Whipped Out » Weekly Menu

Weekly Menu from Casa Wendell

Sarah — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:17:32 +0000

This is a short week for Hubby and me. We’re celebrating our 10th anniversary on the 28th, and so my in-laws are taking the kids AND the dogs and Hubby and I are taking a trip to Quebec City. Our menu for the week is three nights long with a planned night for takeout or road food while we bring the dudes up to the in laws.

Monday Cashew Chicken – I love this recipe. I’m going to try to make brown rice in the rice cooker, and hopefully I won’t totally screw that up.

Tuesday I’m going to a dinner in Brooklyn (WOOT) so I won’t be home. I think Hubby is planning to order Chinese or something.

Wednesday Hubby is going to grill some fish, and I’ll probably make whole wheat/flax seed couscous on the side. I am sure the excitement is knocking you over RIGHT NOW.

Thursday We’ll be bringing the boys up to Connecticut so dinner will likely be sandwiches or road food (ew).

So: what’s your favorite travel food? When you’re on the road, what places do you look for? And if you’ve ever been to Quebec City, what do you recommend?

Thanks!

Weekly Menu: 5/16/10-5/22/10

Angela — Sun, 16 May 2010 23:45:08 +0000

I almost forgot about the weekly menu (again) because I’m currently in Toronto, where I’ll be until Tuesday. So, of course, that means an abbreviated menu this week, but I still need to cook the last part of the week, so let’s see…

Wednesday: pork chops. On the grill if it’s nice, in the oven if it’s not. Baked potatoes. Corn on the cob.

Thursday: Ranch chicken (I was supposed to make this last week, but didn’t). I have no idea what sides I’m going to serve. Side dishes are the hardest part of meals!

Friday: Grilling… fish for me, hamburgers/hot dogs for the others. Corn on the cob and roasted potatoes.

Saturday: Date night! Brianna is going to my in-laws for TWO weeks, leaving this day.

Heh. So it’s a lot easier when I only have to plan for three days. The next two weeks of meals will be different because I’ll be out of town both weekends (once for fun, with Josh, then for work) and because Brianna won’t be here. I tend to cook less and plan ahead less when she’s not around. But there will still be three of us, so we’ll see how the planning goes.

Anyway, what’s on your menu?

Weekly Menu: 5/9/10-5/15/10

Angela — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:02:10 +0000

This weekly menu thing is for the birds. Who thought this was a good idea? Okay, the truth is, I NEED the weekly menu, because it’s ugly when I don’t have one (like last week). We seem quite aimless and are always guessing at what we’re going to eat. It causes stress and makes me tired. So a weekly menu it is, it’s just that some weeks, it seems SO hard. Why can’t someone do this for me?

Sunday: it’s Mother’s Day, so I’m not cooking (much). Josh is grilling steaks and corn on the cob. I’m making Crash Potatoes and sauteing some asparagus and maybe some zucchini. And I made both Strawberry Pie and Strawberry-Rhubarb crunch (recipes to come on Wednesday) for dessert because we picked strawberries yesterday (I LOVE strawberry picking!)

Monday: Spaghetti. Yeah, we have this a lot. It’s my favorite meal to cook and to eat. And I love having spaghetti leftovers for lunches.

Tuesday: Chicken stir fry with rice

Wednesday: Pioneer Woman’s Ranch Chicken with mashed potatoes and salad

Thursday: Shish kabobs on the grill (ingredients to be determined but probably beef and/or chicken, mushrooms, grape tomatoes, potatoes, onions and green peppers)

Friday: Parent’s Night Out. Date Night!

Saturday: I’m going to stop planning Saturdays because we always get busy and don’t follow the menu

Weekly Menu 4/25-5/1

Angela — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:27:29 +0000

I think I may have mentioned this, but I’m going to be out of town for the next week so not a lot of cooking will get done. Well, not by me, anyway. I’ve been thinking of a few dinner ideas I can suggest to my family while I’m gone. Things that don’t require a recipe and can be thrown together quickly (it’s not that they can’t cook but they do it so rarely, it’s best not to get too fancy). But, for the most part, they’re on their own. While my work trips aren’t vacation, I do think of them as vacation from meal planning, cooking and cleanup!

Today, I’ll be making country ribs in the crockpot, so they’ll have those for leftover, but that’s the extent of my cooking for the week. Otherwise, it’s all restaurants for me. I thought I’d share some of the places I have reservations this week.

Wednesday night, I’ll be taking a group of authors to dinner at Hyde Park Prime Steakhouse. The menu makes me swoon.

