Notes on food and eating {menu and company coming}

I haven't posted a menu in a long time and I thought it would be fun to share that today. For the majority of my married life I have done menu planning. It just makes life so much simpler for me. Last year somehow I got rather out of the habit and I only made menus off and on. My whole organization starts to crumble when I fail to menu plan. I think I am back on track again with menu planning and I hope to stay that way!

Here is our menu for the week:

Sunday

Waffles

Little burgers with sauce, Potato Salad, Bananas and Sweet Bread (we took that to a church potluck dinner)

Chicken Curry, Rice and Fruit

Monday

Leftover waffles, pumpkin pudding, quick bread and fruit

Pork and Veggie stir fry on rice

Tuesday

Cooked wheat (gruel) with cream

Steak, Broccoli and New York Potatoes

Wednesday

Puff pancakes with Raspberries and whip cream

Macaroni and Tuna Salad

Chicken and Tomatoes on Wild and Brown Rice and Corn

Thursday

Zucchini or Mince Bread and Eggs

Pita Bread Sandwiches, Carrot Sticks and Popcorn

Pizza Casserole and Salad

Friday

Biscuits and Gravy

Soup and Sandwiches

Spaghetti, Green Beans and Garlic Bread

Saturday

Scrambled Eggs and Muffins

The rest of the meals will be eaten at a church rally.

We have company coming tomorrow (We're excited!) to spend the week and then more coming on Friday (more excitement!) so are week will be busier than normal. When company comes it is very nice to have a menu planned. Sometimes we tend to eat a lot of leftovers or things like that and that doesn't always work so well when company is here. A menu plan helps to eliminate the stress of thinking "What am I going to feed all these people?"

My friend Emily put a post up (with a linky) recently wondering if we had any ideas for what to do when company shows up unexpectedly and you want to serve them a meal. This is a great question and one I was thinking about not long ago. I had a meeting at my house at 10:30 am. which I didn't think would last too long but still I had thought " I should figure out a lunch (besides the leftovers that we had planned to eat) that I could invite them to stay and eat with us". I didn't really get a lunch planned and even though they stayed until nearly one (we had lost track of time!) they didn't stay to eat with us. I resolved that next time I would be better prepared!

 Mostly being prepared is just having ideas of quick meals figured out and the ingredients available. Having meals in the freezer can also help a lot. Here are some of the things that work for me (when I remember them!)

Meals to freeze ahead:

• Pizza - this is nice because it doesn't take a lot of time to thaw either. I just throw it in the oven straight from the freezer a lot of the time.
• Tuna Pasta Hotdish (And I was able to buy tuna on sale for 39 cents a can tonight! Yeah! I bought 73.)
• Chicken Rice Burritos.
• Enchiladas.
• Meatloaf or Meatballs
• Goulash
• Chili

It is also nice to have other treats frozen and ready at a moments notice like:

• Cookies
• Zucchini or pumpkin bread

Besides having food already prepared and ready whenever we want them I also thought it would be handy to have a list of foods that I can make quickly with ingredients that I normally have on hand. Here is some that I thought of:

• Tuna Melts ~Tuna salad on a slice of bread (homemade at our house) with cheese on top, place everything in the oven under the broiler until the cheese melts.
• Popcorn
• Tomato Soup ~I make it using our home canned tomatoes
• Pasta Salad
• Corn Pone Pizza
• Super Nachos with my own corn "chips".
• Apple sauce ~that I canned
• Pigs in a blanket (Though I am keeping hotdogs on hand less and less lately)
• Potato Soup
• Tacos ~ This takes a little bit but I just put everyone to work, people can chop, roll out tortillas, etc.
• Fresh fruit
• Carrot sticks

Those are some of my ideas for quick meals for company. What are yours?