Welcome!
Hey there! I'm Holly. A 40+ year old insurance-nerd wife, mom, beauty lover, and about a million other things in between.
This is the place where I share about our lives, what I'm currently loving, books I'm reading, plus-size style, beauty recommendations, health + fitness endeavors and anything else I'm finding interesting at the moment.
Thanks for stopping by!
Category Archives: Menu Plans
What’s For Dinner?
This week the garden and its bounty are dominating the side dishes. Our house is overrun with zucchini, squash, lemon cucumbers, regular cucumbers, spaghetti squash, basil (RESURRECTION!), and we even have some gorgeous tomatoes that are ready to be eaten! I barely had to buy produce. I’m so excited to have fresh, awesome produce right in my backyard.
Reason # 426 of Why Summer Rules!
Monday
Lunch: Taco Salad
Dinner: Turkey Chili with all the fixins!
Tuesday
Lunch: Grilled Chicken Salads (chicken grilled up this weekend!)
Dinner: Italian Pub Burgers with Roasted Parmesan Zucchini + Caprese Salad (Thanks for the inspiration to roast my zucchini, Jessica!)
Wednesday
Lunch: Chicken Rogan Josh + Curried Squash with Onions
Dinner: Pork Chops Pizzaiola + Roasted Broccoli + Pizza Squash
Thursday
Lunch: Kielbasa + Greek Salad
Dinner: Pesto + Goat Cheese Chicken + Sauteed Cabbage
Friday
Lunch: Stuffed Zucchini Boats
Dinner: Spaghetti Squash Bolognese
Saturday
Leftovers, pick up meat share.
Sunday
Brunch with some of my favorite lady friends!
Leftovers/Veggie Drawer Cleanout for dinner.
Ok, it’s YOUR TURN…
________________
What’s For Dinner?
God, I love this game.
The weather is going to be a bit cooler this week around here, so I am taking advantage and cooking some things that use my oven/stove. Last week that was NOT an option.
What are YOU having for dinner this week? Next week’s menu isn’t going to plan itself you know. Give me some inspiration!
Monday
Lunch: Balsamic Pot Roast and Roasted Cauliflower
Dinner: Jalapeno Popper Burgers (inspired by this recipe) + Grilled Salad
Tuesday
Lunch: Grilled Mojito Lime Chicken Thighs (cooked over the weekend) + Sauteed Summer Squash + Basil
Dinner: Turkey Satay Sliders (if these are any good, I’ll post my recipe) + Salad (We have a Costco bag of Romaine that needs chowing this week)
Wednesday
Lunch: Grilled Southwest Chicken Thighs (again, this weekend’s work) + Sweet and Sour Cabbage with Bacon (inspired by this recipe)
Dinner: I’m going out with a friend…Poor Garrett, Leftover city — Population: 1, buddy.
Thursday
Lunch: Spiced Pork Chops with Sauteed Apples (again, recipe to come if it is good) + whatever looks ready in the garden. That stuff doesn’t eat itself.
Dinner: Chicken Breasts with Italian Sweet and Sour Fennel + Sauteed Cabbage (can you tell we have lots of cabbage on hand, too?)
Friday
Lunch: Turkey Larb (inspired by this recipe, Paleo-ified) + Greek Romaine Salad
Dinner: Pork Chops with Balsamic Peppers (here is a similar recipe) + Squash and Cabbage Warm Bacon Coleslaw. (Whoa, whoa..wait. Squash? In Your Coleslaw? Yep, it’s divine.)
Saturday
Lunch: Chicken Gouda Sausages + Veggie Drawer Cleanout
Dinner: Ribs — recipe TBD + Surf and Turf Skewers (spicy shrimp + chorizo) and Grilled Veggies
Sunday
Eat Leftovers and go grocery shopping!
Ok, it’s YOUR TURN…
________________
What’s For Dinner?
Well I couldn’t very well tell you last week that I want to be more accountable at meal planning and then not actually make a meal plan. So here’s what we are eating next week. What recipes around the internet are you excited about? Leave me some links in the comments. I need some new recipe inspiration. Don’t worry if they aren’t Paleo, I’m a very good recipe adapter.
