Menu: November 2-8


Why was menu planning so hard this week? We were struggling to come up with something suitable for Saturday night, but kept coming up with things that were not too difficult but a higher difficulty than we wanted for a late night dinner.

Which now that I say that, I'm thinking of making some sort of difficulty level for menu items. Fridays & Saturdays have the potential to be a late night, so we like to have dinner in the crockpot or at least fully prepped so all we have to do is heat it or even just walk in the door and eat. Monday & Tuesday nights we have to work around whatever Mr. Moon's evening schedule is, plus knowing there's an early morning ahead so we don't want to risk dinner being too late. On-Call shifts we basically treat as if he's working, as far as dinner prep goes. So besides just working with a "Weeknight vs. Weekend" kind of difficulty level, it's "I don't want this to take more than ten minutes" and "30 minute meals are okay" and "early morning/double shifts = something ridiculously easy" and "day off = something new/more complicated/ prep & cook & eat all at once" and then there's of course date-night dinners where we make something complicated and fancy.

On top of difficulty level, it was trying to keep some variety in our menu. Not having pasta, rice, or chicken two meals in a row. Not having two meals that are basically the same thing with just a different starch or a different meat, let alone in a row. So we ended up with Saturday sandwiched between chicken & rice (Fri) and beef & barely soup (Sun) and burned out on curry and a week full of soups and pasta so of course we kept coming up with things like curries, pastas, soups, or rice with chicken in them. Infuriating.

Anyway, so we have 5 of our menu items set for next week already, all but one of which are work-night dinners. And one of them is a F/S dinner so that's good. Hopefully that will make next week a little less frustrating to set up.

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PS I promised to tell you how savory french toast went: It didn't lol. We bumped it for something else because plans changed and then I wasn't feeling well. Oh well!
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What's on the menu?

Breakfasts: egg sandwiches, oatmeal, frozen egg burritos.

Lunches: quesadillas, grilled cheese & tomato soup, chili nachos.

Snacks: fig bars, v8, apple sauce.

Dinners:
Monday: Meeting Mr. Moon at work for dinner. [Out]

Tuesday: Pork Chili Nachos [Pork, leftovers]

Wednesday: Tortellini soup (seriously if this gets bumped again I'm cutting it completely) [pasta, vegetarian, soup, easy]

Thursday: Date night! Canapé dinner & a movie in our "home theater" [fancy]

Friday: Chicken, broccoli & rice casserole [chicken, casserole, rice]

Saturday: Barbacoa tacos [beef, crockpot]

Sunday: Lamb & Barley soup [lamb, soup, crockpot]

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What's on your menu this week? Need planning ideas? I'll be linking up at orgjunkie.com, if you need other ideas!

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