Thursday night, it’s a business dinner at M and I’m excited to check out this restaurant. The website makes it seem very alluring.

For lunch one day Jane, Sarah and I will all be visiting ZenCha Tea Salon. This restaurant specializes in a soothing, Zen atmosphere and superior teas. It’s the perfect restaurant for the three of us to lunch at together.

Other places I’ll be eating are the hotel restaurant (haha, always exciting!), Buca di Beppo and possibly this Mongolian BBQ, which I’ve suggested as a lunch option. Of course, since I’ll be eating out for nearly a week, there will be many more additions to this list (including our Friday night dinner option, which hasn’t been determined yet), but I’ll have to wait and see what it turns out to be!

What’s on your menu this week?

Weekly Menu: Easy Three!

Sarah — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:43:41 +0000

This week I’m traveling to the Chicago Romance Writers Spring Fling conference, so I only need dinners for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night. So inspired by Angie, I did a weekly menu on the Google calendar I share with Hubby – which makes it easier for both of us since he’s crazy busy this week and we hate being hungry and standing in the kitchen after the kids are in bed having the following conversation:

Me: “What do you want for dinner?”
Him: “I dunno.”
Me: “Me either.”

That conversation means we eat poorly or takeout – or both!

So this week, it’s a brief menu including leftovers of unquestionable awesomeness.

Monday
Saturday night Hubby and I went out to a new restaurant for us and had Turkish food. Oh, my stars and spicy pants, it was delicious. He had stuffed grape leaves and kabob chicken and beef, and I had falafel and lamb patties called Izgara Kofte. I’m drooling just thinking about it. We had so much leftover that I’m going to stop by the grocery store and buy a small package of pita bread so we can eat the leftovers. I hope the restaurant packed up the tahini sauce when we requested a to-go box. That was so freaking good I could eat it with a spoon.

Tuesday

We’re grilling fish, probably tuna with lime and salt coating, and serving with with green beans and quinoa – easy and yummy and takes about 20 minutes to cook. WOO.

Wednesday

Big night for us: burgers and sweet potato fries. We buy frozen bags of pre-made sweet potato fries, bake them, and serve with honey mustard. I now prefer these to regular French fries, and pretty much would eat sweet potato fries any time, any where, even for breakfast. The burgers are like a side dish to the main seductive awesome dish that is sweet potato fries.

Then – I’m off to Chicago, where the food is awesome – but I have no idea what I’m eating yet so I can’t plan.

Coming up soon: pictures of what really old azaleas look like when they bust out with their crazy magenta selves, and why my house was probably a gateway to the perennial floral blooming for the dead.

Weekly menu 4/18-4/24

Angela — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:11:39 +0000

Let me share something sad with you: we spent most of the morning and a portion of the afternoon yesterday doing some grocery shopping at Sam’s Club and Walmart. But I went without first planning my menu for the week, but we already had a long list for each place, of staples we needed. What does that mean? At least one more trip to the store will be in order this week, to fill in any holes because I didn’t plan my menu first. Bad. Planning. So I’m going to try and plan with what we have on hand (we have plenty of meat, it’s the veggies that do me in).

Sunday: Josh is off racing and Adam is sick, so B and Adam requested chicken soup for lunch. For dinner, Adam requested Thai Basil Chicken (it’s spicy and will help clear his sinuses)

Monday: Dinner Made Easy: Burrito BLTs. This is the recipe I shared last Wednesday. It was on my menu last week but I actually didn’t have the ingredients, and I ended up changing my menu and making things I did have ingredients for. Luckily, I had this part of my menu planned yesterday so I picked up the lettuce/tomatos/tortillas then. And we had grilled chicken last night that I made extra of to add.

Tuesday: 40-clove garlic chicken in the crockpot. I bought a whole chicken cut up last week and we buy fresh garlic bulbs in bulk so we’re set for this one. Will serve over mashed potatoes with some canned or frozen veggie from the freezer.

Wednesday: Grilled pork chops with…stuff

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Seafood lasagna

Saturday: No cooking

Sunday: I’m planning this one ahead because I’ll be traveling the entire week following (Monday-Sunday) so no menu planning for that week. We’ll probably grill something, though I’m not sure what yet. Possibly chicken drumsticks.

Hmm…I think I’m okay with this menu. The iffy day will be the seafood lasagna. Not sure about that. Anyway, what’s on your menu?

Weekly menu 4/11-4/17/10 (Tax week. Bleh)

Angela — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:44:46 +0000

Last week I was in Toronto and though I came home early thanks to being sick, I only cooked one night out of the last ten days because first we were out of town, then I was out of town and then we were all sick. So we’re ready for some home-cooked meals, but once again I find getting into the groove of meal planning and cooking hard. You’d think I’d be used to this by now, but no.

