Pinning & Planning – August 26

When you plan your meals for the week, will your week go as planned or do some meals get tabled?

Although planning meals saves money and time, sometimes weeks don’t always go as planned.  Some evenings will serve an unforeseen school event or family situation which wasn’t on the menu and it will cause dinners to go uncooked.  When that happens, I just postpone that meal for another night or the following week.

Such was the case last Friday.  An unanticipated road trip caused us to miss our Friday evening pizza and we had to catch a bite on the road.  So dining out for two meals last week may not have saved us any dough, the pizza was saved for tonight and next Friday’s family pizza night will be leftovers.

As for this week’s supermarket ad, I wasn’t really impressed with the meat selection.  Salmon and shrimp were on special, but my kids won’t touch the stuff.  However, while stopping by the supermarket for milk the other day, I happened to stumble upon two unadvertised specials, such as Greewise (Publix’s store brand organic) thin cut chicken filets for $5.59/lb and organic ground turkey for $5.50.  See, sometimes it pays to swing by the meats on the way to the milk cooler.

Here’s my menu for the week:

Sunday – Pizza

Monday – Black Beans and Spanish Rice

Tuesday – Roasted Grape Tomatoes and Arugula with Linguine

Wednesday – Ground Turkey Tacos

Thursday – Chicken-Mushroom {and Spinach} Quesadillas

Friday – leftovers

Saturday – dinner out

About my ground turkey tacos, I make my own seasoning, which is so simple and seriously makes the tastiest tacos ever.  I add extra cumin and this chili powder recipe.

If you are using taco seasoning from a packet, please stop now. Those packets are so unhealthy.  They’re full of sodium, MSG and garbage.  Here are ingredients as they appear on the label of the packet you probably have in your pantry:

“Yellow Corn Flour, Salt, Maltodextrin, Paprika, Spices, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Natural Flavor, Caramel Color (sulfites)”

Think you don’t see MSG.  Think again.  “Autolyzed Yeast Extract” is another form of MSG, as well as a few others.  Once you remove MSG from your diet and your taste buds adjust to the way food is supposed taste, you will notice a huge difference in food and your overall health.

As for the “leftovers” I’ve planned for week…honestly, my family is not the biggest fans of leftovers, but I love them.  If I enjoy a meal, I love eating it the next day.  My family will eat leftovers if I present them in another form, which makes two meals out of one.  This week’s leftovers will consist of leftover turkey taco meat which will be used for nachos and that my kids love.

So, what’s cooking this week?  Do you stick to the weekly plans?  Are leftovers part of your weekly menu?  Link up and share.



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Denise Mestanza-Taylor+

3 comments

  1. sue says:

    Here I am, it must be Sunday. Thanks for the taco seasoning recipe, I am going to forward it to my kids. I’m with you, the store bought packages are awful…so much sodium. As an educator, I sometimes wonder if we have to reinstate home economics to teach young people about nutrition, cooking, finances, and home making skills. It is worrisome to see young people in such poor shape. It took a lot of time and effort to manage what my kids ate, but both of them love to cook, are adventurous eaters and they are their ideal weight. However, some people don’t realize that they have to teach their children, they never learned and it is a vicious cycle. That’s why blogs such as yours are so beneficial. Keep up the good work!

    • Run DMT says:

      Thank you! 🙂 I agree home economics are long forgotten but much needed lessons. I think many people are afraid to cook because they imagine a whole day in the kitchen, but there are some fabulous quick and easy AND healthy ways to cook without breaking the bank or your belt. Thanks for stopping by!

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