Menu Planing Monday

Happy Monday, everyone!  I hope you all had a great weekend.  I know I am enjoying my day off so far!  This morning I took the Scooter to do my errands.... Probably not my best idea, as I've been home nearly 2 hours and haven't fully recovered yet!

On Saturday I did my menu planning and grocery shopping.  I picked 6 meals that I hope will take me through next Sunday.  As such, I'm counting that shopping trip as the last one for January.  I still have a couple of things to pick up for meals, but as of right now, I know I did not stick to my grocery budget.  Whoops.  Part of me is really unhappy about this, but another part reminds me that quality of food is still important.  With that being said, I do have a plan for next month to help me stick to the budget better.  Stay tuned to hear what it is!

This week I wanted to spotlight some of the produce we picked up from the CSA.  I planned my meals so that as many of them featured CSA produce as possible.

1)  Beef chop suey (beef and veggie stir-fry with rice noodles) and Chinese cabbage salad.  This featured 2 different kinds of cabbage from the CSA box, the napa cabbage, and purple cabbage.  This was our dinner on Saturday night, and I had leftovers of it last night.  As A pointed out, they were dishes that had subtle flavors.  We loved the veggie-ness of the meal, too.  The picture below is of the cabbage salad.  It was vaguely cole-slaw like, but really benefited from the addition of jicama.

2)  Salmon with Spinach, fennel and apple salad.  We're going to be having this tonight, and I m really looking forward to it.  We both like seafood, but I haven't been making it as much lately, because of price considerations, and the overall quality of seafood in a landlocked state (usually not the best).

3)  Black bean chili with roasted winter squash.  Black bean chili is one of my favorite winter dinners.  I thought, what better to pair it with than some yummy sweet winter squash?  I think those cute little winter squash are going to make cute "bowls" once they're cut in half, seeded, and roasted!

4)  Chicken souvlaki with greek salad.  Yum.

5)  Mexican spiced pork with avocado salsa and black beans.  The salsa is  veggie explosion, and I am using double the salsa for each serving, so I don't feel bad about not serving a "formal" vegetable side with this one.

6)  Kidneys cooked in butter, mustard, and parsley sauce with creamed onions and green salad.  I feel like I need to explain this.  Yes, kindeys like the organ meat, not like the bean.  A and I have been talking for a while about introducing some organ meat to our diets.  There are a lot of reasons for this, and I don't think today is the day to go there.  We are really excited to give this a try and see how it works out!

What are you eating this week?  Are you trying anything new?