How to Plan a Week of Meals.....Almost

I have been so busy lately. Cooking dinner has been a bit of a challenge. I decided to try a new approach: plan meals on the weekend, prep as much as possible on Sunday night and throw dinner together during the week. I used a meal plan from Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller.

This plan included three meals. Two of the three worked out pretty well. I've documented my week.

Sunday evening
I chopped all the vegetables for the week. It was a little bit of work, but I had everything prepped in under an hour. I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was confident the week would go well.

Meal number one: Maple Orange Chicken with Acorn Squash and Sweet Potatoes
Monday night
I classify this meal as a complete disaster. My husband agreed it was the second worst meal I've ever made. The worst meal was a goulash-like dish I cooked back in 1999 or 2000. I made that meal on the same night I got mugged outside my apartment. It was a bad night all around. I can't really pinpoint one problem with this meal. The chicken was dry, the vegetables were too mushy and everything tasted like overcooked leeks. I cooked this for the recommended amount of time, but that may have been too long. I still feel pretty certain that this meal would have been gross no matter how long I cooked it. We didn't order a pizza, but we did end up splitting an old cinnamon roll for dinner since this was pretty much inedible.

Meal number two: Black Bean Soup with Crab and Andouille Sausage
Tuesday night
This was a success. The soup was very easy to put together and it was tasty. I would definitely make it again.

Meal number three: White Pizza with Chicken, Pesto and Pine Nuts
Thursday night
This pizza was delicious. The idea is to use one of the chicken breasts from the first dinner for the pizza. It worked out quite well. I put it together in about 5 minutes and it took only about 10 minutes in the oven. I served a salad alongside and it was a perfect weeknight meal. I omitted the pine nuts this time around because I was out of them. I also thought some sun-dried tomatoes would be an excellent addition to this pizza. You could also add some other meat, like Italian sausage. There so many options and it's still quick and easy.

Next week, in a quest to find easier ways to get dinner on the table, I'm going to try making a set of 12 meals at Menu Makers. I'm very excited and I can't wait to see how it goes.