Food plan

One of my downfalls is healthy eating. I plan well, I find recipes, we buy the ingredients, then after work I get lazy and have no desire to cook it. We order in or heat up pizza.

I want to do better this year, so I've decided to make my meals on Sunday. This way I have all the meals I had planned for the week cooked and all I have to do is re-heat them. This may not sound appetizing to you, but it's perfect for me. I'll add a frozen vegetable to many of them and be good to go.

This week's recipes are all Weight Watcher approved:

• Veggie Chili
• Deep Dish Pizza Casserole
• Taco Bake
• Tortellini Soup

We have a couple unhealthy foods left over from the holidays, which we will eat because I am not going to let them go to waste - money-wise or meal-wise {there are people in the world who do not have food and I am not going to let them go bad}. If we sprinkle them in between healthy foods, it won't be too bad.

My goal is each week determine the meals for the week and then make them on Sunday. This should reduce how many times we skip the healthy meal for convenience. Time to write up the grocery list and get started cooking!
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The Gourmet Toaster Oven

I'm not the best lately with wanting to cook. I just want food (preferably healthy food) ready to eat quickly. I don't want to have 9 million ingredients and take 7 hours to make. I have the time honestly, I just don't want to spend it that way.

I have a great toaster oven that we got as a wedding gift 11 years ago (Wow. That's a long time for a toaster oven...) and I like using it. We heat things up in it all the time, but I was pretty sure it could do more.

Around Christmas I saw a short review of this book. I immediately put it on a list of presents that hubby could potentially get me for the holiday. Come Christmas Eve it was sitting under the tree. Yea!

So, I finally got around to looking through it for recipes. I'm looking forward to trying them out. Since we all know I'm not all that into cooking, I won't be doing these all in one week. LOL! I'll be slowly trying the following recipes out:

Coffee Cake Muffins

Bacon and Cheddar Cheese Breakfast Muffins

Eggplant with Tomato and Cream Sauces

Turkey, Tarragon and Apple Meatloaf

Old-Fashioned Apple Crisp

Peanut Butter Cookies

I'll check back in and let you know how they go. I have my cousin coming up in a couple weeks and I was thinking the Coffee Cake Muffins and the Bacon and Cheddar Cheese Breakfast Muffins might be nice for Sunday morning breakfast. I think they will be the easiest to try too. I'll keep you posted!

What are your cooking expectations? Got a favorite cookbook? Got a favorite recipe that makes you love (or at least like) cooking?

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Meals

My Grandmother is 87 years old. About 20 years ago, give or take, she decided she had cooked long enough in her lifetime and she wasn't going to do much of it anymore. Sure, she and my Grandfather had sandwiches, soup, and such but she decided no more big meals. For some reason I already feel that way and I'm not where near 87 years old.

I grew up in a family where everything was home made. My dad cooked (he was a cook in the Coast Guard for a number of years) and my mom baked. It was all from scratch. So, I have some guilt about not making from scratch meals for hubby and I, especially since we don't have kids. I have the time, but I realize I don't have the inclination.

This week I tried making my grocery list reflect the fact that we need to eat in more and eat healthier. I was able to purchase a Gordon's Baked Tilapia and since we have lots of various frozen veggies I know we will have a good meal. We also have frozen Jennie-O turkey burgers in the freezer we can have with chips. There are light hot dogs in there. We have tuna we can mix with Zatarian's mix or taco seasoning.

Hopefully this will help us keep our costs down and eat a bit healthier. I was happy at the store today when at the end of check-out we had saved $36.00. I'll take that. Coupons and sales are where it's at.