What Lisa Cooks

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Family Meal Plan #24

Welcome to our family meal plan!

This is a real reflection of what my family actually eats—some weeks I’ve got recipes to share, sometimes there are photos, and other times it’s just me giving you the rundown of what I made. I hope these menus give you some fresh ideas or inspire you as you’re planning your own meals. Feel free to adapt or follow along however it works for you—because meal planning should make life easier, not harder!

From one busy home cook to another, let’s make dinner a little less stressful together.

You can find all of our past meal plans here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, Notes from the Kitchen Table, to get the latest weekly meal plan delivered straight to your inbox!

On this week’s menu:

(see below for a few notes about some of the meals)

  • Sunday: Burgers

  • Monday: Chicken sausages and zucchini patties

  • Tuesday: Chicken posole

  • Wednesday: Leftovers

  • Thursday: Cabbage roll casserole

  • Friday: Frozen pizza and bag caesar salad

  • Saturday: Slow cooker Moroccan chicken

  • Sunday: Cajun spiced meatballs, roasted tomato sauce, pasta

  • Extra: banana chocolate chip muffins

A bit more detail about some of the meals:

Sunday: an easy meal of frozen burgers. I had both chicken patties and salmon burgers from Costco, so I just tossed those on the grill and served with the usual burger fixings.

Monday The packs of chicken sausages from Costco, tossed on a baking sheet and roasted until browned and splitting, along with some zucchini fritters and pasta. I make my zucchini fritters very much like the ones in this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, although sometimes I add in another veggies that need to be used, like cabbage or onions or broccoli.

Tuesday Chicken posole. Posole (or pozole) is a Mexican stew, think of it a bit like a tortilla soup, but what makes it posole specifically is the addition of hominy. I have a recipe for a pork posole posted here, but this one was even easier - basically just chicken broth, enchilada sauce, canned hominy, some cabbage and onions. What really makes is great is all the toppings - chips, sour cream, cheese, I like shredded cabbage, green onions.

Wednesday is our usual leftover night.

Thursday I used the leftover sausages from Monday and chopped them up and mixed with rice, cabbage, and some fresh tomato sauce and baked it all together with bread crumbs on top. We can call it a cabbage roll casserole, because the flavor and texture of the cabbage & rice and tomato reminded me of those cabbage rolls my grandma used to make. No real recipe here, and it was just ok, not sure if I’d make it again.

Friday was a frozen pizza night after the end of a very full week.

Saturday was the star of the week. A new recipe that is instantly a new favorite. I made up a Moroccan spiced slow cooker chicken and it was one of the best things I’ve made in a long time and so easy!

Sunday was another new one - Creole spiced meatballs. I don’t have a recipe but really it was too easy. I combined ground beef and turkey in the usual meatball fashion, with some diced onion, eggs, and breadcrumbs. For seasoning I just used a whole bunch of my favorite Creole seasoning, which made it all really easy and very tasty. We had these with an amazing fresh roasted tomato sauce, pasta, and some frozen spinach that I cooked with just a little butter and salt.

Extra meal prep: I made up a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins for school morning breakfasts this week. I’ve adapted this recipe so many times that I felt it was time for a new write up, so there’s a new blog post up with this version of the banana bread recipe.

That’s the week!


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Wishing you a delicious and stress-free week ahead!

– Lisa