Weekly Meal Planning

Big changes this week in Meal Plan Land: I'm doing away with my nightly categories. While cooking with categories definitely helped me reign in my recipe selection, I often found it a bit too limiting. Lots of the things I scheduled every week (pasta, soup, burgers) will undoubtedly still show up on my menu frequently. But this gives me some much-desired leeway in the meals that I cook, which is very appealing to me right now.

I'm still going to do Burgers and Fries Friday, but I'm also giving myself permission to skip a week or two (or more) if I want to and make something else for dinner instead. These days I'm all about taking the pressure off myself.

Monday: Chicken taco pizza We ate spaghetti pie leftovers. Well, Joe did; I stuffed my face during a work potluck, so I wasn't really hungry. I ate a bowl of cereal for dinner.

Tuesday: Stuffed pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks. I can tell you right now, Andrew and Joe are going to be all over this meal. Since we didn't eat the chicken taco pizza Monday night, I gave Joe a choice between that and the meal that I'd scheduled. He chose the taco pizza, much to my surprise. I'll be moving the pizza rolls and mozzarella sticks to next week's menu, because it sounds so delicious to me.

Wednesday: Dinner with friends at a local fondue restaurant

Thursday: Our favorite chili (by Joe's request), Mexican corn bread. Normally we eat our chili with grilled cheese sandwiches, but this corn bread recipe sounds too delicious not to try.

Friday: Chili mac and cheese, our favorite way to use up chili leftovers. I can't even begin to describe how good this is.

Saturday: Three packet pot roast, parmesan knots

Sunday: Southwestern shepherd's pie. Joe and Andrew are both huge fans of sweet potatoes, and would tell you that I don't cook with them nearly enough -- usually just in a casserole for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love this twist on shepherd's pie that uses sweet potatoes as the topping, and I can't wait to try it.

Weekend Breakfast: Pot roast hash and eggs. We'll have this Sunday morning, using leftover pot roast from Saturday night's dinner.

Baking: Cinnamon caramel corn with pecans and white chocolate. I've been drooling over this one for a few weeks now and thought it was high time I tested it out for this year's Christmas packages.