Menu Planning

My menu planning "board" is actually an upright freezer in our laundry room - but this could easily be made on an old painting from the thrift store, or a canvas from the craft store.  I love to use old thrift store paintings for things like this - just cover the original piece with a coat of paint, or even adhesive shelf liner.

For Cricut Users:
Our Menu "Plan"
This is the same basic menu plan I have used for many years.  Things like "Thursday pasta" came from our sons playing football - so we loaded them up on carbs the night before.  Having a theme for each night, even if we don't always follow it, helps to narrow down the "whats for dinner" question that can be a little overwhelming at times.

There are several cards under each clip.  One card has a list of ideas, the other cards have meals that are either made ahead in the freezer, or we have all the ingredients on hand to make.  Each week I flip through the cards and move meals to the front, or I make a new card for something new I want to make that week.   That's our menu "guideline" for the week.  I may move tacos to Wednesday, or get busy and decide to just have spaghetti on a night I planned to cook something more time consuming..  The menu is a guide, not a set rule.  (there's a list of our "menu ideas" by theme, at the bottom of this post.)

The inventory card is a list of things in the freezer.  When the local stores like Burkholders have their chicken sales, I buy a case, then sort it out into zip lock bags, seasoning or marinating a lot of it, and making things like chicken cordon bleu, anniversary chicken, and cubed chicken for soups and pastas, all frozen and labeled.  The inventory helps me remember what all is still in there.  

There's a clip just for recipes that I want to try, and the lower clip has some seasoning packets we bought to try.  I'm less likely to forget we have them if they are clipped here, rather than stuck in the pantry.  

I rarely make just one casserole.  If it can be frozen, any time I make one, I make 2 or 3 and pop the extras in the freezer.  


The "base" of our meal plan looks something like this:

Sunday Dinner
Roast, Chicken, Pork loin - mashed or scalloped potatoes, vegetable, stove top stuffing
Lasagna
We go to church on Sunday, so these meals are all set so that they can mostly cook themselves while we are there.  Stovetop stuffing and ore ida mashed potatoes (yes - instant potatoes on Sunday) can be made in just a few minutes when we get home.  

Whatever meat we have on Sunday influences the rest of the week.  Leftover roast may become beef stroganoff, or pot pie, or roast beef sandwiches.  Leftover pork may go into carnitas, chicken into a soup or chicken pot pie, etc.

Monday  Leftovers
When I say "leftovers" , that could mean a meal I made extra of and froze, or it could mean leftovers in the fridge that I re-purpose into another meal.  

If there are no leftovers, or if none of them appeal to us, we grill hamburgs, or have breakfast for dinner.  

On Saturdays, Fetters in Milton has any large sub for $6.49.  We frequently pick that deal up, and while there we often buy steaks as well.  If we did buy steaks, and didn't have them Saturday night, we'll have them on Monday.

Tuesday Taco Night
Enchiladas, taco salad, taco quiche, refried bean soup, carnitas, flautas, burritos, or tacos

We also sometimes do baked potatoes on Tuesdays, with  variety of topping options.  I may make a meat or sandwich to go with them, or we may just have potatoes.  

This week I plan to make cilantro lime chicken tacos on homemade flatbread, with a baja sauce and a three bean salad with tortillas.

Wednesday Casseroles
"casseroles" is a misnomer.  Wednesday is my errands day, so what we have is often left up in the air, based on what I find at the market or store that week that looks good.  If I know it's a particularly busy Wednesday, it will be something I can throw in the crockpot before I leave for the day.  But I keep a list of ideas as well - 
Sweet and sour chicken, soulvaki, celine dijon chicken, brasciole, sauerbraten beef, shepherds pie

Thursday Pasta
Ideas - Pork Lo Mein, Rigatoni Casserole, Goulash, Beef Stroganoff, Haluska, Chicken Spaghetti, Turkey Tetrazzini, Chicken alfredo, Carbonara, Spaghetti, Baked Spaghetti, Macaroni and cheese...

