Hello friends!
Welcome back to another Teacher Tuesday!
Today I thought I would share my first two weeks of school meal plans. I love to spend a few hours the weekend before school starts to prep our meals for the week. This is beneficial in many ways. One, I don’t have to spend a lot of time when I get home from an exhausting day at school making dinner. If it’s ready to go, I just have to pop it in the oven. Then I can sit down and relax for a bit. Second, clean up is way easier. The only things to clean up are the dishes we eat off of and whatever we cooked in. No measuring spoons, mixing bowls, none of that! Win-Win!!
I either linked to the recipe I use or I included the recipe. Some of these “recipes” aren’t even true recipes – they are really just throwing ingredients together! All of these recipes are easy and not very time consuming so prep is easy. Easy is my middle name this time of year!!
Week One:
Monday: Chicken Cordon Bleu and roasted veggies.
This one is really easy! The chicken is already put together, I just take them out of the package and put them on a pan. For the roasted veggies, I just open the bag, pour it on a pan, drizzle with olive oil and salt and pepper! Easy peasy. They go in the oven for 30 minutes and we are eating! These are a family favorite!
Tuesday: Sausage, Peppers and Onions.
Another favorite, though the girls will eat more of the sausage than the peppers and onions! That’s okay – I eat whatever they don’t! Very easy prep – just chop everything and store in a container until ready to cook. Bonus: this is one hubby cooks! He seasons it with garlic powder and some other random spices, cooks until veggies are tender and then covers with cheese! So yummy! We eat them as tacos and always make enough to have leftovers!
Wednesday: Tacos
I prep the meat on the weekend so all we have to do on the day of cooking is fry up some corn tortillas and put out all the toppings. We like lettuce, tomato, cheese and avocado! I can take leftovers for lunch the next day, either as tacos or as a taco salad!
Thursday: Pesto Chicken with roasted veggies or salad
I know I’ve mentioned this one a lot on this blog, but we eat it two or three times a month! It truly is a family favorite, easy and delicious! I got the original recipe from HERE but I’ve tweaked it, of course. It’s simply an 8 oz block of cream cheese, 1/2 a cup of basil pesto (more or less, depending on how much you like pesto – we LOVE it!) and mozzarella cheese. Mix the softened cream cheese with the pesto, cover your chicken breasts with the pesto mix and then cover it all with the cheese. Cook at 375 for about 30 minutes, or until your chicken is cooked through. That’s it! The only pre-prep I do is cut the chicken breasts in half if they are thick. Prep is like 5 minutes! Again, we like our roasted veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper, so that’s super easy as well! If we have a salad, it’s usually pre-prepped, though during Back to School time, it likely comes out of a bag!!
Friday: probably leftovers or YOYO (you’re on your own!) Momma gets a day off from kitchen duty!
Week 2:
Monday: Sausage and cabbage
This one couldn’t be easier! Chop cabbage into large pieces and throw in a LARGE pot with butter. Let it cook down to how you like it – we like it soft. Throw in the sausage the last few minutes to heat up and THAT’S IT! Depending on how you like your cabbage, the hardest part of this recipe is just watching and stirring up the cabbage! Each person can add whatever seasoning they want – either a basic season salt or Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning.
Tuesday: Chicken Spaghetti with salad and garlic bread
This will be the girls’ first day back in school and chicken spaghetti is one of their favorites. I follow THIS recipe by the Pioneer Woman and it’s delicious! This one is easy to prep and store in the fridge. Everything is already cooked and it just gets heated up the day of eating for about 30 minutes. This one is a winner in our house! I usually prep a huge batch of chicken in the crock pot over the weekend so it’s quick to throw this one together. It also freezes amazingly if you wanted to double the recipe for later.
Wednesday: Deconstructed Beef Kabobs
We really like this one and it’s easy to prep all the veggies over the weekend. You can find the recipe here. I have learned, however, with a marinade, you don’t want to prep too early. The soy sauce in the marinade starts to break down the meat. I will usually get everything cut up and the marinade made, but I will mix them the morning I plan on cooking. This works out much better! When I get home from work, all I have to do is dump everything onto a sheet pan, throw it in the oven for about 30 minutes and dinner is ready!
Thursday: Meatloaf muffins with veggies
Are you a fan of meatloaf? We love it in this house! THIS is the recipe we have been using and it has really great flavor! My girls love the muffin-size of these too! I just add a vegetable or a salad on the side and we are good to go!
Friday: EAT OUT!! Kitchen is closed – you will find me relaxing on the couch for the rest of the weekend!!!
Well, that’s it! An easy peasy two week meal plan that will help me be less stressed during a very busy few weeks of back to school! All the meals are family favorites and very easy to prep and cook. Let me know if you try any of these out and what your family thinks. And if you are an educator going back to school, I hope these will give you some ideas to help your transition back to school be a little easier!