My Meal Plan for February

I was going to begin this post by telling you about our lovely, productive weekend. I've felt like I've been so business-y here lately and our weekend was turning out to be a really nice thing to share. Then yesterday happened. Not only am I not ready to talk about it, but I've not had the sleep (or coffee yet) to aid in the words putting into sentence doing. Also, I think that yesterday's events really don't belong in a post about making nummy food. Because then you won't wanna make the yummy food. Anyways, my weekend recap may come mid-week.

Ok. Here it is. My meal plan for this month. I will link to all meals so you can check out the individual recipes. In a few days be watching for my "this is how I made all of this in one day" post.

My approach to meal planning this month was to try more crockpot meals, only do real cooking once a week, and repeat meals for convenience. I'll list the side dishes that I planned as well. Those usually get made in the few minutes to hour before dinner time.

Freezer Meals for the Crockpot:
All my crockpot meals come from sixsistersstuff.com. They are new to us and so far we are liking most of them.


BBQ Spare ribs w/ baked potatoes and veggies x2

Maple Dijon Glazed Chicken w/ roasted potatoes and veggies x2

Cilantro Lime Chicken Burritos x2
This is a recipe we didn't mind but I like my crockpot chicken better.

Black Bean Taco Soup x2
This was delicious! I will definitely make this again!

Freezer Meals for the Oven/Stove:

Pizza x4

Stroganoff w/steamed broccoli x2

Italian Pie w/ veggies x2

Sausage Lasagna w/veggies x2



PW's Chicken Spaghetti w/ veggies x2
I don't make this exactly the same way PW does. I use 2-3 cooked chicken breast diced into bite sized pieces instead of a whole chicken, and veggie broth instead of chicken broth. Still good. Just saves a few steps.


Meals for My Cooking Night:
I love to cook so I reserved one night a week for making a meal. All the other nights I used the freezer meals. It worked out really well for me and I think I'll continue this for awhile.

Doro Wat & lentils w/Injera & kale x2
We are studying Africa this month in our homeschooling and so we decided to make some of our favorite food: Ethiopian! I used some recipes in a seasoning sampler my BFF gave me. If you are super interested in making Ethiopian food we can talk recipes some time. Let me know in the comments.

Orange Chicken x2
I LURV Orange Chicken but I can't get it anymore because of the soy thing. HH and Abiah are addicted too but rarely get to enjoy it out of respect for me. And maybe because I have forbidden that they taste the sweet/tangy nectar of orange chicken since I can't. Maybe. When I saw sixsistersstuff.com had a few recipes I decided to try them both to see if we should add it to our monthly meal plans for good. The guys were pretty excited. 

Our first time around we tried the orange chicken recipe from this post. Mine looked NOTHING like their picture. It had a strong ginger flavor but was strangely still very bland. I added salt, sweet chili sauce, more salt, and more sweet chili sauce and it just didn't get better. The kids loved it so they ate it. I won't use that recipe again.

The second time around we tried this recipe. When I first found the recipe I was super excited because I love orange chicken and this one sounded like it would be good. And then I read the comments. And I wasn't so sure anymore. So many people said they threw it in the trash! Ugh. Anyways, I decided to give it a try but give it a twist. I decided against using the crockpot and just made this one on the stove. It was super simple. The changes I made were: add seasoning salt, garlic, and ginger to the flour mixture and add grated orange peel to the sauce. It wasn't Panda Express good or our favorite  Chinese resturaunt good, but it was good. I'll make it again. We all loved it. And it only took about 1/2 and hour to make. Super easy, ya'll.

Pan Nachos x2

If you have any questions let me know. Enjoy!