Menu Monday

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. We did. Our first one without basketball games in awhile, a break from Saturday sports until soccer starts. We enjoyed leisurely mornings both Saturday and Sunday (we attend church on Saturday nights) so we had big breakfasts both mornings... biscuits and gravy Saturday morning and pancakes on Sunday. What a treat! (Not sure why I shared that, but this is a food-related post and that was fresh on my mind.) This weekend I added 2 TBS of sugar and a tsp of vanilla to the pancake batter and it made them *so* good. Served with homemade syrup, they were very "yahmmy" as our newest son would say.

I have been taking a break from blogging as much in recent weeks, but not taking a break from menu planning! It's one thing that helps keep me sane! And the new "MPM" graphic at the top reminds me of the Grocery Gadget application I got for my phone. I am a list girl, so this app has been helpful. I'm still figuring it out, though, so if you use it and have any tips, please share!

One thing we had in the past couple of weeks was this Honey Dijon Pork Chops recipe that everyone really liked. Another was an impromptu combination of this Baked Pesto Chicken recipe and this recipe for a simple bruschetta. Dinner was running later than usual one evening last week, so I toasted some bread and made the bruschetta for an appetizer. In the pesto chicken recipe, I substituted bruschetta for the chopped tomatoes. The result was really good! So, it turned into "Baked Pesto Bruschetta Chicken." I halved the chicken breasts and baked them at 400 degrees on foil on a baking sheet, and they were done and perfect in 25 minutes. I think I will always bake chicken that way.
I served it with some pasta with tomato alfredo sauce, peas, caesar salad, and the toasted batard bread we had with the bruschetta. It turned out to be one of everyone's favorite dinners last week. I love it when recipes come together that way! And so easy!

We have a fundraiser at a local hamburger place for my daughter's upcoming mission trip to Mexico, so we have one night out. I've been keeping up my weekly menu planning routine of cooking Monday through Wednesday, leftovers on Thursday, then an easy homemade soup on Friday. Front-loading the week this way really helps me. This way we have left-overs for a YOYO ("You're On Your Own") night and then I don't cook dinners on the weekends (except Ethiopian spicy pasta on Sunday nights!) We go out at least once every weekend after church and the rest of the time we have soup and leftovers.

Here's our week in food:

Monday~ EZ Chicken (Cooking with 4 Ingredients cookbook), rice, stir-fry
Tuesday~ chicken fried steak (Judge me if you must... I haven't made these in just forever, one of my sweet husband's favorites!), mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, peas
Wednesday~ out
Thursday~ leftovers
Friday~ baked potato soup, salad, garlic bread

For more recipes and some great menu links, visit Laura at Orgjunkie. Have a yummy week!