Friday, January 9, 2009

What's for Dinner?

I have managed to make a new meal for the past 6 nights. Tonight we finally had LO night (left over). A gluten free diet & a restricted budget means I cook a lot anyway, but typically about once a week we end up getting take-out Mexican fast food.

This is what I made this week & the opinions of my family:
  • Saturday: Fresh Italian Sausage with a box of Scalloped Potatoes (Wal-Mart brand is gluten free) and frozen veggies (I did cook them first)---pretty good by all but Natalie, who won't eat much meat
  • Sunday: Chalupas---a winner by all counts
  • Monday: Split Pea Soup with salad---salad was good! LOL! Soup was okay by 3 of us, picky Natalie not so much. THANK YOU TO THE CLARK FAMILY for a ham steak I had in the freezer! It was a wild hog steak---shot during "hog season." (grin)
  • Tuesday: Chicken Strips (coat with an orange juice/dijon mustard mix, then finely ground crackers) with potatoes & veggies---Adults liked this, kids thought it was bad. The crackers were not one the kids like anyway (a gluten free healthy grainy nutty cracker)
  • Wednesday: Porcupine meatballs with veggies---pretty good ratings all around, at least once the girls got passed the idea of eating something called porcupine
  • Thursday: Tamale Pie with salad---Picky girl said yuck, Mom said so-so, but would prefer a firmer cornbread crust & Bethany & Phil said it was a keeper (though Phil said it would be better without tomatoes---he doesn't like tomatoes). They ate more tonight!
Since I actually had to budget & plan some foods we could use for 2 weeks time, I think we've done pretty well. I've made pancakes for breakfast once, had cereal some days, sandwiches for the kids, we've had some yogurt (but I think the girls' yogurt is gone now) and I plan to make French Toast in the morning. I need to bake some GF bread if I'm going to eat any!

I still have on my menu plans:
  • Hamburgers with onion rings. I bought myself some GF hamburger buns before Christmas & think we have some regular ones for these picky people who can't just have bread on a burger. I also picked up a deep fat fryer (oh, so healthy---HA!), so I've told the girls we can do onion rings
  • Red Beans & Rice---I have leftover little cocktail sausages & I think some of the sausage from Saturday
  • Tacos for Sunday. We usually do Taco Bell for the 3 of them on Sunday b/c they have "Taco Sunday" with cheap tacos. I usually get Taco Cabana since it's gluten free. We'll do La Casa de Garrison this week
I have a can of alfredo sauce, a pack of turkey bacon, a pack of regular bacon, a big chunk of mozzarella cheese & some colby cheese from my parents, several cans of tomato type stuff (diced, sauce, paste), and bags of white beans and pinto beans.

What other ideas can you think of with these ingredients?

And what have YOU had for dinner?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just seeing if I can post on here!

Anonymous said...

Gotta love HOG season!!! LOL

New batch of sausage coming soon!!

~pjb