What About The Recipes?

Amy: My family enjoys having a nice, hot breakfast in the mornings.  Cereal just won't cut it for them!  Me on the other hand, I am not really a big breakfast eater until around 9 a.m.  My menu plan includes a hot breakfast every day for the boys.  It's important to have some protein and healthy carbohydrates for breakfast which is why I cook them eggs a lot during the week.  Eggs are a great source of lean protein and very economical!  

Instead of eating the same things over and over I tried to design the recipes so that we are using up leftovers in different ways.  So because we had a baked chicken on Sunday, I used the leftover chicken meat for sandwiches and soup and quesadillas.  My soup recipe is really very easy and can be adapted to whatever you like.  I used a quart of chicken broth and two extra cups of water (this helps to decrease the sodium content of your soup), a bay leaf to season the broth and simmered my chicken, rice and vegetables together for about 20 minutes or so.  I used white potato, sweet potato, carrots, onion and some frozen peas (you can use whatever veggies you like or have on hand).  Using frozen vegetables are a great economical way to get your vegetable servings in during the cold winter months.  Fresh vegetables can sometimes be a bit pricier, so purchasing frozen is a great way to go!  The soup was delish!!!  It was even better today for lunch!

Jo-Ellen: I am following the recipes and the menu plan. I find a lot of repetitiveness in the menu, eating vegetable lasagna 6 out of the 7 days during the first week. The recipes are flavorful and healthy. A note about the vegetable lasagna, it didn't specify oven ready noodles, but there was no mention of preparing the noodles for baking. I bought oven-ready noodles.

The chicken rice soup is delicious! It made plenty of soup and I purchased saltine crackers to go with it. (not on the shopping list but part of the extra funds not spent in the menu but to be used for the extras)