Tag Archives: menu plan

Go-To Meals and Menu Planning

Tasty Tuesday

What are some of your “go-to” meals? Are they seasonal? Our temperatures here are all over the place right now. I nearly had to turn on the air conditioner the week before last and then the bottom dropped and it got very cold again.

If I eat a salad, I like to do it when it is warm out (unless it is Chicken and Fries salad, Mmmmm, mmmm) and soups when it is colder. Of course “colder” is relative to what the temperatures have been. If it is the fall and just come out of 100º temperatures then the 60’s is definitely colder but if it spring and the temperatures have been in the 30’s and 40’s then 60 is definitely warmer. ;) See?

Soups/Chili

Well, all that to say . . . my go-to meals are subject to temperature. :D When it is a bit on the chilly side, we lean to adding chili and soup to our menu at least a couple of times in the week.

I’ve shared some of our favorites here. Sometimes I make this crock pot meal with added broth for more of a soup than gravied type casserole.

Hand-held Food

Hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos, and fajitas are ones that make it to our menu frequently, especially in warmer weather. I don’t know why it is more frequent during warmer temps unless it is the fact that it heats the house up less than turning on the oven.

There are other hand-held foods that we eat but not as frequently as those, such as quesadillas, grilled sandwiches/paninis, and chicken nuggets.

Casseroles/Pasta/Grains

We don’t have a lot of casseroles any more unless you call spaghetti a casserole. ;) Spaghetti and pasta dishes frequent our menu. Spaghetti is one of Tiffany’s favorite meals; she has been known to ask for it for her birthday dinner frequently.

I’ve shared several pasta dishes that are THM compatible in the last year, as these are ones that Tiffany loves to just throw together on the fly. She’s been enjoying quinoa again for lunches lately too.

Pizza

Yep, pizza or a pizza flavored dish is a weekly meal here. For a while I had stopped making pizza for dinner and Sean said he missed it. I happily brought it back to our menu as it is a favorite of mine.

We are really enjoying pizza with a sourdough crust for the last several months. It is our current favorite. We’ve even learned to enjoy it with little cheese. :o I know, shocking! However, when we are needing a cheese fix, we will switch to either a fathead type crust and go keto-style or shift to my pizza skillet or pizza topping casserole. :D

Salad?

When it is warmer weather we will sometimes do a salad for dinner but more often than not we will just have a side salad with whatever entree I’ve decided to cook.

My other go-to meals are printed out from recipes I’ve found online; I thumb through them to be reminded of how good they are and if they are simple, all the better. :)

My menu this ‘week’ is

  • fajitas
  • chili
  • pizza with salad
  • split pea soup
  • fried pork chops, crispy asparagus, and caulitaters
  • spaghetti
  • crock pot chicken and noodles with caulitaters (mashed/creamed cauliflower)

The chili was nice the day the temperature stayed in the 50’s and rained. Fajitas were a nice quick fix meal. Crock pot meal will make errand day dinner easy. And the fried pork chops will be a nice change–they were on sale a couple weeks ago, as was the asparagus.

I hope this helps you create your menu.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

A Recent Menu Plan (THM style)

Menu, Tasty Tuesday,

As many of you may know, we follow the Trim Healthy Mama way of eating here. It’s a family thing. :)

This week I thought I’d share my menu with you. I try to include a good number of E meals (those are healthy carb meals) because some of us do a bit better eating more of those.

  • Black Bean Spaghetti (E) – we were using the brown rice spaghetti from Aldi but they discontinued it. :( So we are trying some different healthy carb pastas out. This week we tried a black bean pasta. I cooked some chicken breast and a bit of turkey bacon with it and added some almond milk and gluccie (glucomannan) to thicken it up a bit. With the brown rice noodles we’d used before, the noodles made it creamy enough. I’ll definitely be looking for some more brown rice spaghetti because I wasn’t thrilled with the black bean spaghetti.  Any way, we had a salad with it that I just massaged a bit of MCT oil on the leaves and added nutritional yeast.
  • Impromptu Chocolate Chip Pancakes from Trim Healthy Table page 341 (S)– This is one of our favorite pancakes and Tiffany wanted them for dinner one night. She added some Turkey Bacon and Michael fixed some fried eggs. Lovely breakfast for dinner. :)
  • Pizza Skillet Salad (S) – We love pizza, generally once a week here. It’s been so crazy hot that we’ve been having pizza-ish foods this summer. This week I took the Pizza Skillet recipe I created and we put it on top of a bed of lettuce. :)
  • Salmon Patties, Mashed Cauliflower, and Creamed Early Peas (S) – Okay, I’m going to have to check this one out a bit more because the way I made it this time (after sooo long of not having it) I might have made it an accidental crossover. But I enjoyed it with a heavy dose of pleasure and will hope it doesn’t mess up my weight reduction. ;) I used Wasa light rye crackers and almond milk in my usual recipe. BUT that coupled with the peas is where I miscalculated. 8)
  • Cowboy Grub from Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook page 59 (E) – This we also serve with a salad like described above or with canned green beans.
  • Creamy Chicken Gravy from Briana Thomas’ Convenient Food page 107 (FP) – we served this with broccoli and I put a bag salad on the table too. This was a new recipe for us and I was surprised that we enjoyed it. I don’t generally like dill weed and curry isn’t a spice we use much of at all. This was nice and creamy and went on that steamed broccoli very nicely.
  • Turkey Hot Dogs, Turkey Burgers (all no bun for me), coleslaw, and baked beans (S) – I’ll only have a couple bites of the beans because I’m not a huge fan but Michael loves this meal. Sometimes I make the psyllium husk bread into rolls for both buns and Michael loves that too. :)

There you have it. These were not eaten in this order though. ;) I generally try to mix up the fuel source for dinners so we don’t have 3 or 4 of one type in a row.  On days we have S meals (which is the healthy fats/low carb meal) I try to make sure that I eat at least one E meal earlier in the day and an E or FP snack.

I hope this menu plan is helpful to you and gives you some ideas for your next menu. :)

Until next time,

Michele ºÜº