Meal planning, quiche recipe, and blog changes

Do you meal plan?  Now that I'm at home I sit down every weekend, study the grocery store flyers and plan our meals for the week.  It's a task I'm not a fan of (I don't like grocery shopping either) but it has been saving us time and money.  Originally, I thought I would just run to the grocery store a few times a week as needed but due to my dislike of shopping for food and the extra time that would take, I prefer to buy everything for the week in one trip.

We weren't meal planning before and it definitely showed as more money was being spent but we never seemed to have anything for actual meals.  To me, saving money is part of meal planning so I take into account what is on sale for the week and what we have on hand.  I also try to plan meals that have very little or no leftovers so as to not waste food.  In our home, leftovers are eaten the next day, maybe the day after that but never more than once or twice.  We aren't leftover fans and I hate throwing food away.

We eat dinner out as a family about once a week and for the most part almost all of our meals are eaten at home.  Rich has been bringing lunch to work most days and the girls only buy lunch from school twice a week.  Emily actually went a few months without buying lunch at all.  School lunches cost $2.75 and do include milk.

So here's what my meal planning looked like for this week:

Sunday:  Broccoli soup (homemade tastes like Panera's) with crusty french rolls

Monday:  Stuffed shells with garlic bread

Tuesday:  Cheese steak subs with toppings - grilled onions and peppers, and sliced tomatoes

Wednesday:  Chicken tenders (as in I buy raw meat and cook it), mashed potatoes, green beans, sauteed spinach, homemade pan gravy

Thursday:  Chicken pot pie (chicken and peas)

Friday:  Quesadillas with shredded chicken

Because the girls like goat cheese, I decided to try to make a quiche a few months ago.  I used a basic quiche recipe and then added goat cheese and fresh spinach.  Sometimes I add chopped tomatoes if we have any on hand.  I usually serve it with homemade breakfast potatoes.  It's a popular meal and I like how easy it is to throw together.

Recipe:

- Place room temperature pie crust in pie dish
- Layer crumbled goat cheese on top of the crust, then place fresh spinach on top of the cheese
- In a bowl, mix together 4 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- Pour egg mixture on top of the spinach and cheese
- Bake at 350 degrees until knife inserted in the center comes out clean - the basic quiche recipe I found had a bake time of 40-50 minutes but I cook this for almost an hour



So I finally sat down and took the time to update the look of my blog.  It's more 2016 now.  I don't need anything fancy and actually prefer basic.  There's still some work to be done, mostly on the pages, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.