Category Archives: Monday Menu

Monday Menu: Planning for houseguests

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with , , , , , ,

Summer always brings much-anticipated visits from friends and family, but if you don’t plan ahead, you can get overwhelmed and stressed out trying to feed all those extra mouths. I like to plan meals that are mostly made ahead (I don’t want to be in the kitchen while everyone else is having fun!), with lots of built in flexibility so everyone can personalize their plates (especially important when there are a bunch of kids in the mix). With a fridge stocked with plenty of beverages and healthy snacks (yogurt, fresh fruit and veggies), and a good stash of homemade cookies, you’ll be ready to enjoy your visitors!

Arrival day: Homesick Texan Carnitas, slaw, guacamole, and Dulce de Leche Ice Cream

Panini Night: 2 kinds of good sliced bread, 3 cheeses (I like cheddar, provolone and Havarti), some sliced deli meat, thinly sliced tomato, arugula, maybe a jar of roasted red peppers or some caramelized onions. Set everything out in little bowls and let each person assemble their own sandwich. I don’t have a fancy panini press; I just toast them on the griddle and press them down with a cast iron skillet. Add a salad and some chips!

Pasta Night: Asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta (I realize this menu leans heavily on Smitten Kitchen recipes, but they’re always reliable!). Cook extra pasta and leave it plain for the pickier kids who want plain marinara or just butter and cheese. My kids like the goat cheese but pick out the asparagus. Garlic bread (use a big 1-lb. loaf of soft Italian bread to feed a crowd) and a simple tomato salad.

Breakfast ideas: Doughnut Muffins (that’s what my kids call them because I make them in regular muffin tins) and smoothies; Spinach and cheese strata or Baked French Toast and bacon; Overnight Orange Rolls and Velvet Scrambled Eggs with Fresh Herbs.

Last week on Home Baked

Unclogging the sink

Stenciled Star Wars Cake

Monday Menu: Vacation at the Cottage

Monday Menu: Vacation at the cottage

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with , , , , , ,

We don’t have a cozy little lake cottage, but maybe you do? We have a couple weeks free in August if you need someone to make it look lived in…

But seriously, sometimes the most frugal (and relaxing) family summer vacation option is renting or borrowing a cottage, cabin or condo for a week. It’s not an all-inclusive resort, but it does have a kitchen. With a little planning ahead, you can have easy, budget-friendly meals and not break the bank by eating out every night. Here are my top five tips for an easy week of home cooked meals on vacation:

1. Make a menu. Keep it simple. What are your family’s favorite–but easy–meals? Make ingredients work double duty whenever possible.

2. Make a couple of freezer meals ahead of time and bring them your cooler. If you have the space, bring your slow cooker.

3. Find out whether there’s a grill at your destination. Burgers, hotdogs, brats…and s’mores for dessert!

4. Don’t forget to stock supplies for easy breakfasts and lunches: cereal, muffins, sandwiches, yogurt, fruit.

5. Do plan a meal out if you can!

Monday: Arrival day…something quick for dinner! Pasta with cheese and pepper, salad.

Tuesday: Marinate some chicken in the morning…grill it in the evening. Make sure there are leftovers. Asian Cabbage Salad (make the dressing at home and bring it in a jar), maybe some oven fries.

Wednesday: Crockpot pulled pork sandwiches (make ahead, freeze, and reheat in the crockpot while you’re at the beach).

Thursday: No work: Leftover Asian Cabbage Salad with grilled chicken strips. If that’s too healthy, open a bag of chips. Maybe take 10 minutes and make some Fruit Crumble.

Friday: Grill again! Steak, hotdogs, maybe some fish? Potato salad would be nice (bring small new potatoes that don’t need peeling, add a mustardy vinaigrette). S’mores!

Last week on Home Baked

Empty the basket!

Hummus

Monday Menu: The Grilling Edition

 

Do you like to cook when you’re on vacation?

Monday Menu: the grilling edition

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with , , , , , ,

Summertime was made for grilling. Keep the heat out of the kitchen and outside where it belongs, right? I’ve been trying to grill as often as possible, so I decided to center this week’s menu around the grill. I like how quickly things cook and how few pots and pans there are left to wash!

It’s taken me a few years to gain confidence at the grill. I’m certainly no Grill Master yet, but I’ve learned a few tricks (if only where the hot spots are on our gas grill). I have two pieces of advice to anyone hesitant about their grilling skills. 1) Don’t walk away from the grill! It’s easy to get distracted by other kitchen tasks, and before you know it, your burgers are hockey pucks. 2) Get a grill basket! Now you can cook all sorts of things (especially vegetables) alongside your meat.

