Monday, December 14, 2009

Menu Planning Monday


There is a great website that I found by visiting my friend, Terra's blog. It is called "I'm an Organizing Junkie". Every Monday, she does "Menu Planning Monday" where over 300 ladies share their menus for the week. I love this idea! My friend and I actually sit down every Monday and get our menus ready for the week so this works great for me. Last Monday, we made our menus for the rest of the month so we wouldn't have to think about anything during the busy holiday season. Then, every Sunday or Monday we go grocery shopping to get our ingredients for the week.

On the menu for this week:

Monday - Chicken and Rice casserole
Tuesday - Mushroom Chicken with pasta
Wednesday - Giada's Baked Ziti that I have in the freezer (yay!)
Thursday - leftover Chicken and Rice casserole
Friday - Boston Butt with sweet potato fries
Saturday - Tomato Chicken Pasta
Sunday - raid the fridge

Since there are three recipes this week that include shredded/cubed chicken (which happens a lot on my menus), I prepared all of the chicken last night. I have started buying split chicken breasts for two reasons...cheap and flavorful. So, I bought two family size packages (about 5 breasts in each pkg). I used my roasting pan and a cookie sheet and placed 5 chicken breasts on each. Then, I patted the skins dry and drizzled liberally with EVOO, salt and pepper. Roast them at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour or until the internal temperature reaches 165. I don't usually measure the temperature. I just watch the skins. Usually, when the skins are golden and crispy...they are done. After that, all you have to do is remove the chicken from the bones, chop, and separate into containers for each meal. I ended up having about 11 cups of chicken. That is a lot of chicken for $10!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love menu planning! It really saves so much time, and money. I have fallen a little behind on it, but fully plan on picking it back up. So glad you have this on here to help keep me on track :)
Jessica

Jessica Lynn said...

I'm terrible with menu planning because I am so fickle about what I eat, what I hate today I may crave tomorrow, but what I have been doing is whenever I cook meat, usually chicken or turkey, I make lots of it, and freeze what I don't use for later. I also make "chili packs" because we eat so much chili. I put ground turkey and onions and peppers together and freeze them. Then all I have to do is add tomato, spices, and beans and yay, chili done!
Loving your blog!!!!

carlyn said...

i buy 10 lb bags of chicken quarters when they go on sale for less that $0.50/ lbs. which happens pretty often. i boil mine with some onion, celery, garlic and salt. then i end up with over 10 cups of chicken and like 20 cups of chicken broth!!! i will definitely have to try your method of roasting slit breasts. i know they go on sale often as well.

Talia said...

Glad I could give you a little boost, jessica ; )!

Great idea, Jess! I have heard of people doing packs like that. I really need to try it!

I have done that before, Carlyn, but with split chicken breasts. I've never bought chicken quarters. What is the difference? I will have to keep an eye out for them. I've been making chicken stock and freezing it a lot lately. I don't know why I never did before. It is so much cheaper than buying stock!!!

Laura said...

Welcome to MPM!!

 
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