Meals

I'm a big planner in case you didn't know...shocker! I created a two month meal plan and was shocked at how nice it makes dinner and grocery shopping. I wanted to try and minimize my grocery costs and also make meal time easier. I already had been doing a weekly meal plan, but decided to step up my game when our job situation changed. I started by having a basic structure that Wednesday was soup day since that's usually my busiest day of the week. So I like to have dinner in the crock pot with a side ready when I get home. Then Mondays were sandwich day (chicken salad, tuna salad, etc.) since Sunday dinners are usually a more elaborate meal than weeknights. Then I made one night a mexican meal (tacos/quesadillas) and then filled in the rest with recipes already in my cookbook. I tried to throw in one new recipe a week and stack similar ingredients near each other. January was a fabulous food month and it even made it easier for Candler to help out because he knew what I was planning to make.

I also cooked up another batch of shredded chicken for my freezer. I cooked it overnight in the crockpot on low with some water and seasonings, threw three breasts at a time into my KitchenAid mixer, and then packaged it into Glad containers. I can thaw these pretty quick too. About 1.5 minutes on defrost in the microwave if I've forgotten to put one in the fridge overnight to thaw. About 1 chicken breast per container is what I use for our meals which obviously stretches our meat instead of each of us eating a breast on our own, which isn't the healthiest either. Those are my tricks. Give them a try.