Monday: Southwest turkey burgers (add crushed tortilla chips, salsa, cumin, etc. to ground turkey–serve with cheese, avocado slices and more salsa), corn on the cob (grill that, too!), green salad

Tuesday: Grilled salmon, Asian cabbage salad, grilled pineapple slices

Wednesday: Yogurt-marinated grilled chicken, grilled veggies (asparagus, fennel, onions, zucchini…toss with olive oil, salt & pepper and toss them in a grill basket)

Thursday: Take a break! Leftover cabbage salad with strips of leftover grilled chicken. Grill up some toast! (Or just bask in the A/C.)

Friday: Pizza on the grill (leftover grilled veggies make a wonderful pizza topping)

 

Last week on Home Baked

Cleaning carseats

Kids’ travel neck pillows

TGIF (Or, Happy Hour at Home)

 

What’s your favorite grilling standby?

Monday Menu…and last week’s links

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with , ,

I keep saying I’m going to clean out the freezer, but it never seems to happen. Just wishing doesn’t make it so, apparently. But this week I’m planning meals around what I find in the freezer: a couple of lonely steaks, several pounds of stale bread, sausage, bits and bags of frozen fruit. In the fridge, I’ve got eggs and a bunch of vegetables to play with. By the end of the week, I should be one step closer to the Great Freezer Purge of 2012. (Sounds fun, doesn’t it?)

Monday: T-bone steaks (for the adults), meatballs (for the kids), baked potatoes, green beans

Tuesday: Spinach and cheese strata, green salad, fruit smoothies

Wednesday: Pasta with cheese and Italian sausage, kale (salad or cooked?)

Thursday: Sandwiches (the perfect summer, no-prep meal)

Friday: Leftovers!

 

Last week on Home Baked

Food processor mango sorbet

Rotating seasonal clothing

Monday Menu…and your weekly link round up!

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with , , , , , ,

This week’s menu is brought to you by my Number One Husband, who enjoys dreaming up menus in his spare time. As I come from a family that sits down to one meal and ends up discussing what to make for the next meal, you can see why I keep him around. He also did all the grocery shopping on Sunday with Little Four in tow, made dinner, and put a big pot of vegetable broth on to simmer. I will probably cook most of these meals, but it’s a relief not to be responsible for the plan. With so much of my usual Monday routine already complete, I might find the time to dig into a good project this week! (There’s always trim to paint…)

Sunday: Tuscan chicken with grilled fennel and onions, grilled potato wedges, brownies

Monday: Pad Thai

Tuesday: Picnic Supper–Big Sandwich, deviled eggs, watermelon

Wednesday: Quesadillas with leftover chicken, guacamole, salsa, refried beans and rice

Thursday: Grilled salmon, broccoli, rice

Friday: Homemade pizza (toppings: shaved asparagus, leftover roasted fennel/onion/tomato)

 

Last week on Home Baked

In case you missed them, here’s a round up of Home Baked posts from the last couple of weeks:

Recipes: 

Applesauce Bran Muffins

Stone Fruit Pie with Streusel

Projects:

Moving the dishes to kid-height

PVC Bike Rack

 

Which do like better, planning a meal or cooking it?

Monday Menu on Tuesday…plus recipes and projects you may have missed!

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu and tagged with

I hope all of you who celebrated Memorial Day had a wonderful weekend. Between cleaning out the garage, lounging on the patio with a book, visiting with family and friends, and participating in the Memorial Day ceremonies at our local cemetery, I had the perfect combination of productivity, relaxation, celebration and remembrance. This week I’ll have some fun projects and recipes to share with you to kickstart your summer!

Before I get to our delayed installment of Monday Menu, I want to address a little blog housekeeping. If you’re a mysuburbanlife.com reader, there have been some technical issues with the blog feed and you may have missed some posts in the past few weeks. So here’s a round up of projects and recipes that you might want to check out!

Recipes: Coconut Banana Popsicles, Best Yellow Layer Cake with Fresh Fruit and Pastry Cream

Home projects (The William Morris Project): Recipe Binder, Painting Lampshades, Repairing a Bamboo Roman Shade, The Garden Project

Monday Menus: May 21st, May 14th, May 7th, April 30th

After any holiday weekend, we usually have a fridge full of goodies just waiting to be transformed into meals for the week. I packed cold chicken and watermelon in everyone’s lunch today, and there is a bounty of cheeses and delicious dips that my husband made for our cocktail party on the porch last night. This artichoke dip, thinned with some pasta cooking water, is going to make a lovely pasta sauce. The roasted cherry tomatoes will be a perfect pizza topping, and we have plenty of watermelon left for ice pops. Alas, we polished off all the pie, but I’ll be sharing the recipes with you tomorrow!

Tuesday: Pasta with artichoke olive pesto, Fennel and Parmesan Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette, Nutella Pizza

Wednesday: Pizza and Strawberry-Watermelon Ice Pops

Thursday: Potage Saint-Germain (French Pea Soup),

Friday: I’m leaving the planning to the rest of my family, as it’s my early birthday dinner!