Friday Night Pizza Night
Calzones are a staple here.  Home made pizza dough, topped with Italian seasoning, garlic, deli ham, pepperoni, and thick layers of provolone and mozzarella cheese.  Fold, bake, serve with sauce on the side.

Weavers Pizza is also a frequent option.

Saturday Soup and Sandwiches
Bear Creek Soups are very good, and pretty cheap at Big Lots.  One pack costs around $3 - and all you do is add 8 cups of water.  I keep these in the pantry, and they are great for any night I am in a rush

Soups are also great for using up leftovers.  I can usually clean out the fridge and make it into a soup of some sort.  :-)

Other staples on our menu rotation: French onion, broccoli cheddar, vegetable, chicken noodle, chicken enchilada, sausage tortellini, cheeseburger soup, chili, chicken corn

Sandwiches are rarely lunch meat here.  It's not something I typically keep on hand.  The exception is deli ham from the cooler section of Sam's club.  It's a cheap ham, over in the aisles near the frozen foods, not in the deli aisle.  It comes in a two pack and freezes exceptionally well.  This is what I use in calzones, and in ham and cheese sliders,  or ham bbq.  Occasionally I will buy sliced roast beef at the deli, specifically for roast beef sandwiches.  I love horseradish and have a ton in my garden, it goes great on roast beef sandwiches.

Other staple sandwiches - Hamburg BBQ ("sloppy joes"), falafel, pulled pork, chicken salad, white castle knock offs.

Lunches For Dan's Work
The freezer in our kitchen, on the side of the fridge, is for meals for Dan to take to work, and ice cream.  When I cook supper I always try to cook enough for Dan's lunches, if it is something that will freeze.  I stack the meals in containers like tv dinners, putting the latest in the back - so what he takes to work is almost never what we had for supper the night before.

Inside Our Freezer
I know upright freezers are no longer common, but this 1980's montgomery ward freezer still works great, nearly 40 years later.  We've been through at least 12 "more energy efficient" chest freezers since 1993, but this freezer my mom gave me, from my childhood, is still going strong.  (Many of the chest freezers are used for storage here on the farm, but too many of them were simply trashed, as they were not able to be repaired) It has to be defrosted manually twice a year, but I think it's worth it!

 The freezer is sorted into sections - there's a basket of premade foods (the chicken cordon bleu for instance - and that basket it sitting on one of the "emergency lasagnas" always kept in here) one of just meats, one for vegetables, and one for things like frozen french fries and pierogies.  The baskets at the top hold cheese, and sweets. When I make doughnuts or muffins, I freeze a bunch in the sweets basket, and we use SO much cheese in this house..  I know it changes the texture to freeze it, but it still works just fine if it's going to be melted into a dish anyway.  I frequently buy logs of provolone, and large bags of shredded mozzarella and of cheddar, and then freeze them in quart sized ziplocks.

The door of the freezer holds frozen breakfast foods (waffles, scrambled eggs with peppers and sausage for breakfast burritos, sausages) and fruits that I froze in season.  I have too many chickens, so we have a good amount of eggs.  Ok, an insane amount of eggs. I give a lot away, but I also scramble and freeze a few dozen each week.  They reheat well.

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An Index Of Recipes & Resources


Five Light & Funny Book Series

Five book series that are fun, easy to read, and and just might make you laugh out loud.


Holmes On The Range By Steve Hockensmith
Not only is this series of mysteries light, offbeat, and funny, it is also historical fiction, covering the Worlds Fair, the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, and western life in the 1890's
Two cowboys, one addicted to the Sherlock Holmes stories that ran in the monthly strand magazine.  As the men travel across the west in search of work, they stumble on to mysteries, getting in the way of the new Pinkerton Detective Agency as they solve them using Sherlock Holmes methods.

