Monday Menu and back to blogging

It's Monday and I have finally crossed the last of the holiday parties and events off the calendar. We had to reschedule the teen Christmas party that was supposed to have been at our house on the 27th because we had the stomach flu in our home at that time, and the following weekend too. We moved the location of the party to the church which removed the stress of having to get the house cleaned up and company ready but added the stress of having to transport all the food and serving dishes to the church. The menu was a success -- tortilla roll-ups, Jewish hotdogs, and my mother-in-law's warm from the oven ham and cheese on a bun sandwhiches, chips, olives, the famous (or should I say infamous?) punch (1 liter of red berry juice, 1 liter pineapple juice, 2 liters lemon/lime soda and a few scoops of vanilla ice cream). Everyone loves it. Desserts were a platter of lemon bars, another of chocolate mayonaise cake which came out almost like brownies this time, and a platter of all the Christmas cookies that were still hanging around in tupperware in my house. There were a few shortbread cookies, some Choco-mint snappers, a slew of spritz cookies and then my husband had the nerve to put the last of the peanut-butter bonbons on the tray. He is much more spiritual than I am. I was planning on keeping those last 9 bonbons in the tupperware at home for a day when I really needed them. Oh well. That's life.
Rachel, over at Home Sanctuary gave us a challenge the other day regarding our meal planning. Spurred on by the promise of 100 points towards my Company Girl total, I came up with 6 meal categories (one for each day of the week other than Friday which will remain Pizza night) and then wrote down 4 main dishes for each category. So, in theory I have 28 days of meals planned, right? Well...... maybe. I still need to come up with lunches, side dishes, breakfasts and snacks. And, I need to go shopping to make sure I have the ingredients for these meals or I will end up staring at the list, realizing I am missing an ingredient for all the possibilities and making peanut butter and jelly again.
Here are the daily categories I came up with for this month and we will see if they need some tweaking before February.
Monday- Crock pot meal (so I can be free to spend my energy cleaning up after the weekend and doing laundry) This one didn't work out today but it is the "general plan" Ended up making hamburgers today and heating up leftover soup.
Tuesday- Oven meal. I normally am home on Tuesdays so I think it is the best day to plan a more labor intensive meal or at least one that cooks in the oven.
Wednesday-- Quick pasta meal. Hopefully this will help with the "get me to the church on time" run around on prayer meeting night.
Thursday-- Egg dishes My plan to still eat well despite the economic "crisis".
Friday-- Still Pizza night. I value my life.
Saturday-- depending on our schedule for the week it will be leftovers or perhaps the chance to try out a new recipe.
Sunday-- I am working on coming up with a list of 6 or 8 meals that work for our crazy Sunday schedule. It is a rare Sunday that we get home from church before 2:30pm and it is usually closer to 3pm. We are all ready to eat RIGHT AWAY so I need to have things that cook up super fast, or meals that have been prepped the night before and can be heated quickly in the microwave. Also crockpot meals work well here. I would love to just buy the rotisserie chicken from our local chicken place a block away. His prices are still the best around, but even so, we need to cut back on spending.

This week's tentative plans for each main meal (sometimes mid-day meal, other times evening meal depending on my husband's work schedule) is as follows:
Mon -- Had cheeseburgers and leftovers. No time or ingredients to mess in the kitchen this morning.
Tuesday-- homemade macaroni and cheese with ham cubes, salad?
Wednesday --Baked bean casserole. (switching pasta to Tuesday so as not to have 2 ground beef meals back to back)
Thursday-- broccoli casserole (uses frozen broccoli, cottage cheese and eggs)
Friday-- homemade pizza
Saturday--????
Sunday-- Hubby wants chinese food for his birthday lunch after church and then wants me to cook the roast I bought (per his wishes) for dinner. If this ends up seeming like 2 big meals for one day we may move the roast dinner to Saturday's meal.

Check out Laura's blog to see what everyone else has on their menu for the week.