Welcome to Crosbyville: Meal Planning

I am terrible when it comes to planning out meals for our little family. I think most of it stems from the fact that Andrew is just so darn easy to please, when it comes to meals we usually just throw something together at the last minute and it's usually edible enough. If it's not, we always have cereal on hand (if you know me, you know I could eat cereal for every meal and be quite content). However, I've been challenged lately by several blogs I read that have done meal-planning challenges, or just discussed easy recipes or meals that they make for their families. Since soon I will have one more mouth to feed (that eventually will probably not be as easy to please as her daddy), I've decided to try and start planning meals a little better. I'm taking it in baby-steps, because I know if I overcommit myself and set the goal too high, I'll burn out and then go back to my old "hmmmm....what's in the cabinet that I can throw together" ways. Andrew and I have also decided that since we're about to have a baby, who will without a doubt cost us money, we should start saving more (which means less eating out). We love to eat out...it's a guilty pleasure that we just cannot deny living in a city with such amazing food options, but we know we need to cut back slightly.

I sat down this past weekend with a pen and paper and started my pinterest search. I've used pinterest for a while, so I've got a good amount of recipes that I've pinned thinking I might want to make them someday. I picked 3 semi-simple, yummy looking meals to make this week.

1. Chicken-broccoli bake
2. Barbacoa beef tacos
3. Chicken enchiladas

Can you tell I'm craving mexican food??

I knew we had to have a lot of chicken centered food this week because we had 4 huge chicken breasts left over from a barbeque we had for our friend Stephen's birthday last weekend, but my plan got thrown a little of kilter when our friends planned a Cinco De Mayo party for Saturday and I offered to make Chicken Enchiladas (already had all the ingredients, and wanted to try the recipe...perfect!). I ended up making quesadillas one night and then we had a free for all with the rest of the left over food from the barbeque the next night.

Tonight (we STILL had 2 left-over chicken breasts), I made the Chicken-broccoli bake and oh my goodness...YUM! Definitely not the healthiest recipe in the world (by far), but still extremely delicious. I altered the recipe just slightly to make it a little less fattening (less cheese, less butter, and less ritz crackers on top), and it was still so good. I think what made it so good is the fact that the sauce in homemade rather than just a can of cream of chicken soup...less sodium and preservatives, too! This makes a lot of food, which is okay because that means I get to eat it for lunch, too.