Meal Plans Week of 3-14-10

A new week, a new decade!  Didn't think I'd get to say that twice in one year :P  Happy Birthday to me...you lose an hour of sleep.  Oh well.  We celebrated yesterday.  I had a nice spa treatment in the morning...massage, pedi, mani.  Then in the afternoon we did presents (I got a Toby Mac CD from Rebecca and a beautiful pink opal necklace from Justin), some shopping (browsed the dishwashers and I got a new water bottle...finally got rid of the plastic and went with stainless steel!) and went to Red Robin for dinner (mmmm).  In the evening we had some yummy ice cream cake for dessert!!  This was not the prettiest cake.  Let's just say my icing wasn't cooperating when I tried to make some do-ahead decorations (I had intended to experiment with new decorations and make them from icing that would harden so I could just put them on the cake later...but no luck) so I had to quick decorate the cake in about 10 min. on the fly...no plan, not a lot of time when you're dealing with ice cream.  So the decorations are not very good.  And when I assembled the cake the ice cream was quite soft, so it's not totally even.  But who cares what it looks like...it tasted awesome!!!  It's my homemade chocolate overload cake.  It's chocolate chocolate chip cake, homemade vanilla ice cream, chocolate chips, chococlate chocolate chip cake and chocolate frosting.  Then to make it even better I drizzeled some homemade chocolate sauce on top.  I think I could eat another piece right now :)  I'll definitely be enjoying some more tonight.  A great way to kick off my 30's :)  This was definitely better than last year's ice cream cake.  Maybe the next time I try one I'll actually put some more effort into making it look nice :P

On to this week, let's see what's going on.  This morning is church and nursery duty.  Monday is grocery shopping and nursery cmt meeting (early, easy clean up dinner), Tuesday Justin has his first alumni orchestra rehearsal for this season and I'm hoping to do some birthday present shopping (half of my family has birthdays in March and April), Wednesday is Kindermusik, Thursday Justin has class and Friday is MOPS.  We haven't made any plans for Saturday yet.  Maybe we'll try to get to the children's museum or something.

I have several extra baking projects for this week.  Hopefully I'll get to all of them.  My goal is to try making pita bread today.  We'll see.  I still have to figure out what recipe to try.  There are so many!  I would also like to try making homemade chocolate chips, granola bars and orange muffins.  If I find some good fruit at the store I might make more dried fruit.  We're almost out of homemade dried fruit.  I'm going to cook some garbanzo beans today for our dinner tomorrow.  I've never used dried garbanzo beans.  Hopefully they turn out well.  I also have a lot of dairy products in the fridge to use up - 1/2 and 1/2, heavy cream, plain yogurt, sour cream and cream cheese.  So I need to find some baking/cooking projects to use those.  That's the plan for now.  We'll see how the week goes.

I did really well with breakfasts last week.  I only ate cereal once!  I really can't believe that.  I'm finding that there are just so many other yummy, healthy things to eat for breakfast.  I have a hard time choosing!  So far I have 4 breakfasts planned for this week.  That could change as the week goes on, depending on what we have on hand/what goodies I make/what fresh fruit I buy.

Potty training continues to go well.  At the beginning of the week we didn't even try...Rebecca was too sick.  It was enough just to get her settled in the morning.  But from mid-week on she's been doing great!  She even pooped on the potty a couple times!  She was very excited :)

Finally I think I'm going to steal my SIL's idea and try a new format for menu planning.  Now that I'm listing so many breakfasts instead of just dinners I'm going to space things out differently...make it easier to read.

So here's what we've got planned for this week.  Hopefully we'll have a good week even with the time change adjustment :)
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S - (church, nursery, bday, make pita bread, cook beans, make hummus, meatless dinner)
  L - beef roast, carrots, potatoes (in crockpot)
  D - homemade pita bread w/ hummus, avocado, cucumber and spinach, corn, home canned applesauce

M - (Meijer, nursery cmt, early/easy clean up, meatless)
  B - yogurt, granola, cherries and peaches
  D - refried bean burritos w/ sour cream, avocado and salsa, home canned applesauce

T - (make muffins, prep dinner, gift shopping, CAO)
  B - orange muffins, fresh oranges
  D - chicken and mixed veggies in crockpot over couscous, home canned pears

W - (KM, St. Patrick's Day - green food:)
  D - chicken pepper pesto parmesan panini, peas, home canned applesauce

Th - (make chocolate chips, make granola bars, class)
  B - orange muffins, grapefruit
  D - salad

F - (MOPS, clean)
  B - granola bars, fresh oranges
  D - steak, baked potato (grilled?), beans (Justin), salad (me)

S - (clean, laundry, make hot fudge, make wheat thins)
  B - granola bars, fresh oranges
  D - crockpot corn chowder, cornbread