Bernadette: Meal Plan

I haven't been good at making myself meal plan so I finally decided to try out a meal planning service. I found one called Cook Smarts, which had a free email subscription at the time that I joined but which has now switched to a paid subscription service. I continued with it because the recipes are pretty simple and using the meal plan helps get me out of my cooking rut. There's always one vegetarian meal and the dinner is usually seems pretty balanced. Each recipe also lets you know what you can make ahead of time, very handy for when I just have a few minutes to do something useful before one of the kids need me. If I don't like the sound of a dish for a particular day, I just look for another recipe from a different source but at least there are a few meals for the week already planned.


This week, I've made the following:

Stuffed Peppers with Quinoa, Black Beans, and Corn with a side of Roasted Asparagus - This dish was much easier to make than I expected and everyone liked it. The 4 year old helped me assemble the peppers and sprinkle cheese on top and was so excited to pick her pepper. She tried to eat it but mostly ate the cheese. I think she wasn't sure about the quinoa though and really doesn't like beans. She loved the corn though.
Baked Chicken Cordon Bleu and Roasted Broccoli - This one got rave reviews from the husband and we even served it to a dinner guest. I liked it because I got to pound the chicken flat although the recipe involved a little more work than I like - it can be inconvenient to watch 2 kids and handle raw meat at the same time. I didn't think the 4 year old would eat it so I broke my rule about trying to get the 4 year old to eat what we eat and made chicken tenders on the side. Making the chicken tenders was easy since all the ingredients were already there and it just meant not rolling up the chicken with the cheese and prosciutto.

I liked both dishes enough that I'd be happy to make either of them again.

Tomorrow is Honey Lime Salmon with Quinoa and over the weekend we'll probably be using our new grill which means sausages and corn and other veggies.