leftovers – Life Love Laughter Linds

I haven’t been very diligent in the meal plan department lately. My grocery shops have been few and far between as I try to use up the contents of our cupboards, fridge, and freezer. I meal plan on the weekends usually – even if it’s just a loose idea of what I can come up with and often the complexity of the meals will vary with how I’m feeling. This Sunday when I sat down to meal plan I was “done” and it reflects – there’s a lot of quick meals or comfort food. Nothing wrong with that! Before I type up my grocery list, like most people, I try to shop the cupboards first. I’m also notorious for forgetting something on my list or the whole list entirely so I also approach my meal plan with a certain flexibility. It’s not always a happy flexibility, but we try to make it work (even if there’s a certain degree of cupboard banging and very loud sighs in the process.)

Today was the first snow day of the school year for the boys and bonus, I was given the work-from-home option – which sounds delightful, but in reality made me crave the office. My productivity levels were way off and throw in a borderline migraine for fun and well, let’s just say we’ll be making up some hours this week. We were *supposed* to have leftover butternut squash soup with biscuits, salad and fresh veg, and smokies for some protein for those who would say soup doesn’t fill them up. Unfortunately, my plan backfired as many of my plans do lately as the soup was still frozen solid by the time dinner rolled around. Plan B was to make a tortilla soup with smokies instead of chicken and that would have been delightful but between Friday’s “don’t eat the tortilla chips” and today, said bag of tortilla chips disappeared. Meh. To top it off, I *destroyed* my stock pot the other day and there was no salvaging it – I have a teeny tiny saucepan to cook in… and was clinging to that almost-migraine. Dinner prep felt like a disaster.

We salvaged it though. One child made himself a smoothie and frozen pizzas (and you know what, I wasn’t cooking twice or didn’t have energy to win this one so his tummy is full and that’s fine.) I still made a sauce-pan sized pot of soup with tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, corn, rice, and diced up smokies and it worked. Still made the biscuits. Still had salad for two of us and pulled out the Costco veggie tray we picked up and has been a hit at meal times as they graze the veggies they like. No one dared complain. (I may be extremely grumpy when I have an almost-migraine.) Here’s hoping the rest of the meal plan goes a bit smoother and our dinners this week are no fuss, no muss – while using up some of that frozen meat that was passed our way!

Sunday – leftover roast beef poutine, caesar salad, and fresh veggies featuring leftover
Monday – soup with biscuits, salad, fresh veggies
Tuesday – smokies, cornbread, fresh veggies, and that leftover butternut squash soup
Wednesday – veggie goat cheese flatbread (no kids!)
Thursday – chicken, broccoli, and rice
Friday – ribs, sweet potato fries, fresh veggies
Saturday – burgers and salad

How do you salvage meal time prep that’s gone awry? I’m sure we’d be using UberEats way more often if we didn’t live outside of town. (Probably a good thing that we don’t!) Also, if anyone is talking to Santa, could you mention I’m looking for a good pots & pan set and that I’ve been a VERY good girl this year!

My kids are heading out to more ‘things’ in the evening and this seems to cover the dinner hour – no appeasing two different appetites on these nights (impossible!) I count that as a win. However, the driving back and forth doesn’t seem like a win and Kevin’s been working erratically “late” some evenings. Even when I meal plan, things seem like a bust – and it’s often on the fly.

I do, however, continue to try. I dont always share our menu or mealplan because I don’t often feel its remarkable or that I’m successful in sticking to it. Despite that, every week I have at least a loose plan going in before I tackle the groceries. Making things interesting is the desire to clean up my freezer/cupboard/fridge. My in-laws leave us with their freezer contents every time they winter in Florida. We have so. much. pork. at the moment. It helps with my grocery bill, but I come to a halt in creativity while still trying to find balance.

This afternoon, the boys headed to a paint party. They are literally painting the walls of a new youth room and the leaders are buying pizza. Kevin and I had tomato soup I found buried in the forgotten corner of the freezer. I served it with a fried egg, salami (there were 2 slices left), and cheese on some slightly freezer-burnt toasted English muffins. Gourmet dinner it was not. Curbed the hunger? Absolutely. Wednesday will most likely be another day I can cull the fridge of leftovers as I’ll be on my own. Or perhaps I’ll indulge, and grab takeout mango salad on the way home.

Here’s the rest of our menu for the week:

steak, potatoes, caesar salad, and carrot sticks
crockpot pork roast with rice and broccoli slaw
pulled pork tacos
slow cooker jambalaya (minus the shrimp) – I’ll be giving this recipe a try for the first time and using turkey sausage
dinner for 1 (soup, leftovers, or takeout)
Spinach and chicken pasta

What do you prepare when you’re cooking for one? How do you deal with fluctuating schedules and last-minute change of plans while still cooking at home? Share your wisdom, please! We want to know what works for other families.