Cooking! I can do it without setting the kitchen on fire!

For the past week, I have planned and executed all of our dinners and lunches. I never had the time before, but since I've been playing house girlfriend, I've had lots of time. While it can be a pain in the butt planning a whole week of meals, in the long run, it ends up saving money and time. Go figure. I even had dinner planned and cooked by the time I got home from my one temp job. So for the last week here has been our menu.

Cranberry Chicken - this recipe was done in the crock pot. Apparently the smell of cranberries permeated the house the entire day and drove Scott nuts. I substituted the chicken pieces for boneless, skinless chicken breasts and it worked wonderfully! We had it with couscous and a salad. Quite a success, if I do say so myself. I found it in my Fix It and Forget It, cookbook on page 175.

Mac's Meatloaf - family recipe with my own tweaks. It calls for 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef, but we doubled it and baked it with a bunch of potatoes. We got six meals out of it! Works great for lunches. If you really want the recipe, I guess I could share, but I'll only mail it through snail mail!

Pasta with Broccoli, Sausage with a Ricotta Surprise - a Rachael Ray recipe. Sometimes it is a hit or miss with her recipes. The first time I make one of her recipes, I follow the directions exactly. But sometimes I find that the sauces don't reduce enough in the time the book says they should. Also, I don't have a lot of fresh herbs on hand (sometimes they are too pricey and the farmers market is winding down) so I substituted dried parsley for fresh. Also, use only 3/4 cup chicken stock (I used chicken broth) instead of what the recipe says. Pretty tasty recipe and not too bad reheated, this dish serves 4, but we got six meals out of if. It is on page 80 of Express Lane Meals.

Lemon Steamed Fillets - Desperation Dinners at its finest. I have yet to meat a Desperation Dinner meal that I have yet to like. This one is really easy and really tasty. Fish prices, being what they are, we went to Costco and purchased a large package of tilapia (it was 4.59 per pound, by far the cheapest in the area) and what we didn't use we individually packaged in snack bags and then put all the snack bags in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer. This way I won't have a fish popsicle when I go to defrost them. Very light and tasty and not fishy at all! We had ours with rice pilaf and salad. This is on page 278 of Desperation Dinners! They now have a number of cookbooks out, but this recipe was in the original cookbook.

This week, will be shorter as far as cooking goes. Tonight it's a round roast done in the crock pot. That will last for dinner and lunch for probably two to three days. And then a chicken recipe with feta cheese. Wednesday night is celebration for Scott's birthday so we're going out, and then of course Thursday is T-Day, which I don't have to cook this year. So I'll just post the picture of the perfect bird from 2004. (Didn't get one from last year, it was carved into to quick!)