
   
   

Steak Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

• Mixed salad greens
• Sliced bell peppers
• Cherry tomatoes
• Blue Cheese dressing
• Leftover flank steak, sliced
• 1/2 cup Italian dressing
• 1/2 cup steak sauce

Mix flank steak or roast beef with Italian dressing and steak sauce in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

Layer salad greens, bell peppers, and meat on plates; garnish with cherry tomatoes. Serve with Blue Cheese dressing.

Fruit Salad

Your favorite combination of canned or fresh fruit. I suggest grapes, banana, Mandarin Oranges, strawberries and pineapple (these are on your grocery list). Serve with vanilla yogurt. Double this and save half for tomorrow night.

 

 

Crusty Bread

 

 

Tuesday Recipes

Notes for Tuesday:

1. This isn't one of the healthiest meals, but it is easy to make and easy to adapt to what you have on hand. Feel free to substitute cooked chicken and cream of chicken soup if that is what you have.
   
   
2. Use leftover Fruit Salad from last night.
   
   
   

Tater Tot Casserole

• 32. oz package frozen Tater Tots
• 1/2 lb. browned ground beef, thawed (from freezer)
• 16 oz. container sour cream
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup (substitutions)
• 1 can cream of celery soup (substitutions)
• 4 oz. can mushrooms, drained
• 1 pkg. sauteed onions, thawed (from freezer)
• 6 oz. can French fried onions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13 casserole pan. Place frozen tater tots in bottom of pan. Sprinkle beef over tater tots. In a bowl, mix sour cream,cheese, soups, mushrooms, and sauteed onions. Pour over beef. Top with French fried onions. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until bubbly.

 

 Seasoned Green Beans

• 1 lb. fresh green beans, slightly steamed
• 2 T. butter
• 1/2 package Good Seasonings Italian dressing mix

Melt butter in large fry pan. Add green beans. Sprinkle with the 1/2 package of seasoning mix and stir well while sauteing.

 

 

Leftover Fruit Salad

 

 

Wednesday Recipes

Notes for Wednesday:

1. I recommend periodically making a double (or triple) pizza dough recipe in your bread machine or large mixer and freezing the extra dough for an easy lunch or dinner another day. The Urban Homemaker has a double pizza dough recipe that is very good. It has variations for garlic, herbed, or seeded dough.
   
   
2. If you are using a bread machine to make dough, time it so that it is ready just before you want to cook the pizza. If you are using a frozen pizza dough, be sure to allow enough time for it to thaw. I like to thaw it for several hours in the refrigerator.
   
   
3. Make enough salad for tonight and Friday night, saving the crunchy ingredients and salad dressing to add right before serving each night.
   

Pepperoni Pizza

• Your favorite pizza dough recipe (see notes above)
• 28 oz. can spaghetti sauce
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• pepperoni

Make pizza dough according to recipe and roll out on a pizza stone or pan. Layer remaining ingredients. Cook at 400°F until brown and bubbly.

 

 

Salad

 

Pineapple Parfait

• 2- 20oz. cans pineapple chunks or tidbits, drained
• 16 oz. vanilla yogurt
• 16 tsp. honey (about 1/2 cup)
• toasted shredded coconut, for garnish

In 4 parfait glasses, layer 1/4 cup pineapple, 1/4 cup yogurt, and 2 tsp. of honey. Repeat layers and top with remaining pineapple. Garnish with toasted coconut and serve.

 

 

 

Thursday Recipes

Notes for Thursday:

1. Tonight's dish can be as easy as you would like to make it. If you want fast prep, use broken lasagna noodles as your dumplings. If you prefer homemade noodles (you can use freshly ground whole wheat to make these), I am providing a recipe for those.
   
   
2. If you don't have chicken in your freezer, this would be a great time to cook extra. You could add a whole chicken fryer to your grocery list, cook it all day in a crockpot with seasonings of your choice, pick off all the meat and strain the broth. Use what you need for tonight and freeze everything that remains, including any remaining broth. This is on your grocery list. If you still have cooked chicken in your freezer from when we restocked a couple weeks ago, you can delete the whole chicken from your shopping list.
   

 

 Chicken and Dumplings

• 2 cups shredded chicken (from freezer)
• 3 cans chicken broth* or 6 cups water with chicken soup base added
• Garlic salt or Adobo
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• broken lasagna noodles or homemade* noodles

Noodles:

• 2 cups of flour
• 1 rounded tsp of baking powder
• 2 eggs

Mix ingredients for noodles. You want workable dough so if they are too dry add a few drops of water, too wet a bit more flour. Roll and cut; a pizza cutter is the best way. If you get too much baking powder they will have a salty 1/2 cooked taste. Cook noodles in broth. Your cooking time will depend on how thick the noodles are; you will just have to taste it. ;-)

Add soup and seasonings to taste. Add chicken in when the noodles are almost cooked. You may sprinkle with parsley for some color if you would like.

Thanks to Monica from TheHomeSchoolMom in the Kitchen Yahoo Group for the recipe for Homemade Noodles.

 

 

Peas and Carrots

 

 

Canned Pears

Friday Recipes

Notes for Friday:

1. You may adjust the amount of cheese in this soup. If your family prefers it less cheesy, use 8 or 12 oz. of Velveeta. You may also add cooked chicken if you would like.
   
2. Using the leftover salad from Wednesday night, add croutons, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, and any other "crunchies" just before serving.
   
   
   

Cheesy Broccoli Soup

• 2 Tbsp. butter
• 1/4 cup chopped onion (from freezer)
• 2 Tbsp. flour
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 1 lb. Velveeta prepared cheese product, chopped into 1-1/2" cubes for easier melting
• 1 pkg. (10-16* oz., depending on how much broccoli you want in the soup) frozen broccoli, thawed and drained
• 1/8 tsp. pepper
• 1 tsp. marjoram
• 1/4 tsp. Adobo

Melt oil over medium heat in a large saucepan (6 qt. is good) on stovetop. Add onion and saute until tender. Add flour, stirring constantly for 1 minute over medium heat.

Add milk, stirring constantly. Bring to a gentle boil and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer 1 minute. Add all remaining ingredients and cook until cheese is melted and soup is heated through.

 

Leftover Salad

 

 

 

Crusty Bread

 

* Indicates that of the options listed, this item is the one on the grocery list.

This week's Grocery List can be downloaded here:

Grocery List for February 15-19, 2010 - PDF

Grocery List for February 15-19 , 2010 - TXT (for PDAs or text editing)

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