Meal Planning Help for You – A Month of Meals

Meal planning help for you is on the way.  We have a month or more of meals listed here that might help you when you’re planning your corona lock-down menu.

Hello, everyone.  We hope you are staying healthy.  Thank you for being here.  (First off, please pin this post, share it on your Facebook, and share it on Instagram.  We want to help people who are having issues with menu planning.)  Since we are all eating at home more these days than we might be during healthy times, I thought that I would share with you the meals I have cooked and the meals I plan to prepare.  I went through my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry and took inventory.  Then I went to the store and added some items that would help out.  I pretty much can go for a month right now based on what we have on hand.  If you are in a conundrum and just don’t know what to prepare, we have some meal planning help for you.  I am basing all of these foods on what’s in our pantry.  Yours might have completely different items.  I told Mike that some meals will be more nourishing than others, but we will have meals.  Also, I live just half a mile from Kroger and could go there at any time.  However, I just don’t want to expose myself when I don’t need to.

My plan, is to have enough made for dinner that we can eat the left overs the following day for lunch.  Also, I am freezing meals when it’s too much for us to eat in two meals.  For instance, last week I made chicken rice pilaf.  That made enough for a 9 x 13 casserole dish.  Instead, I divided it into two smaller dishes.  We had enough for dinner one night and lunch the next day, and there’s still a chicken rice pilaf in our freezer.

When I am at the market, I buy produce with a longer shelf life.  Some veggies that last longer are cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, spaghetti squash, potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, and I have all of these items on hand.  Fruits I try to keep on hand that last longer are oranges and apples.

In our pantry I have chicken broth (a necessity for many homemade soups) dry beans, rice, orzo, couscous, canned vegetables like green beans, pork and beans, diced tomatoes, and tomato juice.  Also, there’s canned pineapple, peaches, pumpkin, applesauce, and evaporated milk.  Of course, there’s flour, sugar, all of the baking supplies, like chocolate chips, yeast, cocoa powder, etc.

We have frozen vegetables, fruits, orange juice, chicken, ground turkey, salmon, and shrimp in the freezer.

A few things I want to point out before I get started.  I don’t eat beef so all of the dishes that use ground meat is ground turkey.  Also, I don’t eat pork (except bacon), so these foods are heavy on fish, turkey, and beans.  Also, there might not be a vegetable listed with every item on the dinner, but if we aren’t having soup, then I will add a side of veggies or a salad.  These are not fancy meals, but they’ll serve us well. Please look over the recipes we have listed above in our recipe index.

Breakfast

Mike always makes a fruit/veggie smoothie for breakfast, but I like a carb heavy breakfast.  I vary the following items:

Oatmeal

Biscuits and jam (recipes for biscuits here, here, and here.)

Bagel

French toast

Cinnamon toast

Scone (recipe here) You can use what you have on hand as added ingredients.

Pancakes (recipes for pancakes here, here, and here.)

Lunch

As I said, we try to have leftovers for lunch.  When they aren’t available we would eat something like this:

Tuna salad sandwich and chips

Chicken salad sandwich and chips (I bought canned chicken for the first time)

Grilled cheese

Cheese quesadilla

Fruit, cottage cheese, and pretzels (my favorite lunch anytime)

Dinner

I make all of our soups from scratch.  There are lots more in the food section above, but these are the ones I can make with what I have on hand now.)  I will try to have something to go with these soups like corn bread (recipe here), garlic bread, homemade rolls, or biscuits.

Bean soup (I always make bean soup in the crock pot)

Vegetable soup

Carrot soup (recipe here)

Tomato soup (recipe here)

Crab and corn soup (recipe here)

Minestrone (recipe here)

Salmon chowder (recipe here)

Galician soup (recipe here)

Lentil soup (recipe here)

Cream of cauliflower (recipe here)

Chili

Cheese stuffed manicotti (I use the recipe on the box of manicotti)

Chicken rice pilaf (recipe coming Friday)

Chili cheese fries (using leftover chili)

Pesto, pasta, and peas (uses pesto from this recipe that I have frozen)

Quiche (recipe here)

Salmon tacos (recipe here)

Pizza

Spaghetti

Potato soup (recipe here)

Onion soup

Shrimp and grits (recipe here)

Shrimp stir fry with rice

Black bean burrito and rice

Crab salad

Cheeseburger pie (recipe here), mashed sweet potatoes, and peas

Chicken hotdogs, sauerkraut, and baked beans

Tortellini

Tacos, rice, and refried beans

Sloppy joes and fries (recipe here)

Chicken and couscous salad

Meatloaf (leftovers make great sandwiches), baked potatoes, corn

Risotto (recipe here)

Stir-fry chicken and veggies

Desserts

I like to have some sweets on hand so we can grab a treat when our bodies crave a snack.  I can make the following things right now:

Various kinds of cookies

Orange brownies (recipe here)

Chocolate brownies

Bread pudding

Chocolate pudding (recipe here)

Orange pudding (recipe here)

Lemon meringue pie (recipe here)

Chocolate cake (recipe here)

We hope this serves as inspiration for you.  Our goal here is to share homemaking tips, and right now we all can use some ideas from others.  Please let us know what you think of our menu and add your suggestions below.

Take care.