Menu Planning

Now that the school year has started and our crazy schedule has begun, I have found that planning a bi-weekly menu is especially important and saves me a lot of time.  I choose to plan for two weeks because we get paid every two weeks and I only make a major grocery store trip once every two weeks that way (which also saves a lot of time).  Today I was able to plan my menu, grocery shop, and prepare and freeze three meals.  This is the best way I can think of to have home cooked meals on a time crunch. Below I will post my menu with the a couple of the recipes I will be making. 

Menu:
Cilantro Lime Pesto Chicken Tacos with Refried beans
Meatball Soup
Chicken Bacon Pasta
Olive Garden Spaghetti
Creamy Chicken Taco Stew
Stuffed Green Pepper Soup
Chili
Teriyaki Chicken
Hot Dogs in Crescent rolls w/ Mac and Cheese

Cilantro Lime Pesto Chicken Tacos with Refried Beans
I am especially excited about these.  They sound delicious and when I made them today the marinade smelled delicious. I found the recipe on Pinterest for the tacos and have attached a link to the recipe and a couple of pictures below.  I plan on making this meal tomorrow and adding some Spanish rice to it as well.
 
http://joelens.blogspot.com/2010/05/cilantro-lime-chicken-tacos.html

Refried Beans
This recipe I found on the Simple Recipes web site.  I have always wanted to make home made refried beans instead of heating them up out of a can and this recipe is very simple.

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/refried_beans/

Meatball Soup
This recipe is very simple and easy to make and utilizes the slow cooker which is even better.  This is a recipe that I just put together when trying to come up with a use for the frozen meatballs I had in my freezer.  We really enjoy and hope if you try it, you will too. 

Ingredients:
1lb. frozen Italian meatballs
1 carton of beef broth
1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables
2 tbsp Italian seasoning
Elbow Macaroni

1.  Put meatballs, beef broth, frozen vegetables, and Italian seasoning in the crock pot and cook it on low for 6-8 hours.  About thirty minutes before eating cook elbow macaroni according to package directions and add it to the soup.  Turn off the crock pot and serve.

Chicken Bacon Pasta
This is a modified recipe from Kraft recipes.  I cook the crock pot Chicken Bacon according to Kraft recipes directions and then I cook Penna pasta and add the chicken mixture to the pasta (in a large saucepan) with a little chicken broth to thin the sauce out a little and serve it all together.  I also add peas to this to make sure there is a vegetable.

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/community/recipe-exchange/UserRecipeDisplay.aspx?group_id=1&user_recipe_id=424145

I am going to post the other recipes as I make them so I can post pictures of what whey look like.  I will add pictures of some of these others as well.