Making the monthly menu list...

As I made out the June Menu -- I know, I'm a bit late this month. I wasn't thinking. June sort of started up and creeped in on me!

Anyway, I went to a couple of my favorite sites and came up with a great list with some new things to try out. One of my favorite sites is Mennonite Girls Can Cook.

Just try to get away from that site without taking a notebook full of notes!

Some goodies on my June menu include a Seven Layer Casserole, Mexican Potato Casserole, Chicken Cheese and Broccoli Quiche, and Meat Pinwheels.

I took down a TON more recipes, for snacks, desserts, brunch goodies. But these are on my to try list immediately.

The rest of my menu is same ol' same ol' for us --
Poor Man's Parmesean
Meatloaf standard, and later in the month, meatloaf mini's.
Sticky Chicken -- we do up at least 6 at a time and then plan other meals for the leftovers, like
the Chicken pot pie on this month's list
Rigatoni with ground turkey
sausage and potatoes
plain old grilled cheese and tomato soup
Mexican Stuffed Rice (no, I haven't found a way to "stuff rice"....this is really just the rice mixture you would make to do stuffed bell peppers. We add some taco seasoning to it)
bake a turkey ham, 2 of them -- leftovers will go for ham and corn chowder later this month
Beef and Gravy -- really just Stroganoff, over rice or pasta -- haven't decided which yet
Beef Roast -- a really big one -- leftovers going for a beef pot pie later this month.

All in all I have 3 weeks played out on paper and will shop for the few missing items to put them together. If we have to repeat later, we're good with that. All we really need is 3 weeks of favorites and no one minds repeating them.

I'd like to make up some calzones and meat sandwiches as well, for lunches and maybe even for a light dinner, with a tossed salad and some fruit.

I don't typically plan out lunches here. My main plan only involves dinners, and the once-a-month fellowship meal for church. Breakfasts are the same -- oatmeal, pancakes, granola or scrambled egg burritos. Lunches tend to flow about the same -- someone will grab some sausage patties to heat up for a pancake sandwich, or it's just good old American PB&J. We aren't fancy gourmets here :o)

Well -- off to put the final touches on the list and hit the store. It's bill paying day, which means shopping is in the plan. This is my light week for bills as I have them adjusted, so I can do my monthly stock up on things. I need to put some more flour in the pantry store, and oats too. And I've somehow let my stock of butter in the freezer dwindle down to just 4 packages.

Might even get lucky and find some more eggs on sale. Our Wal-Mart is terribly at ordering eggs. They have far too many 'varieties' with their free range, their organic, their brown in various sizes, the white in various sizes...they always end up with several coming close to date which drop in price drastically. I stocked up not long ago on about 14 doz organic, free range brown eggs that normaly sold for $2.85 doz (which I'd never pay!) on sale for a mere .50 doz. I like .50 a doz eggs :o) We bought them up, whisked into 3 egg packs and put in the freezer. They take a couple days to thaw properly in the fridge, and bake up fine. Seems to be a bit of a texture difference for just scrambling, but if you have used dried eggs for scrambling before, you won't mind the frozen ones. I do mine in sandwhich baggies, but be warned -- these do have a tendency to leak as they thaw. If you have some of the small tupperware containers, say for salad dressing in a lunch box, or something small like that, use them instead. I'm sure it's much nicer when thawing. We just toss our bags in a bowl to thaw, but yes, they are messy in the baggies.

Get over to Mennoninte Girls Can Cook and have a fresh new notebook and a good ink pen handy!