7 day family meal plan: including breakfast, school lunch, and dinner.

How's it going with your menu planning?  Are you giving it a try?  I know it's not always easy, but I make myself do it because I know it will make my week so much easier.  

Even I have off days, and today I'm feeling pretty uninspired.  After Halloween (which is totally overwhelming for me), and being up a couple times in the night with kids, and up earlier than I wanted to with the time change... the brain is not coming up with a lot of original ideas today.  

So these are the times when I fall back on things I know will be easy.  This week's menu has a couple of old comfort food favorites, and a few things that are new-ish but I know will be pretty simple.  

Here we go... (notes and links at the end)

• I had spaghetti and meatballs on last week's menu, for Sunday, but then I realized that we have a soccer pizza party this afternoon so I just moved that one to Monday since I already have all the meat and it needs to be cooked.  I'll probably do my one pot spaghetti recipe, and just make the meatballs up as I go.  I like to do a mix of meats for maximum flavor - this week I bought ground beef, turkey and lamb.  Throw in some eggs, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, parmesan cheese, Worcestershire, etc. - shape into balls and cook off.  They're easy to cook on a baking sheet in the oven.  Or - a friend recently introduced me to her secret for amazing sauce:  cook the meatballs in the sauce.  Either way - I always make lots extra.  I love having homemade meatballs in the freezer for a super easy dinner. 

• I've seen a few links lately for Mexican pizzas, so I thought we'd try that for a slightly different (but easy) twist on Taco Tuesday.   Something like this one.  

• Wednesday is usually leftovers, but I've got a bunch of parsnips and leeks that need to be used so I'll make a soup out of those, and the kids can have leftover spaghetti if they want it. 

• I made up some quick pizza rolls for the kids for lunch.  I'll write up that recipe and share soon.  It was so easy!  Basically just crescent roll dough, spread with sauce and cheese, rolled into a log, sliced and baked.