WEEK 22: Meal Planning and Traveling

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I'm a little late posting this time, but this was a week to reap the rewards of planning ahead and freezer preparation. It was a busy week and we went out of town for the weekend. For both of these reasons, I was able to use lots of leftovers and prepared frozen food for ourselves and the boys.

FOOD DESCRIPTION
Spinach Bites and Baked Sweet Potato Fries continue to be my go-to freezer finger food on the go. I'm going to list our meals below from the past week to give an idea of what we ate.

• MONDAY
  Breakfast: I won't repeat this one every day because we eat eggs every morning with fruit and sometimes a smoothie. The boys eat oatmeal (soaked overnight) with apples and cinnamon as well as a whole banana each.
  Lunch: Chicken Tortilla Soup with avocado (The boys had eggs, fruits, and veggies.)   
  Dinner: Smoked Chicken, green beans, apples (I added avocado and porridge for the boys.)
   
• TUESDAY
  Lunch: Leftovers (soup)
  Dinner: Leftovers (chicken & salad) (The boys had split pea/barley porridge, avocado, and veggies.)
   
• WEDNESDAY
  Lunch: Leftovers (soup)   
  Dinner: Hot dogs, broccoli, sweet potato (I added avocado and porridge for the boys.)
   
• THURSDAY
  Lunch: Crock Pot Pineapple Chicken, baked beans (dry, soaked, baked), broccoli   
  Dinner: BBQ Beef Short Ribs, baked sweet potato, sauteed spinach (I added avocado and porridge for the boys)
   
• FRIDAY
  Lunch: Leftovers (BBQ beef), salad (I added veggies and fruit for the boys instead of salad.)
  Dinner: Leftovers (chicken), salad, sweet potato fries (I added avocado for the boys.)
   
• SATURDAY
  Lunch: OUT (I took some spinach bites and sweet potato fries for the boys to have with fish.)
  Dinner: OUT (I took some spinach bites and sweet potato fries for the boys to have with steak.)
   
• SUNDAY
  Lunch: Homemade Pizza, salad (The boys had fruit, veggies, and toast.)
  Dinner: Leftover Pizza (The boys had black bean/rice porridge, fruit, veggies, and toast.)

PROCESS

• Leftovers I only made a couple meals this week, but enjoyed leftovers as a family and had some handy things in the fridge for lunches and the boys' meals.
•  Baked Sweet Potato Fries I continued with my original recipe on these, but I have been spoiled recently with the purchase of a new food processor. I got it at a great deal for only $107 and am just loving learning all about using it and everything I can now do with it. So, I took 4 sweet potatoes and chopped them all in different shapes to bake them for this finger food. See here for the recipe, but pictures below of some of my favorite options.

 These were made from just slicing the potato into quarters. They were thin, but made good fries.

These made a good size from just cutting the quarters into thirds, but my slicer was too thin and the small size and thinness resulted in overdone, crunchy fries.

These made a more fry-shaped slice and baked fairly well with the thicker slicer.

WHAT I LEARNED
I really, really think I want the french fry disc blade for my food processor after making these, but quite a few of them created good results. However, I did not master the small, thin pieces. The larger thin pieces were fine and the thicker pieces were fine, but the little chips didn't turn out so well.

REACTION
Jonathan and the boys both enjoyed our leftovers at home and on-the-go. We are all enjoying both the Spinach Bites and Baked Sweet Potato Fries. Remember to season them how you like and you will be able to enjoy them too!

SUMMARY
Leftovers are great and it's even better when I remember to buy and cook more than what is needed for a single meal. The boys both love fish which I somehow did not cook any of this week, but ate out once. I usually try for at least two fish meals. In fact, I would say they like it more than chicken or beef right now. Chicken is not Owen's favorite. In his defense, some of the chicken he has been fed recently has been dry and chewy...yuck. Wyatt, will just eat it.

Maybe I can get things together well enough in the future to start posting some of our weekly family meal recipes as well. I'm getting better at the meal planning and shopping as we go on this path as a family of four eating meals together.

Please share your thoughts or ideas.
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