I know the week is part gone already, but we went out of town and then I was prepping for a gather for the inauguration today and so… yeah… here I am. No worries, I’ll back it up so you can see what we did for the missing days.

First though, I thought I’d talk about menu planning and cooking ahead.

One of the things I like about menu planning is it allows me to have ideas in my head for meals so I can make less frequent trips to the grocery store. I hate going to the grocery store. Of course now that I’m mega couponing, I do make my trips very long and very cost effective. But, simply planning a menu makes your shopping trips more cost effective, coupons or no!

The more often you go to the grocery store the more you spend. Think about it. Every time you go in, just for that one gallon of milk, how much do you come out with? Oh, I really need new chips. Oh the stuffing is on sale! Hey maybe I’ll not make what I was going to make and pick up this prebaked chicken! We know how it is! And don’t even get me started on going with hungry people. YIKES!

If you are really good, you can plan to buy in bulk. If you are going to make tuna noodle casserole and a lazy lasagna, buy a larger box of noodles that might be cheaper. If you know you need four pounds of ground beef, you can buy the family size and split it up when you get home.

One of the things I like to do, but haven’t done recently because of the crazy busy holiday time, is to stock my freezer. I love to spend a day in my kitchen cooking in advance. I’ve made up to 16 dinners in one day before!

Does anyone freezer cook like this?

I just read a four part blog entry about one lady’s big cooking day today. She made waffles and meatballs and stuff. I need to look into doing a good freezer cooking day maybe in February.

Would anyone be interested in hearing how I go about that? Comment and let me know.

Now, that’s enough of that. Here’s our menu for this week! But as a special treat, I’ll include some cooking I did today in honour of our new biracial president!

Monday: Lunch was Lumpia from the Phillipines – a friend made them for us and we froze them. We still have over half the batch! She also gave us directions on how to make them. MMMMM. I listed them just cause they were cool and normally our lunches are pretty relaxed and absolutely boring.
Dinner: Spaghetti and Garlic Texas Toast
Tuesday: Homemade Pizza and black and white cupcakes. (They were devils food cake, because that is absolutely the best chocolate from a box, and white frosting that was whipped.)
Wednesday: If you can find it, yum yum!
Thursday: Chili and cornbread
Friday: Macaroni Grill chicken meal thing (I got everything for free with coupons and I wanna try this thing, even if Sir Megs won’t eat it because it is “chicken”. Silly man!)
Saturday: I’m going to let him decide because of being mean on Friday and making chicken.
Sunday: Beef Stew cause it’s COLD! Nothing like stew when it is cold!

So there you have it. 🙂

Enjoy your adventures in food this week!

–Lady Ozma
(who’s thinking about getting Personal Trainer: Cooking for the DS since it’s on sale this week. Any thoughts?)