Menu Plan

Still working on eating down the freezer/pantry. I took an inventory of our pantry and came up with several more ideas for menus we could/should use with items on hand. Sometimes, it's hard to maintain the right balance between having a stockpile on hand -- in case of blizzards or other issues -- and actually eating the food.

Monday: Beefy Baked Beans

Recipe from my dad, which only uses a half pound of hamburger. That's the last of the hamburger I had browned up from a family pack purchased a while ago and frozen in meal-size portions. Also used 2 cans of pork and beans from the cupboard, and some of the bacon in the fridge because it was thawed for last week's blueberry pancakes meal. We just had some brown bread with this, some of us with butter, some with some of the rhubarb jam my mom makes for us every year.

Tuesday: Fish and Rice Dinner [Kraft Food and Family magazine, Winter 2002 issue]

Surprisingly for this family, we don't have any rice opened and stored in our rice storage container; however, there was an unopened box of Minute Rice in the cupboard. This is a quick and easy meal (you pour boiling water into the rice and throw everything else on top of it, so everything cooks together in the oven), which will also use some frozen tilapia fillets and frozen mixed vegetables from the freezer. Of course, since it's a Kraft recipe, it calls for one of their salad dressings as a seasoning, but I never actually buy vinaigrette -- I just mixed up some with some olive oil, cider vinegar and spices from the cupboard, using a combination of recipes from the "salad" section of my personal notebook cookbook.

Wednesday: Church Supper

Events at church mean we eat there.

Thursday: Ham and Cheese Calzones [Kraft Food and Family, Winter 2002], Sauteed Apples & Raisins [Dec/Jan 1998 Taste of Home magazine]

Some time around Thanksgiving, there were good sales on ham. After we ate our purchase in its regular ham incarnation, I ground up the leftovers in the food processor and froze the ground ham in meal-size portions. We'll use some of it to make calzones with the Pillsbury crescent rolls in the fridge as the dough. I also froze a bunch of apple slices from our apple picking expeditions last fall. This recipe calls for cooking some of them up with some raisins, cornstarch, brown sugar and water -- although it does appear we are getting low on raisins. (The other item we're running low on, as I discovered when mixing up the vinaigrette, is black pepper.)

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Salisbury Steak with Onion Gravy [Dec/Jan 1998 Taste of Home]

We have a couple of packages of egg noodles in the cupboard because my family likes a certain beef stroganoff recipe -- but I haven't come across any stew meat at a good sale price since I bought them. This recipe promises to have a similar taste, and will use some of the egg noodles and be the first in the chain of recipes to use the next family pack of hamburger. (If I cook it on Saturday, I should have time to brown the rest of the hamburger as well.)

Some time this weekend, I would also like to make Apple Cream Pie [Dec/Jan 2000 Taste of Home]. I really should use that cream cheese in the fridge soon, and there are a lot of apples in the freezer. I'll have to make a graham cracker crust for it, though, since I used my last frozen pie crust for last week's chicken pot pie.

Check out more menu plans and link up your own at Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday post.