Oh, hello my long lost friend I call menu planning!  Welcome back to my life.

It it totally confession time.  The reason there has not been A Weekly Plan post in close to one year is because I literally dropped the ball.  I am not sure if it was 8 years worth of preparing meals, but I kind of just gave up.  Has this ever happened to you?  Sadly, even without a menu, dinner STILL needed to be prepared.  Let’s just say that eating is much better when you put some thought into it!

So, if you value eating a home cooked meal with your family like I do- you need a plan!  This is our week of dinners.  It is my hope that you can find at least one meal to put on your menu.

A few things to know in case you are new:

1.  I usually make my plan for the week on Saturday.

2.  I do all the cooking in my family.

3.  My #1 criteria for weeknight meals is quick and easy.  No meal I post [unless a Sunday Dinner or a slow cooker meal] will take more than 45 minutes to prepare.

4.  All meals are 100% gluten free. Most are dairy free.  [Because we are fun like that!]

5.  My kids do not eat everything I serve.  [And that, my friends, is an entirely different post.]

A Weekly Plan::

1// Quinoa, Chicken Kale Soup

{Slow Cooker}  Quick to prepare in the morning, hearty soup in the evening, and lots of left overs.  Make sure to add a squeeze of lemon before you serve it too!

2// Chocolate Chili

No beans in this chili and the unsweetened chocolate makes it super unique and tasty.  {You could always add beans.}

3// Thai Beef Stew

{Slow Cooker} This is dinner tonight!  It already smells delicious.  It would make a great Sunday supper.

4//  Wintry Mushroom, Kale, Quinoa Enchiladas

A spin on traditional enchiladas.  I used store bought enchilada sauce to make the prep faster.  Since my husband is not dairy -free, I added cheese to his enchiladas.  You could easily add chicken or pork as well.

5// Comfort Noodles

OMG.  These are crazy good!  I hesitated because the recipe calls for making zucchini noodles, which seemed kind of nuts.  Trust me, it took less than 5 minutes to make them and this whole dish was to-die-for good.  Searching now for more recipes with zucchini noodles.  This recipe link also has a short video on how to make the noodles! TRY IT!

6//  Energy Bites

A little something extra for your week.  Make these on Sunday and they will help with the “It’s 3pm and I will eat anything and everything right now!”  They are also great ski treats-if we had any damn snow!!

Have a great weekend!  Eat well, my friends.

Tags: a weekly plan

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2015 at 2:09 pm and is filed under a weekly plan, in the kitchen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.