Once again, I’m menu planning. This is becoming a regular thing because I have to be VERY careful with where my food money goes these days. Do you know how much food three kids can pack away every week? A ton. Every one tells me, “Oh, they are so little! They won’t eat much!” They don’t know my kids at all. Those little half servings that most people give their kids are just appetizers for mine. My nine-year old out-eats me every day of the week and occasionally puts her Dad to shame. And the boy-o? You have no idea how much he can pack away when he’s in the mood to eat.

This week the budget is extra tight. This is the end of the month crunch when belts don’t just get tightened, new holes are punched.

I went two places to find menu items this week. The first is the website Budget Bytes. I’ve never used a recipe from there before but I like the setup that tells me exactly how much each serving is but also tells me the entire recipe price. Most budget recipes only tell you the per serving cost. Then you find out it serves 20 and you aren’t really saving any money at all. The other site I used is the Taste of Home website. They only give you the per serving cost but I know their recipes are winners most of the time.

On to the recipes:

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

I have a good potato soup recipe but it’s not exactly what one might call “healthy”. I’m going to try this one and see how it works out. It really doesn’t matter if I make a healthy version or not, the rest of my family will complain because it’s soup. Soup dishes are never keepers in this house. I, however, love soup. As long as I’m the Head Chef around here, we’ll eat soup.

Focaccia Pizza

I know. More pizza. I don’t care. There will never be too many pizza recipes in this world. This one has a pesto sauce and a handmade focaccia crust.

It’s possible this one isn’t supposed to be a main dish. I’m going for it anyway.

Summer Vegetable Tian sounds all fancy but a Tian is actually a rustic dish from Provence. I don’t know why I know this, possibly because after Ratatouille came out, I googled the heck out of french food. That’s probably it. In any case, this involves summer squash and cheese. You can not go wrong.

After all that healthiness, we need something that is just pure comfort food. True story, I was hopelessly addicted to those salisbury steak frozen meals when I was a kid. They were super cheap and delicious.

Hopefully, this will be just as good as I remember those being.

I’ve had a whole chicken sitting in my freezer for two months. It’s probably time that I did something with it. I don’t like preparing whole chickens. I never buy them unless they are stupidly cheap. Someone brought this thing to my house for some family weekend and it never got cooked.

I really hate chicken carcasses. I never know what to do with them and I think tearing meat from a bone is disgusting. Whatever. It’s here. It’s free. I should eat it. This recipe looks simple enough and I like the idea of sweet and tangy food. That’s one of my favorite combinations.

That leaves us with a quick review of last week:

Crescent Sandwiches: These were great, of course. There was never any question if my family would love these. Ham, crescent rolls and cheddar cheese is a no-fail dinner any day in this house. We ate two entire tubes of these babies.

Slow Cooker Orange Chicken: This is not Panda Express. It isn’t bad. It is simply not what I wanted. The husband liked it; the kids were ambivalent about it. I was… I don’t know. Maybe if I hadn’t wanted Panda Express so much, it would have gone over better for me. Not a keeper.

Slow Cooker Italian Chicken: There is nothing wrong with recipe. It cooked up fine. I’m not a fan of bland food though and this was definitely bland.

Cheesy Pepperoni Bread: Cheese. Pepperoni. Bread. Yeah. Another no-fail. I added a good amount of minced garlic and we dipped it in marinara sauce and it was perfect.

Chicken Pot Pie: I didn’t make this. We were invited to a friend’s house at the last minute and this ended up being scrapped as a dinner that night. It has made it to this week’s menu. I have a plan that involves a mini pie maker thing my Mother-in-law got me for Christmas. I think Mini Pot Pies will be adorably edible. We’ll see how adventurous I am feeling later this week when it comes time to make them.

I’ve hooked up with Menu Plan Monday because it worked out that today is Monday and I’m menu planning. Isn’t that fortuitous?