Sunday: Grilled T-bone steaks (they’re on sale for $4.99/lb in case you think I’m a big spender), grilled potatoes, deviled eggs and green beans

Monday: Spaghetti w/meat sauce, garlic bread and salad

Tuesday: Chicken and rice

Wednesday: BLT burritos (dinner made easy! Recipe to come)

Thursday: Swiss steak, mashed potatoes and some random veggie

Friday: leftovers

Saturday: Not cooking, local barbecue festival!

It took me TWO days to write this post and plan the menu. I’m still not convinced this is what we want to eat (nothing sounds good, I’m still sick so all food seems blah to me) but it makes me feel better to have a semblance of a plan.

Tell me, what’s on your menu? (maybe I’ll want to make that instead!)

Weekly Menu: March 28th-April 3rd

Angela — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 14:00:17 +0000

Hello! April already? I’m not sure where March went, but okay. I think I should have gotten Sarah to do a weekly menu for this week, so we could see what she’s doing for Passover, because I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you for Easter weekend. Why? We’re going out of town for the weekend. We’re headed to Washington DC for some go-kart action and an MLS soccer game. Oh, and shopping. We are SO hitting the Annapolis mall. But anyway, I still have to get through the rest of the week and do some cooking, so here’s what I have planned:

Sunday: corned beef and cabbage. I know, this was on my menu last week, but I moved it to today because Josh doesn’t like it and he’s going to be gone, so it works out.

Monday: Chicken & Dumplings. I made this not to long ago but I’ve been craving it.

Tuesday: Salsa chicken and Spanish Rice.

Wednesday: Fried potatoes and sausage links.

Thursday: Homemade baked beans (I’ll be posting the recipe on Wednesday!) and something on the grill. Depends on what’s on sale at the grocery story later in the week.

Friday: Leftovers!

Saturday: Out. Of. Town. Yes!

So what’s on your menu? I’m especially interested to hear your Passover/Easter menus! Do you have any special dishes that you’ll be making? And someone mentioned deviled eggs in Sarah’s Passover post, if you have a great recipe please share it!

Relish Relish

Sarah — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 05:02:39 +0000

I’m on vacation this week with the family – woo hoo! We’re going skiing, and although that means I’ll be doing minimal cooking, I didn’t want to miss a chance to give you a heads up on something kinda neat.

While reading my mother in law’s old issues of Real Simple, I came across a site called Twitter feed that’ll get you 2 free weeks to try it out: click “Redeem a Voucher” at the top of the RelishRelish.com site, and enter code TS3PRDCH.

If you give it a spin, let me know what you think? I’m very curious about it, and love the idea from this week’s menu collection of making mini turkey meatloaf muffins for the kids.

Weekly Menu March 21-27

Angela — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:20:31 +0000

Hey, look at that! It’s Sunday. Someone tell me where the week went? And since I’m writing this at 8pm, where the night went? So right now I’m supposed to be getting my taxes in order for the accountant tomorrow and look…I remembered one more task I can use to procrastinate that! Yay me!

Last week’s menu fell apart a bit mid-week for some reason. I can’t even remember why now, but there was a good reason why I didn’t end up following much of my menu the second half of the week. Probably I was working and didn’t want to take the time to even prep a meal for the crockpot. So a few of my meals from last week are traveling over to this week.

Sunday: We cooked nothing (in fact, as of this writing, I haven’t had dinner). I actually marinated pork chops for grilling but we went to the beach, ate late and then had ice cream so none of us were really hungry for a full meal come dinner time.

Monday: But that means we get to have grilled marinated pork chops Monday night! I’m going to serve them with saffron rice and salad. Oh, and fresh bread because I got freshly churned butter at the local dairy farm today and that just demands fresh bread!

Tuesday: Pizza roll. This was on the menu for last week but has been moved to this week.

Wednesday: Corned beef, potatoes and cabbage in the crockpot. I know this is a week too late for St. Patrick’s day, but it was on sale last week so I got two, one to cook and one to freeze.

Thursday: Crockpot country ribs, baked potatoes and…some veggie. Green beans for the family, something fresh and sauteed for me.

Friday: It’s Mom’s Night Out. I’m going for Mexican and margaritas and my family is on. Their. Own. Wheee!

Saturday: Grilling out. Some kind of fish because I’m really craving fish on the grill.

Whew, the planning wasn’t as hard this week as it was last week. I actually managed to do it in five minutes. Hot damn! So what’s on your menu this week?