Look to see if you can borrow the  audio books from your  local library through the Libby app - this is a series that is great for the whole family to listen to together.

The Rosie Project By Graeme Simsion
A 3 book series, these are a romantic comedy.   Not my normal genre, but these are a unique, quirky, read that was both funny, and charming.
The art of love is never a science: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.

Rosie Jarman possesses all these qualities. Don easily disqualifies her as a candidate for The Wife Project (even if she is “quite intelligent for a barmaid”). But Don is intrigued by Rosie’s own quest to identify her biological father. When an unlikely relationship develops as they collaborate on The Father Project, Don is forced to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie―and the realization that, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love, it finds you.

The Andy Carpenter series by David Rosenfelt

My problem with cozy mysteries is that they are often so ridiculous that it becomes annoying.  The main characters are often so inept that it can be hard to keep reading.  That is not the case with this series.  

Andy Carpenter is a lawyer, who is surprised to inherit a great deal of money, but doesn't particularly need the money and doesn't change his lifestyle too much at all, other than to only take cases when he truly wants to.  He uses some of his money to fund a dog rescue, and most of his cases revolve around dogs, although it's almost always the owners he defends.  (at least once, it's actually the dog - but it manages to not be silly and even comes across as reasonable, as unbelievable as that may seem.)  The books are smart and well written, with twists I frequently don't see coming.  But they are also light, full of dry humor, and do not require a lot of heavy thought.  There's a large number of characters that appear in every book over and over, and they are all well written and well developed characters.

If you read too many of them back to back, some of the themes can become a bit repetitive.  But even that hasn't hampered our enjoyment of them.


Agatha Raisin  by M.C. Beaton
The Agatha Raisin books are a 30 book series by M.C. Beaton. In 2018, these were the "light reads" I defaulted to between the thrillers and historical fiction that  I typically read.

 After selling her successful PR firm in London, Agatha moves to village life in the Cotswalds, where she stumbles into murder after murder, before, in book 15, finally opening her own detective agency. Middle aged, acerbic, and constantly making poor decisions, the books are both funny, and charming.

For those who love Stephanie Plum books, these are the older, classier, British version.  (They are also  a bit more PG - although Agatha does her fair share of bed hopping, the details are left to your imagination)


Miss Fortune Series by Jana DeLeon

 With a leak in the CIA and a price on her head, CIA Assassin Fortune Redding needs to lay low.  She's sent to the Bayou, where she poses as a former beauty queen and librarian - her most difficult assignment to date. 

This series gets better and better as it goes - with lots of comedy. Very quick reads.

Years ago I listed to a podcast - the only podcast I've ever really enjoyed - Book Tour With  John Grisham.  He went to small independent book stores, with other big name authors and interviewed them about their books and writing process.  It was fantastic.  In it [and it's been quite a few years, so forgive me if I get this wrong] he mentioned he was "challenged" to write a beach read.  I think someone said he couldn't do it.  So..  he did.  Camino Island was the first, and it was REALLY good.  Then Camino Wind, which I also loved.  Light, beach reads.  The 3rd in the series is Camino Ghosts, and I think it might be a bit heavier of a read, considering the subject matter - but I'm very much looking forward to it.


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For the purposes of this list, I'm going to assume you have already heard of the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich.  Laugh out loud funny, I admit that I read these as soon as they come out each fall.  A guilty pleasure for sure, as Evanovich is at heart a romance author, of the smutty variety, and that does carry over to these books.  Stephanie is a slut who regularly lives with one man while sleeping with another, something I can't imagine any series getting away with for 30 books if the main character was male.  Then to add a layer of disbelief, these two strong, handsome men who could have their pick of any woman and yet choose to share this one, both work together on many occasions to keep her safe. It's so despicable really, that you shouldn't like her -and yet its truly difficult to not love this bumbling, incompetent, bonds agent, and all of the great characters, and family,  she surrounds herself with.  (Reading this description, even I can't believe this is a series I love.  It's really that funny, that you can overlook this, even though normally it would completely ruin a series for me)
,
The situations Stephanie runs into  are hysterical, and her grandmother is an absolute riot.    It's hard to think of another series that has made me laugh out loud as frequently as this one.   

