Meal Planning

We're being careful about our expenses, so last week we stocked up at the grocery store, and over the weekend we made a bunch of food.

On Saturday I made meat loaf using a stupidly easy recipe from a Boston Globe cookbook published in the 1980s. It works nicely with a blend of ground beef and pork, and the market conveniently sells a package of the two combined. For me the whole point of making meatloaf is to have meatloaf sandwiches, which taste best the next day, after the loaf has been refrigerated, on good bread.

On Sunday I made chicken breasts, cut them up, and threw them together with tortellini and some cheese and olive oil. I then added pantry items we had on hand: a can of olives, a jar of artichoke hearts. We also had some grape tomatoes, so I put those in too. You can also make this with pre-cooked sausage like Trader Joe's (most markets carry some version of it) instead of the chicken.

Yesterday the Mrs. baked chicken thigh pieces that she had marinated overnight in the refrigerator. We'll be having those tonight with salad and some broccoli. Now we basically have enough food prepared for the rest of this week. Next week we'll shop again, and I'll make another batch of slow-cooker chili, which I've been perfecting for the past several months.