Meal Planning July 8-14

So, each week I would like to make a list of my meals that I am planning and how I come up with those meals.

So, to begin.  I think about all the produce in my fridge, got thought eat type of meat that I am going to use for meals and then make meals.  Once I have the meals planned I think about how big they are and decide when we will have a leftover night.  During the school year leftover night is on the night that I work a very long day.  During the summer it tends to be Sunday afternoon.  Our church hours are just not the greatest for eating meals so we usually have leftovers when we get home from church.

This week I only need three dinners.  We are leaving for Vegas and then California on Thur night after Russ gets off work.
Meat:
I had one chicken, one pork, one beef and two fish meals last week.  I don't really want another meal of fish for a while.

Produce:
I obviously have tons of zucchini, but I still have a few more heads of corn that I bought.  I have a watermelon that I need to cut up and either eat or bring with us in the cooler.  I also have 4 bananas to freeze.  My dehydrator will be coming tomorrow and I wanted to make some fruit leather to bring with us and i have a whole box of kiwi to do that with (or freeze the kiwi for later).  We will need to have salads because I already have lettuce and radishes that are picked from the garden that I don't want to go bad.  Last but not least I have a whole tub of mushrooms that we need to use.  I also have 1/3 a 5lbs bag of potatoes that has been in the cupboard a while.

Breads:
I have no buns to use and I don't want to thaw any when I am going to be leaving town.  I do have some loaves of bread i need to make into bread crumbs or croutons before they go completely bad.  I will hopefully be making zucchini bread one day so we have that for breakfasts.

Leftovers:
I usually have some rice or noodles or leftovers that I need to incorporate in meals for the week, but thankfully Russ ate all of them today so we are starting with almost a clean fridge.  I have some spaghetti sauce we made last week that I would like to use.

So, 1st I would like to find a meal that uses pork, mushrooms and I have some baby carrots in the fridge.

So:
Monday: Crockpot Pork stew with fresh mushrooms, carrots and the rest of the potatoes.  Hopefully i have pork stew meat, if not I know that i have beef stew meat.  With the pork stew we use cream of mushroom soup as the base.  If it is beef stew I will have to use beef broth.  I don't like it that runny but it will work if we need.  I can also pull out a bag of frozen onions from the freezer and use lipton onion noodle soup.

Tuesday:
I need to make a meal using a salad of lettuce, radishes, cucumber, tomatoes and Russ needs to make homemade Ranch dressing.  Hm, chicken would be my choice of meat, but the only marinated chicken I have in the freezer is chipotle pepper and that doesn't really work with a green salad I don't think...well without the green salad having cilantro.  (So, this paragraph is my completely though process through how I am choosing my meal.)  If I do a shredded chicken salad I would also like black beans, but we may forego that this week so I don't open a can and then have leftovers in the fridge while we are gone.

Ok, so I have settled on this link.  It is an all-purpose shredded chicken recipe.  Sounds great and seems versatile.

So, if monday I freeze the corn for later use, I don't think that I should have any produce left over that needs to be used on Wed.  I don't know if there will be leftovers.  I am hoping that there is a little leftover chicken so wed should be leftover night this week, or fend for yourself

I am thinking
Wed:
Chicken Quesadilla's either plain or with taco seasoning and sauteed zucchini.  So I may need to do two bags of chicken for Tuesday night's dinner.

Well, there it is.  We will be on the road for almost 24 hours this weekend, so exercise and planned meals will be rough to say the least but at least we will be going to the beach with the kids for the first time and that will be super fun.  Until next week.