This Week...So Far

I feel like I'm settling into a nice groove with this challenge.  When I plan and shop for my weeks dinners, I also now sit down and plan lunches so I know what's coming up each day.  I have also found that, with a little planning, this challenge has added surprising little to my grocery budget each week, since I am using ingredients or dishes that are leftover from dinners during the week.



Over the weekend we made a dish we call "Haystacks", it's kind of a cross between nachos and taco salad and it is wonderful!  I promise I will post our families recipe for Haystacks at a later time, it's a favorite Friday night treat.  Since I was planning ahead, I prepared extra taco meat and set it aside so that on Monday I could send taco salad for lunch.  They loved it! And once again, no one noticed that I replaced the sour cream with greek yogurt!

For Tuesday's lunch, I honored a request for a repeat.  The big winner of the challenge, so far, is the Italian pasta salad, I think we could all eat it for lunch every day and not get bored!  This time I changed it up just a tad (mostly because I'm forgetful and I forgot to get some olives) instead, I cut some mushrooms up and marinated them in some balsamic vinegar for about 15 minutes before draining them and adding them to the salad.  Delicious!

Today being Wednesday I felt like a sandwich was in order.  So, I set aside some of last night's meatloaf to make meatloaf sandwiches today,  I was so excited about making them that when I remembered that  I was out of mayonnaise, I could let that stop me.  Thankfully, I know how to make mayonnaise and have the freshest eggs available at any time, so I whipped up a batch of delicious homemade mayonnaise for the meatloaf sandwiches, topped them with some lettuce and our favorite Tillamook cheddar cheese, and the result was the best meatloaf sandwich ever!