Homemaking: Menu Plan and Intentional Living 10/10/11

Live an intentional life by planning your days...

Menu Plan

Basic Egg Casserole was wonderful! It was a huge hit with everyone. Using fresh basil was mentioned in the comments - bet that would be yummy! Too bad I picked the basil from my garden and forgot it on the ground.

I forgot how much I love kale chips. My family....eh not so much....not bad, not great.

Breakfast Menu Plan
Lunch - leftovers or whatever for me (kids eat school lunch and they typically provide lunch for my husband at work)

Steps in planning....

1. Print out a menu planner and fill in all activities for the week that could cause interference with cooking (ie. sporting events, appointments, working late, etc.). 
2. Plan meals around these events. 
3. Make more food the nights you will be home so you can re-heat food the nights you are busy.
• For example, we will be at a cross country meet one night this week so when I make burgers for dinner I'll also fry 1 pound of burger for Carbonara.

Dinners:

1. Homemade Chicken Soup
2. Chicken Salad Sandwiches (no bread...maybe lettuce wraps? not sure we're at a volleyball game)
3. KISS (keep it simple silly - same thing every week) Wednesday: Burgers, green beans, baked sweet potatoes (for hubs and me) and smoothies. 
4. Carbonara roasted broccoli and carrots
5. Ground Beef Curry from The Local Cook
6. Lynn's Potato Soup (my comments) I'm bringing this to a party. I ate at Qdoba's, my husband and son went out to celebrate the end of cross country season and I'm not sure if my daughter ate as she was home alone! We didn't end up going to a party.
7. Hubby cooks - I always try to have meat on hand and he's great at whipping stuff up. I'm requesting chili!

Other recipes I want to try:
MoreThanMundane posted this magic sauce recipe.
Flank Steak,  french toast recipe, pork chops

Check back on Friday to see how primalish eating on a budget worked out for us!

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Homemaking Plan

I've updated my Homemaking Page on my website with some of my goals. If you are interested, I wrote a post on why goal setting does NOT work for me.

I'm in the middle of working through the steps in Amy's book "Tell Your Time" again and realized why it doesn't work for me. I don't know why that book has struck something in me, but every time I pull it out I learn something new. I suppose it's just the way it seems like she can relate to me personally.

My one word to work on this week (okay, two words):

Being Present

You know how your kids can be talking or your spouse can be showing something to you, but you are multitasking in your head: planning your menu, trying to remember something you forgot, balancing your checkbook, etc. They KNOW when you are doing this! This week, I just want to  be present when they talk to me...really listen to them and engage in conversation.

On a different note...I love going to all sporting events, but I think cross country is my favorite. I learned quickly that you should always wear running shoes to cross country events if you want to see your kid more than just one time at the finish line.

The last race my son had he fell down, had an asthma attack and got stuck in the crowd of kids. He said it was a great race. Seriously? Yep!

Recently my husband and I have decided to try and do something together as a family every weekend - we naturally all go our different ways. My daughter got to choose a game to play and then we had ice cream afterwards. She's 15 and she choose Candyland. We laughed at how much different the conversations are now that they are older.

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Check out other menu plans at:

Orgjunkie
11th Heaven's Homemaking Haven always has a lot of homemaking posts to read as well!