Sometimes, when you’re having a tough and/or long day, you don’t feel like doing much when you get home. You’re exhausted and mentally not in tune with your family.

My Recipe for Hectic Workdays: It can be absolutely wonderful to take a moment to cleanse your mental palate by watching your children laugh.

Enjoy!

Is there anything better than watching your children laugh?

Our weekly meal plan is simple this week.

Over the weekend, I experimented with canning. Home Canning is making a comeback these days, and is a great way to save money!  My first time ever so I started off with something very easy and I’m very pleased with the results. I made the Best Crockpot Apple Butter. Mountain Man and the two little bears taste tested and they approved. This will go on pancakes, waffles, toast, biscuits and Peanut Butter sandwiches. I’ll share more about my canning adventures later.

 This week’s meal plan:

Breakfast:
(served with fresh fruit and fresh squeezed orange juice)

Breakfast Burritos
Smoothies (I froze a bunch of smoothies this past weekend to have during this week)
Yogurt, fresh berries and toast
Muffins (I have muffin mixes in the freezer; just need to add in wet ingredients and bake)
Oatmeal with toppings
Pancakes

Lunches:
(served with fresh fruit, veggies, water, juice or milk)

 Smoothies
Peanut Butter and Apple Butter Sandwices
Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Easy Lunch Rolls
Homemade Hot Pockets
Ultimate Grilled Cheese

Dinner:
(served with green salad, bread or rolls)

Family Style Chili, Cornbread
Chicken Enchiladas
Cheeseburger Pie
Spinach Rice Casserole
Leftovers
Pizza Night
Chicken Nuggets

This menu is part of Menu Plan Monday at The Organized Junkie.

What’s on your menu this week?

There is always something going on all the time at our house; even more so during the school year so for dinner time I have to be organized. I make it a lot easier on myself, if I know what I’m having and what I have to prepare. I’m no longer saying, “What am I fixing for dinner.”

Meal Planning

When I map out my meal plan, I ask my family what they like to eat and what they don’t like. We even discuss options on changing a dish that they liked or ways to improve a dish. We try to pick a different meat, (based upon what’s on sale at the grocery store) with different vegetables and different side dishes. I then sit down with my calendar, browse through my personal cookbook of recipes, magazines, and some of my favorite cookbooks and plan. Every single day of the month, I try to have something different to eat, (unless it’s a family favorite then we have it at least twice a month) and I build in a few days for leftovers.

Side Dishes

While the main dish is usually my main focus, side dishes are just as important. They complete the meal along with vegetables so that my family will get a full balanced meal. So, I try to plan side dishes as well. Those tend to fall off the radar occasionally and if I don’t have a plan, well, the meal just isn’t as fun or filling.

For a change of pace to regular old potatoes, I often make these potato wedges as a side dish. These potatoes are flavorful and will cook in only 30 minutes.  They even taste better and are much healthier than fast food fries.

Crispy Potato Wedges

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary (or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
6 russett potatoes (about 1 pound), scrubbed and dried

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Lightly spray large shallow baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.
• For seasoning mix, place olive oil in large bowl. Add Dijon mustard, rosemary, garlic powder, salt and pepper; mix well.
• Cut potatoes into wedges.
• Add potato wedges to seasoning mix; toss gently to coat wedges evenly.
• Spread wedges in a single layer, about 1/4 inch apart, in prepared baking dish.
• Bake potato wedges, turning occasionally, under tender and crisp, about 30 minutes.
• Serve immediately with your favorite grilled or roasted meat.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 4

*Red potatoes would also be great for this recipes as well. Sweet potatoes are great too! Simply use 3 Tablespoons of granulated sugar mixed in with 1 Tablespoon of cinnamon instead of the mustard, rosemary, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Just coat them with the cinnamon-sugar mixture and bake.

We eat lots of chicken, mostly because it’s inexpensive and you can create lots of wonderful dishes. Today’s recipe is a simple crockpot chicken. It’s perfect for those busy weeknights and a great budget meal idea. Chicken thighs are always a great bargain at the grocery store. I had purchased a package and split the chicken breast up, with 5 pieces in each ziploc freezer bag. This continues in my prep for freezer cooking. I tossed in 1/2 bottle of Zesty Italian dressing and froze.

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients:

• 4-6 Chicken Thighs
• 1/2 bottle Zesty Italian Dressing

Directions:

•  Defrost chicken thighs in the fridge the night before.
• In the morning, pour chicken thighs with dressing into the crockpot.
• Set crockpot to low and cook for 6-8 hours.

They will be tender, juicy, and yummy. Serve with rice, green salad and rolls.

 The research is very clear and widely discussed — kids who eat regular family meals are:
• Twice as likely to get A’s in school
• 45% less likely to try alcohol and 24% less likely to try marijuana or drugs
• 32% less likely to have ever smoked a cigarette
• Half as likely to be highly stressed or suffer extreme boredom

What I love about these stats is that they confirm what I always knew deep down in my heart: Family dinners really do matter. I’m not just cooking and flinging food into a senseless void.

 My second oldest starts her high school senior life tomorrow and my oldest just turned 19 last week and I can hardly believe how my two younger ones have grown so quickly. I find myself feeling rather triumphant about what those dinners mean to family life in our household, what family meal time traditions will they carry on as adults, and I marvel at the fact that against all practical odds – (sports practices, PTC meetings, band practices and piano lessons to name a few) — I somehow pulled it off more nights than not.

But actually getting the food on the table is just the start of it.

Once everybody sits down, how do you transform the tendency of teens to shovel in the food and flee? How do you get them to put away that cell phone and give their thumbs a rest from texting their friends for 30 minutes to an hour? And now that you’ve finally got everyone’s attention, it’s tempting to try and solve family problems between bites of beef stew. I am here to testify: If you want to promote proper digestion (and family unity), save those difficult discussions for another time. This is the time where you want to engage with your kids; find out what’s going on in their lives, what they find interesting or disturbing in their world.

So how DO we do it? Several obvious things – create a meal plan with the help of your family, get the kids involved in the prepping or cooking of the meal. Get them excited about family meal time and make the dinner hour non-negotiable and somewhat sacrosanct.

I’m sure there are tons of other ideas for getting teens to the table and keeping them there and I’d love to hear ideas from other families. How do YOU do it? Please post your ideas in the comments section following this post!