Evanovich has three other humorous detective series that are also very  funny, and all three are lighter on the "graphic romance" scenes -  

The Fox & O'Hare series teams a female FBI agent up with a Con man to break up crime rings.  

The Lizzie & Diesel Series teams up an unlikely pair as treasure hunters.  Funny and light, there's a bit more of the fantasy/magical element in these books, but not completely, just in the peripheral, and still in a humorous way.

The Knight & Moon series pairs up a socially awkward,  eccentric, genius with a practical minded junior analyst. 

And if you like these series by Evanovich, here are more to try:
https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2014/04/if-you-like-stephanie-plum-novels-try.html

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Find more book lists, reviews, and recommendations, here:

Peek A Boo Clothespin Chicks - With Free SVG

Make a peek a boo Chick Clothespin Craft - with a free printable, and a free svg for those who want to use a cricut to make them.

The Download includes two files
A PNG file - which can be printed on any printer and cut by hand, 
OR upload it to Design Space, delete the white background, and use the print and cut option with cricut.

And it includes the svg, which you can upload to design space to cut.
When you upload the svg, change the size first.
You want the entire group to be 3.115 tall.

Once you have it resized, click on ungroup, and change the colors

I made the egg white so that kids can color and decorate them, but you could use colors too!
I cut the egg and chick out of paper, and the face out of vinyl, so the face is stickers
BUT - the face is tiny.  It may be much easier to just draw the face on!

You can also use the shapes tool to add shapes to the egg, then change them to draw, so that kids have shapes to color in and around.


Glue the chick on to the bottom first, then the egg over top.  Work as close to the end of the clothespin as you can, so that is opens as wide as possible.  On the very edge of the chick and egg are glued fast.  I used e600 glue because it was laying out from my last project.  It worked great, but it does not dry super fast.



If you want to cut a bunch all at once, 25 fit on one 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper.

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Dollar Tree Cookie Sheet Metal Flowers

This Flower made from Dollar Tree cookie sheets held up for nearly three years outdoors - one year on the porch, and two out in the open on a fence, before a storm blew it down and it was mangled under the trampoline.  I hadn't really expected it to hold up that well   - I was impressed!  

Six Cricut Projects To Try This Week-End

Six Cricut Projects To Try This Week-End - A pillow, A 3d Paper Truck, A Puzzle, Converting a photo to an svg on an Easter Basket, Making a Charger Plate sign from the Dollar Tree, and A Rolled Paper Flower Wreath (maybe make it in a variety of pastels for Easter?)

Ten Books To Read While Facing A Pandemic

Ten books, including fiction, historical fiction, and non fiction, about pandemics through the centuries.

The Stand, by Stephen King, was already a best seller and a classic, but these days, many book clubs are pulling it back off the shelves to read it again.  The book has been referenced so many times in recent weeks, that King himself responded on twitter with "“No, corona-virus is NOT like THE STAND. It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions".  

But for those of us who like to read based on current events and themes. The Stand is hard to skip over right now.  Here are ten books, including fiction, historical fiction, and non fiction, about pandemics through the centuries.

The Stand By Stephen King
In the Stand, one man escapes from a biological weapon facility after an accident, carrying with him the deadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that - in the ensuing weeks - wipes out most of the world's population. In the aftermath, survivors choose between following an elderly black woman to Boulder or the dark man, Randall Flagg, who has set up his command post in Las Vegas. It's a classic tale of good versus evil.

Historical Fiction - based on true events
A Year Of Wonders By Geraldine Brooks
Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history

Set in 17th century England, of a village that quarantines itself to arrest the spread of the plague When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Fiction
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

Historical Fiction
Fever by Mary Beth Keene
Mary Beth Keane has written a spectacularly bold and intriguing novel about the woman known as “Typhoid Mary,” the first person in America identified as a healthy carrier of Typhoid Fever.

