How am I already feeling worn-down and it’s only Monday? I’m thankful for the motivation of Menu Plan Monday because it makes a huge difference in how our household functions.
I’m going to make it easy on myself this week because it’s the dreaded twice-yearly clothing switchover time. For a recovering slob, it’s pretty rough to have three huge piles of clothes in the living room right now. Eliminating the “What’s for Dinner?” stress will be a big help.
I’m using my rice cooker twice this week. The rice cooker is my absolute favorite small kitchen appliance. I think I’d even put it higher than my crock pot! You can cook any kind of rice or rice mix in it. Just dump the rice and the liquid in, and turn it on. It will cook, and then switch to warm. It will keep your rice until you’re ready to eat it.
Monday – Meatballs in Cream of Mushroom gravy over rice. I usually have this over mashed potatoes, but I got a great deal on 85% lean ground beef this weekend, so supper prep tonight will include cooking up all thirteen pounds of meat. To make things easier, I’ll be putting some rice in the rice cooker instead.
Tuesday – Tacos. This is one of our favorite quick meals that we make from the pre-cooked ground beef.
Wednesday – Jambalaya. I suppose you could come up with a fancy recipe for jambalaya, but I had a college roommate from New Orleans who swore by Zatarain’s rice mixes. Who am I to argue with that? I follow the package directions, and then add an additional full cup of plain rice and two cups of water. This makes it less spicy, and the boys are eating more now anyway. I also use two pounds of Turkey Smoked Sausage, cut into about 1 inch pieces. This is my favorite meal to make when I can’t be stuck at the stove, but I forgot to put something in the crock pot. You dump it all in the rice cooker, and then you leave it alone. After it’s done cooking, it will automatically switch to “warm” and will be ready to eat whenever you are ready. You can eat it in 30 minutes, or in three hours.
Thursday – Baked chicken breasts and pasta.
Friday – eat out
Saturday – Leftovers
Sunday – 3yo daughter won three large pizzas from the local pizza place! We’ll let her treat!
Check out more menu plans at Orgjunkie.com.
We love our rice cooker around here! Those meatballs with rice sounds yummo!
🙂
Super menu plan ya got there.
I love how simple your meals are. I’ve been teaching myself to cook slowly but surely, and I find most people’s menu plans are completely intimidating.
I too have been doing the huge hamburger cooking sessions for years, I can not imagine cooking hamburger everytime I want to make something with ground beef!
I thought I would share my tips on making the meatballs quicker and with easier clean up…
pat the raw hamburger mixture out on wax or parchment paper, several pounds at a time so it is a big area. Then I use a knife or pizza cutter to cut a grid into it of small squares. Each square makes a meat ball. This makes my meat balls all about the same size. Other wise they get bigger and bigger then smaller and smaller. They are quicker to roll into balls when you just have to quickly pick up each perfect sized piece and roll it!
Then I line cookie pans (the kind with sides) with foil and set a cookie cooling racks on top of them. Put the meat balls on the racks and bake till done.
The meatballs drip off all the grease onto the foil and you just ball up the foil and through it away. The cookie sheets just need a quick soapy rinse.
I put all the meat balls on one freshly lined cookie sheet and put into the freezer to quick freeze then transfer them to my freezer bags.
I usually do 20 lbs of hamburger at a time so I make 7lbs into 3 meat loaves, 4 lbs into meat balls, 4 lbs into hamburgers, and the rest into browned hamburger meat.
Ooh..I love the meatball idea from Deeann! And I’m also browsing Amazon for a rice cooker – and found one with a stainless steel cooking pot I’ll probably have by the end of the week. I’ve never owned one, but we eat so much rice around here I can see the logic in owning one. And I just found a Mexican rice recipe a few weeks ago…this would be perfect, since I’ve already made it twice…and will be doing it again tomorrow.
you know i just noticed that the majority of your meals are either ground beef or chicken breast… is that purely for economical reasons, or do you not like other kinds of meat?
It’s just a rut I get in!
since you’re such a fan of the crock pot, I’d reccommend trying chops or a roast cut from the pork shoulder (aka boston butt). We love those cuts in my house, and they do really well slow cooked. I’m also a fan of beef chuck roasts in the slow cooker, or beef shanks. all of these cuts are usually cheaper than ground beef too, so you get more for your money! 🙂