Hoo boy, it’s going to be a crazy week. Our place is tiny, as I’ve mentioned numerous times. So we have to clear out the dining room and see if we can bring up the bigger dining table from downstairs. And I just realized that I don’t even have a tablecloth to cover the old, scratched surface of the table (it was my parents’ table when they got married, and it has two leaves to expand the table quite nicely).

And I need to clean. And vacuum. And make up a menu. And cook. And hubby may have to work Wednesday and even Thursday. We’re not sure yet.

I’m going to work ahead as much as I can. I’ll cook the sweet potatoes a day ahead and just reheat them. I could probably do the same with the mashed potatoes (but I love them fresh). I’ll be heating the dressing in the crock pot, so that’s not a huge deal. Tonight I have a chicken carcass in the crock pot to make broth, which I’ll use in the dressing and gravy.

Rather than make rolls, we’re just going to get some heat and serve. I need to do that tomorrow. And figure out where we’ll get enough chairs. And get some more milk. We have plenty of butter.

Whew. This is why I’ve never had Thanksgiving meal at my place. Did I mention I need to clean? Looks like the next several nights will be filled with rearranging, deep cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, and trying to see if any of our friends have some chairs we can borrow.

It’s going to be a long, crazy week. But it will be so nice to have the family together. We haven’t done that in a while.

I’ll try not to stress too much. No one expects it to be perfect. They’ve all been over so they know our house is crazy. And crowded. But I think we can do it. Hubby helps, so at least it doesn’t all fall on my head. He’ll be right in there with me.

How’s your week shaping up?

So each time I mentioned menu planning, my husband resisted. Why would I want to do that? To save money on our grocery bill. To have ingredients on hand to make healthy meals. And to give us more reason to stay home and eat.

But he didn’t want to be tied down to eating “this” on Monday and “that” on Tuesday. What if “that” just didn’t sound appetizing on Tuesday?

We’re trying something a little different. We’ll make a list of meals that we think will work in the next week. Just keep it flexible, but try some meals that play off of each other. Meals that include the same main ingredient so we can buy the correct quantity – but not so much that we’re having chicken five nights a week.

It’s going to be a work in progress. But we know we need to stop running to the store every 3 or 4 days unless it’s well-planned and within our grocery budget.

Did you start saving more money when you plan your menus? Or have you been thinking about it but don’t know where to begin?

image: morgueFile

Remember the roast prep I did yesterday? This morning I put all of the veggies, the roast (which I had seasoned and put back in the fridge last night), and a bit of stock from the last roast, in the crock pot. I put it on high for a couple of hours and then turned it down before we left the house.

And when we got back, it was divine walking back into the house. I wish more weekends were like that.

It was a really relaxing weekend. I didn’t make my stock, but the carcasses are in the fridge for later. Probably tomorrow. I really love having a fridge full of yummy food just waiting for us to nosh on during the week.

How was your weekend? Did you make any progress toward some household goals? What were they?

That doesn’t always work when you have a toddler running around. Or deadlines.

But fortunately, today wasn’t one of those deadline days. So I took it easy in the morning and tackled some chores this afternoon. Once again, I roasted two chickens so we’ll have meat for the week. Only this time I went a lot heavier on the spices — and you can tell. The meat was a lot more flavorful this time.

While the chicken was cooking, I chopped veggies for tomorrow’s roast. I’ll pop it in the crock pot tomorrow morning and by the time we get in that afternoon from our errands, dinner will be ready. And I’ll also start stock from the chicken bones tomorrow, too.

Here’s what works the best for my stock:

Roasted chicken carcass, after taking off the meat.
Giblets.
Skin & pan juices from the roasting.
One onion, cut in half or quarters.
A couple of celery stalks.
One carrot, or a bunch of baby carrots.
Several garlic cloves.

The cooking time varies depending on how much time I have, but I at least cook it two hours. Preferably four or more.

The chicken was done just in time for supper, so we had some of that with some brown rice and sweet white corn (cooked from frozen in a bit of chicken stock from the last time).

I also did a bunch of dishes while waiting for the oven to heat up. And before I chopped veggies. Go me!

If I could only feel this productive every day, I might have a clean house. Let’s not get carried away now. A girl can only handle so much work in one day.

What makes you feel like you accomplished a ton that day?

So that means TIRED. And while I made a ton of food on Sunday so I don’t have to do a lot of cooking this week, even putting a meal together has been an effort. Yet the already prepared food helps. Truly. It doesn’t help my sink, but that’s another post entirely.

Tonight, I took some of the chicken I’d already cooked, sauteed some mushrooms (baby portobellos, yum!), and put them both in some roasted red pepper and tomato soup (premade). Pop in the microwave and heat. Easy peasy.

Some nights, you just need easy.

So instead of a strict list where we eat this on Monday and that on Tuesday, we make a list of dishes that we’d like to eat during the week. I make my grocery list from that. And then we have everything on hand that we need to fix meals, which saves last minute — and expensive — trips to the grocery store.

If we’re sick of chicken, we can switch to beef or fish that night. If we’ve already had roast beef two nights in a row, we can pull out something else. I’m already finding that just having a general list of meals in mind for the week helps a LOT. I’m less likely to cast around for a meal and settle on something unhealthy (like ice cream and candy bars for dinner. Ahem.).

I’ve also found that having meals (somewhat) planned out is actually easier on me. If I know in advance what we’re going to eat, I can plan ahead. Have things out of the freezer and thawed. That has been my downfall so many times. I fail to plan and then we have nothing thawed. So we eat out, order in, or do something else that’s detrimental to our budget and health.

I really don’t want to set my son up with bad eating habits.

So this week, I’m cooking a roast. It’s already in the crockpot with some onions and beef broth. Later on I’ll add some more liquid with some potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms. We can use the leftovers in soups, sandwiches, and pasta. And later on today I’m going to roast a couple of chickens in the oven, then take all of the meat off the bones to use in a variety of dishes this week. Shredded chicken is pretty versatile and SO easy to throw in a dish when it’s already cooked.

Also, I’ll take the chicken bones and make stock to use for soups later in the week, too. Since I bought some celery and carrots yesterday, I’ll throw some of them, some garlic, and half an onion in with the bones when I make the stock. Homemade stock is much tastier and better for you anyway — you know EXACTLY what goes into it.

So reading Steph’s book has been a huge help. I can follow her recipes exactly or use them as a stepping off point. Having a basic recipe, though, really helps me. I don’t have to come up with something off the top of my head, yet I’m free to tweak it to suit our family. And I love that.

When I was younger, I stuck to recipes exactly, not understanding how to tweak them. But over the years, with lots of practice and experimentation (my hubby has been a huge help in that area – without him I’m not sure I’d know how to improvise as well) I have found that I know what will work and what won’t. What I can substitute or add. And I love it. It makes me feel good when I experiment and it works. It’s so much fun!

But I still hate the dishes that result. Oh well, you can’t win them all, right? And maybe I won’t hate dishes so much once we get our own place with a dishwasher. Maybe.

Photo credit: grafixar from morguefile.com

Disclosure: I requested a review copy of the book because Steph is my friend and I wanted to take a look at the recipes and post about it. I receive no compensation for doing so. A more thorough review of the book is coming later, after I have a chance to cook a few more recipes. But so far, so good.