On the eve of the twentieth century, Mary Mallon emigrated from Ireland at age fifteen to make her way in New York City. Brave, headstrong, and dreaming of being a cook, she fought to climb up from the lowest rung of the domestic-service ladder. Canny and enterprising, she worked her way to the kitchen, and discovered in herself the true talent of a chef. Sought after by New York aristocracy, and with an independence rare for a woman of the time, she seemed to have achieved the life she’d aimed for when she arrived in Castle Garden. Then one determined “medical engineer” noticed that she left a trail of disease wherever she cooked, and identified her as an “asymptomatic carrier” of Typhoid Fever. With this seemingly preposterous theory, he made Mallon a hunted woman.

The Department of Health sent Mallon to North Brother Island, where she was kept in isolation from 1907 to 1910, then released under the condition that she never work as a cook again. Yet for Mary—proud of her former status and passionate about cooking—the alternatives were abhorrent. She defied the edict.

Bringing early-twentieth-century New York alive—the neighborhoods, the bars, the park carved out of upper Manhattan, the boat traffic, the mansions and sweatshops and emerging skyscrapers—Fever is an ambitious retelling of a forgotten life. In the imagination of Mary Beth Keane, Mary Mallon becomes a fiercely compelling, dramatic, vexing, sympathetic, uncompromising, and unforgettable heroine.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History By John M. Barry
The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic.
At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.
"The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."  
 
Non Fiction
Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It
By Gina Kolata
 A national bestseller, the fast-paced and gripping account of the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918 from acclaimed science journalist Gina Kolata, now featuring a new epilogue about avian flu. 
When we think of plagues, we think of AIDS, Ebola, anthrax spores, and, of course, the Black Death. But in 1918 the Great Flu Epidemic killed an estimated forty million people virtually overnight. If such a plague returned today, taking a comparable percentage of the US population with it, 1.5 million Americans would die.
In Flu, Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. From Alaska to Norway, from the streets of Hong Kong to the corridors of the White House, Kolata tracks the race to recover the live pathogen and probes the fear that has impelled government policy.


Hot Zone - The Terrifying True Origins Of The Ebola Virus by Richard Preston

Also a mini-series drama starring Julianna Margulies, Topher Grace, Liam Cunningham, James D'Arcy, and Noah Emmerich, on National Geographic.
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their "crashes" into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.

Non Fiction

Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah

In Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, Shah interweaves history, original reportage, and personal narrative to explore the origins of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera, one of history’s most deadly and disruptive pandemic-causing pathogens, and the new diseases that stalk humankind today.
To reveal how a new pandemic might develop, she tracks each stage of cholera’s dramatic journey, from its emergence in the South Asian hinterlands as a harmless microbe to its rapid dispersal across the nineteenth-century world, all the way to its latest beachhead in Haiti. Along the way she reports on the pathogens now following in cholera’s footsteps, from the MRSA bacterium that besieges her own family to the never-before-seen killers coming out of China’s wet markets, the surgical wards of New Delhi, and the suburban backyards of the East Coast.
By delving into the convoluted science, strange politics, and checkered history of one of the world’s deadliest diseases, Pandemic reveals what the next global contagion might look like―and what we can do to prevent it.
Non Fiction
And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts
 And The Band Played on was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of investigative reporting. An international bestseller, a nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and made into a critically acclaimed movie, Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80's while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat. One of the few true modern classics, it changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years. Now republished in a special 20th Anniversary edition, And the Band Played On remains one of the essential books of our time.
A Journal Of The Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, also wrote a book about the plague.  Read it for free online here:https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm
Or find it on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2II1taY
an account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague or the bubonic plague struck the city of London. The book is told somewhat chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings.
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