Saturday: Steaks and hotdogs on the grill…sides to be determined…

Sunday: Dinner out with friends!

 

As always, thanks for stopping by Home Baked! Feel free to share your menu plans/thoughts/suggestions in the comments! I read every single one!

 

 

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu, Recipe

After a scorcher of a weekend (90 degrees! in May!), some late-night partying–keeping the kids up far past their bedtime, with mixed results–and our first trip of the year to the farmer’s market, it’s a cool and quiet Monday. In between games of Hi-Ho! Cherry O with Little Four, I’m going to finish sorting and reorganizing my recipe file and clear the piles of paper off my desk. Lofty goals! As usual, we have plenty of things in the freezer and pantry, so my grocery list is mercifully short. More time to dream up something yummy for Memorial Day weekend! I’m thinking brunch…

Monday: Red lentil dal and rice, roasted patty pan squash (I’m out of chickpeas, but maybe we’ll add something else)

Tuesday: Potato salad & sausages, green salad

Wednesday: Chicken cutlets with a pan sauce (maybe like this one, since we have plenty of lemons), Ricotta Gnocchi (I’m on a quest to make good gnocchi), asparagus

Thursday: Chili and cornbread

Friday: Who knows? We’ll see how the week goes…we can always have pizza!

Do you have Memorial Day plans?

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu

The end of the school year is barreling down on us. It’s already here for my preschooler; today is his end-of-year picnic. The weather is perfect–warm enough, but not yet too hot. Miss Six got the hang of her bike without training wheels in about 30 minutes yesterday afternoon (best Mother’s Day gift ever), so I expect we’ll prefer to be out practicing on the sidewalk instead of inside making dinner this week. We cooked a bunch over the weekend, so there are lots of ingredients to pull together for some quick weeknight meals.

Monday: Chicken salad sandwiches, green salad, apple pie (made by dad for Mother’s Day)

Tuesday: Pulled pork enchiladas, rice, refried beans, corn salad (mostly leftovers from the weekend’s pulled pork tacos)

Wednesday: Falafel, yogurt sauce, hummus, cucumber salad

Thursday: Baked gnocchi (cooked packaged gnocchi, baked with jarred sauce and cheese), zucchini with garlic and parmesan

Friday: Small Plate Bonanza! (AKA Use Up All the Bits in the Fridge or Snacky Supper)

  • Smoked trout dip
  • Hummus and veggies
  • Rosemary focaccia
  • Cheese and crackers
  • Prosciutto and melon

What are you eating this week?

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu

This weekend my husband tackled what I put off all last week: cleaning out the refrigerator. There was not a single plastic container in the drawer–they were all in the fridge filled with mysterious leftovers of uncertain provenance. Now that order has been restored to the kitchen universe, I’m finding it much easier to plan meals for this week.

You might notice that I planned a meal for Saturday. We’re having friends (with kids) over for the afternoon, so I wanted something that I can make ahead and serve buffet-style, and I don’t want to dash to the grocery store on Friday afternoon!

Monday: Thai-style ground pork with garlic & basil, coconut rice, gingered green beans

Tuesday: Homemade mac-n-cheese, kale salad (raw veggies & dip for the kids)

Wednesday: Pork chops with garlic & thyme, smashed potatoes, pan-roasted asparagus

Thursday: Roasted cauliflower salad, brats (and leftover mac-n-cheese)

Friday: Turkey burgers, apple salad

Saturday: Pulled pork tacos, beans, guacamole, corn & tomato salad

 

What’s your favorite make-ahead meal for a crowd?

Monday Menu

Posted by Melissa in Food, Monday Menu

If last week was crazy (Big concert! Bought a car and sold a car!), this week I am glad to ease slowly into our regular schedule. Nothing too ambitious. Plenty of comfort food. Only one new recipe, and it’s a variation of chicken soup, which everyone is usually happy to eat. (Also plenty of vegetables. I swear, on Saturday I don’t think I consumed a single fruit or vegetable–unless you count ketchup.)

Monday: Spaghetti and meatballs (at the kids’ request), garlicky broccoli

Tuesday: Lemongrass-Coconut Chicken Soup, potstickers

Wednesday: Pork schnitzel, roasted potatoes, tomato salad

Thursday: Ali Baa Baa sandwiches (still some lamb from Easter in the freezer), Greek salad

Friday: Homemade pizza

I’ll also mix up a batch of no-knead dough for pita and pizzas, and prepare a big platter of fruit with some honey-yogurt dip for the kids to snack on (presentation is everything). And I’ve amassed a good stash of frozen bananas, so I think it’s time for banana bread again. I’d better empty the dishwasher and make a grocery list now!

What’s your favorite comfort food?