15+ Meal Ideas for Menu Planning

The Happy Housewife is hosting Menu Planning 101 at her blog this month. Her first challenge was to come up with your top 15 meals that your family enjoys. I missed being able to link up to that post so I decided to show you what I do when coming up with meal ideas.

I recently compiled all of our favorite meals to one list and printed it for my Home Management Binder. I also like to use the websites like allrecipes.com and recipezaar.com when I'm needing to use certain ingredients for a meal. Here is my meal ideas master list.

Tacos

Grilled Chicken Sandwich
Fajitas (chicken, beef or mixed)

Nachos (chicken or beef)

Poppy Seed Chicken
Taco salads

Pineapple Chicken
Enchiladas (chicken or cheese)

Creamy Chicken Noodle
Mexican Chicken

Fish Sticks/Fillets
Mexican Spaghetti

Shrimp
Chow Mein

Red beans and Rice w/ Polish Sausage
Fried Rice

Chicken Noodle Soup

Loaded Baked Potato

Vegetable Beef Soup

Tuna/Salmon Patties
Cheesy Potato Soup

Crock pot Chicken w/ Honey Mustard Sauce

Chicken Tortilla Soup
Beef Stew

Chicken and Rice
Chili

Chicken and Dressing
Spaghetti

Grilled Chicken Breast
Lasagna

Breaded Chicken Tenders
Parmesan Chicken

Chicken Nuggets
Pizza

Meatloaf
Chicken Alfredo

Ravioli (cheese or beef)
Chicken Tetrazzini

Sloppy Joes
Salisbury Steaks

Cube Steak
Steak

Beef BBQ
Hamburgers

Brisket
Roast

Ribs
Baked Ham

Turkey Roast
Pork Tenderloin

Turkey/Chicken Pot Pie
Sub Sandwiches

Breakfast/Waffles/Pancakes
Beans and Cornbread

Beef Stroganoff
Grilled Chicken Salad

BBQ Chicken
BBQ Pork

Chicken and Dumplings

Oven Fried Chicken

This post is linked to:

Kitchen Tip Tuesday

Tackle It Tuesday

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Using Leftovers

Leftovers:

Baked potatoes-

1. Twice Baked Potatoes

2. Dice them up skin and all and fry them as a side dish.

3. Chop them up and make a potato salad (add hard boiled eggs, mayo, mustard, relish, salt and pepper)

Vegetables (green beans, corn, carrots, beans, broccoli, etc.)-

1. Make a leftover soup (if I don't plan to use them in the next few days, I mix them in a bag in my freezer and pull them out when we are ready for soup.)

2. Mix them into your chicken/turkey pot pie

3. Beans can be used in chili too.

4. Add an egg, flour, and baking powder to your mashed potatoes and fry up some potato pancakes.

Meats-

1. Chicken can be chopped up and frozen for many meals.

2. Ground beef/turkey can be frozen or mixed into a casserole.

3. Seasoned meat (taco meat or BBQ) can be served in a baked potato with cheese and sour cream.

For more Kitchen Tips go TammysRecipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday

My kitchen tip for this week is something I plan to do myself this week. We are leaving this afternoon for a short vacation and I am planning to take a meal with us so we will save money on our vacation budget. Eating out can be very expensive and since my family has access to a condo with a full kitchen, we cook meals. I try to keep things easy and take a meal I can prepare before hand and freeze. We also take our lunch with us to the amusement park we go to since the food courts there are so overpriced.

For more Kitchen Tips go to Tammy's Recipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Flourless Cookies

My grandma was bring dessert to our family Easter dinner last week and had planned to make cookies. Well when she went to pull the ingredient out for the recipe she realized she had no flour left. So she went in search of recipe and these yummy Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies is what she found. They were delicious!!!

For more Kitchen Tips go to Tammy's Recipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies:

3/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup butter, 1 stick

1 1/4 cup brown sugar

3 Tbsp milk

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1 egg

Beat all this together. In a separate bowl mix together

1 3/4 flour

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

Add this to the creamy mixture and beat together. Drop onto baking sheet and flatten with fork making crisscross pattern. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for 7-8 minutes

This is a favorite here in our house. I made them yesterday and they are half done already. Enjoy!!

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Bake don't Fry

My kitchen tip for today is fry less and bake more. This is such a healthy alternative for your family. One of the main things I love to bake is french fries. They taste just as good coming out of the oven compared to the deep fryer. Things like chicken tenders, fish, and hushpuppies have a great flavor baked too. Just think of all the calories you will be saving. :-)

Oven Fried Chicken

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast

1 stick butter, melted (I use light butter)

1 tube Ritz crackers, crushed ( I use reduced fat)

Salt and pepper chicken. Dip chicken breast in melted butter then roll in crushed Ritz cracker till coated. Place in greased 9x13 pan and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes then turn and bake another 30 minutes.

This is so much better than that greasy stuff from KFC!! :-)

For more kitchen tips go to Tammy's Recipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Substitute

I am blogging a little early today and that is because I have been up since 5 o'clock this morning :-( It is amazing what you can accomplish when you rise early. My dishes are washed, bathroom clean, and Olivia is feed and dressed so here I am. Although I'm not sure this will be an everyday event.

These pictures are form our dinner last night. Please excuse the armature photographer :-)

Parmesan Chicken

My kitchen tip for today is if you don't have the right ingredient, SUBSTITUTE!

The recipe I follow calls for Italian bread crumbs. I didn't have these in my pantry so I substituted crushed Ritz crackers and a little Italian seasoning. It was delicious!!
We ate this green salad with Olive Garden's Italian Dressing.

And for dessert a bowl of cantaloupe.

For more kitchen tips and yummy recipes go to Tammy's Recipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Parchment Paper

A wonderful item that I use in my kitchen often is parchment paper. I love to spread it over my cookie sheets and bake away with out the hassle of washing pan afterwards. With the economy the way it is and I myself trying to be frugal I know this seems like a bit of a splurge. Yet I have found it to be a convenience that I could not give up :-) But I have found it can be wiped clean, folded, and reused several times.

For more Kitchen Tips check out Tammy's Recipes.com

Kitchen Tip Tuesday: Easy Meals

Because I am having oral surgery this week I decided that my first kitchen tip should be simple. :-) We almost always have what I call a simple meal on Wednesdays since our church services begin at 6:30 that evening. Since I will probably be down for a while this weekend, and our budget won't allow us to eat out the entire time, I have decided that this will be simple meal week. Here are just a few meals I will be serving or have served before:

1. Homemade pizza (I plan on having this made the day before my surgery)
2. Loaded Baked Potatoes
3. Creamy Chicken Noodle
4. Red beans, rice, and polish sausage
5. Soups

These are just a few of many. I'll post more along with recipes tomorrow.

For more kitchen tips check out Tammy's Recipes.