Our Menu for the week

Due to the bad economy, most families are tightening their financial belts and eating in more and more. While I find it difficult to cook night after relentless night, my sentimental side thinks it's a great return to how it should be. I have no memories of eating out as a child, or at least no memories of eating out other than on a special occasion or when we visited my grandmother. Even on road trips, we stopped at picnic tables on the side of the road and ate our sandwiches, hot 2-liter of Coke in tow. The sandwiches were usually hot, too, but I was thankful for the swig of Coke since that was something we very rarely enjoyed. In the age of MORE MORE MORE, it's nice to see us returning to the family dinner table.

DH & I have always enjoyed meals as a family, and we rarely spend dinners apart because our children are still so young, but I always liked the nights at Moe's or Two Guys pizza when I didn't have to cook. During difficult seasons of life, it's always easy to send hubby to "just pick something up for dinner". Unfortunately, Tampa does not have many good cheap restaurants, and since we are trying to be more fiscally conscious, we are having most meals at home. This morning we had cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs, while dinner was a quick grilled cheese before church and then some fruit when we returned home. I am trying to start our week off with the first few meals planned, so here is our schedule:

Monday:
Roast Beef, mashed yukon gold potatoes, corn, and green beans and fruit
Roast beef is prepared very simply. We bought a chuck roast and will put it in a pan with 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup and several cans of water. You can also sprinkle some Lipton's onion soup mix on top. Cook at 300*F for at least 3-4 hours. I am going to cook ours all day at 250*F. You can add carrots and potatoes if you want a more traditional pot roast.

Publix has fantastic sweet corn right now, so I'll just boil that. I am cheating with the green beans and they will be straight out of a can and I will cook them with sea salt and some pepper.


Tuesday
spaghetti night with garlic bread and salad or applesauce
I brown ground beef with onion and spices like oregano, parsley, or basil. Then, I add either Hunt's traditional spaghetti sauce (2 cans) or 2 cans of tomato and basil sauce that I bought at Costco. I'll try to remember the brand name! We like angel hair or very thin Spaghetti noodles. I usually buy the cheap ones, but the Barefoot Contessa recommends a good brand.

I cheated and bought the garlic bread on sale at Publix. I believe it is by Cole's and it was BOGO (buy one get one free).

Wednesday night
If we have lots of leftovers, we will eat those, as the children LOVE spaghetti. Otherwise, we will have NO PEEK CHICKEN.
4-6 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, washed and prepared
1 pkg. Lipton's onion soup mix
1 pkg. long grain & wild rice (Uncle Ben's is best, but the store brand is fine)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can water

Preheat the oven to 350*F. Combine soup, water, and rice mix together. Pour in bottom of casserole dish. Place chicken in the mixture. Sprinkle oven soup mix over chicken. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake at 350*F for 2 hours and don't peek! You really can peek because sometimes it doesn't take the full 2 hours to cook. Enjoy!

I will fix some veggies such as baked squash. I recently bought frozen squash and sauteed it in olive oil. Then I put it in an oven-safe dish, and sprinkled bread crumbs and parmesan on top and baked it for a few minutes. It was delicious!

I'll add something green too.

Maybe this will inspire you!