Were you worried that I’d skipped Menu Monday this week? That bad habits had won out with my being MIA on this front for a while?

Never fear! Menu Monday is not defunct! Mostly I was holding off because I wanted to do something fun… to show off something the kids and I have created around our house!

Now, normally my Menu Monday just gives you a glimpse into our dinner entree. I leave off side dishes and other meals, mostly for the sake of time and sanity. These blog posts are long enough, don’t you think?

Never fear though, we eat other things! I am a mother to two boys that were born hungry and I swear they have never been “full” in all their nearly 13 and 11 years. Oh, the life of momming to boys! Right? And yes I know… I see their ages. Believe you me, I live in fear. I heard that these years are referred to as “The Hungry Years” and when thinking “But every year has been described in that way” scares the daylights out of me.

Which is why I keep stocking up on food. I figure the vultures… uh, I mean boys… will take care of my stock piles of food in no time. Yikes.

I won’t bore you with the 8000 calorie diet that I swear my kids are on. (I think that they are hobbits. They really do think they need two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, and all the snacks in between. Thank goodness for the fruit bowl! I hope my garden starts producing soon!)

Mostly we are simple with our meals. Breakfast is a mix up of oatmeal, cereal, and waffles. Lunch is an assortment of sandwhiches. Sometimes we mix things up and have muffins or soup. You know how it goes.

The boys were wanting to change things. We have a friendship with another family and they formed a little food schedule where they eat oatmeal or certain days and pancakes on certain days. So on and so forth. With a large family, you need to do things like that! My boys liked this idea but we took it a step further and decided to play on the words. What can we say? We’re geeks!

So we totally stole Sundae Sunday from that family! We tried it out this week, and it was fun! Ice cream, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, whipped cream… all the things you forget when you have ice cream at home! My husband’s reaction, “You are going to make me work at the gym!” HA!

Last week the boys and I tried “Malted Milkshake Monday” and giggled. That’s a lot of ice cream, so I think that might not be a regular treat, but we’ll try it at least once a month for both of those special days!

For our meals though, we came up with Tuna Tuesday (though we need to buy some Tuna to start) and Waffle Wednesday! We’re trying to figure out if we want to have Souper Saturday, Souper Sunday, or keep our special days during the week. That one is coming! It’s a fun way to break up the regular pace, gives you something to look forward to, and really helps with menu planning and grocery shopping!

Yesterday we debuted our first Waffle Wednesday!

That’s right, I made a scrapbook page of it! I wanted so much to share photos, so I held off on posting this week!

No normal waffle could do for Waffle Wednesday. Oh no! I own that red and white checkered cookbook that half of America owns, and they have all sorts of waffle variations! We decided to try out the “chocolate waffle”. The basic recipe was just enough for my starving boys, me, and two extra waffles. (For anyone wanting to know you just add in some cocoa and sugar and vanilla, while subtracting a little flour… so not too hard!) Nice!

Obviously, in the future, when we make our freezer waffles… we’ll use those. But sometimes fresh is best! It was fun making a different kind of waffle!

My kitchen aides (more like “those who have taken over cooking”) horned in on the action. My job was to read the instructions. Caramon and Joram worked together to add ingredients and stir. Then Joram manned the waffle maker and before we knew it… we’d experienced our very first Waffle Wednesday!

The kids reaction: We HAVE to do this every week!

I’ll bet.

Fun, right?

As for dinners, I did make a plan this week and we’ve stuck to it! The boys got to help select a few meals, so that was fun!

Monday: Breakfast for dinner: Eggs, bacon, muffins
Tuesday: Fajitas
Wednesday: Quick meals before Scouts!
Thursday: I have a party so I need to feed them early. I’m thinking it’s frozen pizza night!
Friday: Mexican Unstuffed Shells
Saturday: Minestrone Soup
Sunday: My husband flaked on the roast last week so I suppose we’ll have it this week. I think he was trying to be kind to me since I was unthrilled. I’m sorry, I’m really just not a huge cow eater.

–Lady O