Weekly Meal Plan

Sara inspired me to share with you my weekly meal plan. As you probably already know(though I was not such a quick learner), having meals planned for the week is so so so so great, on equally as many levels--less stress, more fresh meals, save lots of moneys. So, here is my meal plan with recipes included, followed by our shopping list that includes almost everything you'd need to make these meals. The meals with more produce are early in the week, and the non-fresh produce meals are at the back. Sam does our shopping on the way home from work on Tuesday, so that is when my meal-week starts:

Tuesday: Blue Cheese Salad

Layer:

Spring greens

Green apples(chopped small)

Blue cheese

Walnuts

Dressing: balsamic vinaigrette of some kind

Serve with crusty bread and wine

Wednesday: Southwest Chicken Salad

1 15 oz. canned black beans

1 and ½ cups corn kernels (either fresh or frozen – fresh is really better J)

2 cups grape tomatoes, cut in halves (or chopped big tomatoes)

8 ounces chopped, cooked chicken breast

1 medium sweet red pepper, chopped

8 cups Romaine lettuce, cut into thick shreds

Dressing:

6 TBS reduced calorie mayonnaise

2 TBS cilantro, fresh, finely chopped

3 TBS water

1 medium scallion, minced

1 and ½ TBS fresh lime juice

2 tsp sugar

1 and ½ tsp chili powder

Combine all dressing ingredients and whisk together until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

In a large bowl, layer salad ingredients in order listed. Cover and refrigerate. To serve, spoon salad ingredients onto plates and drizzle on dressing. By not putting dressing on the whole salad, you can easily store the leftovers. (I also like to crunch tortilla chips on top)

Note: if you cook the chicken in the slow cooker, you can add lots of extra chicken and make this Chicken Salad for lunches(it keeps crunchy for a week):

Cooked chicken

Celery—chopped little

Grapes—halved is fine

Mix 1 part sour cream with 2 parts mayo (like, if you used 1/4c sour cream, use 1/2c mayo) and add to chicken celrey and grapes.

Serve on bread OR my favorite, over spring greens from Tuesday’s dinner with a little balsamic vinaigrette. YUM!

Thursday: Date night/Sam’s dinner night--he has to plan what we eat this night

Friday: Chicken, Rice, and Relish

Grill chicken

Rice cooker rice

And relish: ½ cucumber—seedless, and chopped small(pieces smaller than a dime)

½ cup Feta (2oz)

¼ red onion chopped really small

¼ cup fresh dill, chopped

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs fresh lemon juice

salt

pepper

Saturday: Frozen Pizza

Sunday: Chicken/Pork/Lamb/or Steak dinner

Roast/cook meat

Rice

Sautéed canned green beans

Monday: Stir fry over rice

Put rice in cooker.

Chop chicken, cook in oil in large pan

Add frozen broccoli—cook till tender

Add water chestnuts and bamboo

Add stir fry sauce(homemade or otherwise)

Once blended serve over rice—top with Chinese noodles as desired.