Monday
Lunch: My Favorite Chili leftovers
Dinner: Green Chili Turkey Burgers over spinach + Green Salad + Sweet Potato Fries
Tuesday
Lunch: Chicken Rogan Josh with Broccoli Slaw
Dinner: Taco Salads
*I make my own taco seasoning, add it to ground beef, and throw in a mess of vegetables
Wednesday
Lunch: Grilled Chicken Thighs + Sauteed Squash with Onions
Dinner: Dad’s Pork Chops + Roasted Onions and Broccoli
Thursday
Lunch: My Favorite Chili leftovers
Dinner: Green Curry Pot Roast + Garlic Cauliflower Mash + Roasted Parsnips
*This pot roast is to die for. I mean, dead. So good. So easy.
Friday
Lunch: Sausage + Peppers
Dinner: Skillet Herbed Chicken Tenderloins + Sauteed Garlicky Zucchini
Saturday
Lunch: Out
Dinner: Stovetop Pork Carnitas + Salad + Clean out the crisper drawer veggies
*This is the best make at home carnitas recipe I’ve ever made
Sunday
Grocery Shop
*Breakfast this week includes Green Smoothies, Mini Frittatas, or scrambled eggs + sausage.
What’s on your menu?
________________________________
You Take the Good, You Take the Bad
It’s amazing how one little list can put some new pep in your step! All of a sudden I have purpose! (I know, I’m a little crazy, but I like to think that’s part of why you love me, yes?) I swear my life motto should be: If you want something done ask someone busy — because the more I put on my plate the more I get done. There is no lazier Holly than a Holly with nary a thing to do, trust me. I have the ability to take more than 2 naps in a day (naps, people!) I have no problem doing lazy. Now I realize this philosophy is somewhat dependent on inertia, which is sort of counter productive since one actually has to stop sometimes, but today we’re not here to talk about my flawed life logic we’re here to talk about successes and well, of course, immediate failures.
So I’ve been tackling all sorts of things around here and one of the first things I did was plan all my meals this week according to a strategy I call Operation: Fridge Cleanout. Generally when I plan meals I sit down with Garrett and we talk about what fabulous concoctions we’d like for dinner the following week and grocery shop from there. It’s not always the most efficient for the groceries we have on hand, but hey, it works. However, since I’m “attempting” to wrangle my grocery budget to under $400 this month (which I realize may sound like a ridiculous amount to some of you since there are only two of us, but hey I’ve got to start somewhere) I thought it might be smarter to actually see what meals we can make from the items we have on hand before writing my grocery list. And we did. And guess what? No need to go to the store, we have everything we need right on hand! So success this week goes to our July Week One Meal Plan:
(Apparently our dinner menu is also an advertisement for Sierra Nevada Products. Not really sure what to say about that besides, uh…YUM.)
So…Success, right? Dinner menu with no need to go to the grocery store…WOO!
Except…you knew there was an except, right?
Except last night we went to Trader Joe’s (which you can file under ‘M’ for My Own Personal Kryptonite) to get a few little treats. Is their any better place to go for treats? The only product masquerading as dessert in our house right now is some freezer burned rainbow sherbert and a bag of cherries, and although we don’t eat dessert every night religiously you must agree with me that this is a Dessert Crisis of Epic Proportions, right? You Must. Anyway, so we went to TJ’s to pick up two specific things: Chocolate Covered Raisins (For Her) and Strawberry Licorice (For Him).
And instead we did this:
That, my friends, you can file under ‘E’ for Epic Fail.
So, I appreciate you reserving judgment on the two bottles of $5.99 Prosecco. I don’t know what to tell you about that, or this whole receipt for that matter, except to say it was a momentary lack of all control. But at the time it seemed like we needed all the items! After all we are out of Pine Nuts, which I like to have stashed in our freezer, Honey, which I use on greek yogurt for breakfast or lunch. My almond butter was getting low and plus, the TJ’s brand — has Flax Seeds! And for half the price of my regular grocery store! The General Tsao’s Stir Fry sauce is AH-MAY-ZING (so is the chili pepper sauce, hence the two bottles of those), and last night we sadly discovered they were out of it (until two aisles later when we found two bottles randomly lying about so OF COURSE we bought them both!) The Trail Mix and Nut Aisle is always a challenge for Garrett so he picked up a few more “treats” since we hardly ever hit up Trader Joe’s so those were easy to rationalize. The black bean dip is because we have a giant bag of tortilla chips leftover from making nachos last week and who eats tortilla chips plain? Plus, $1.69? That’s practically giving it away! Veggie corndogs are cheap at TJ’s so I always stock up when I’m there. Who doesn’t need an extra bag of Penne on hand (and our pasta stash was getting low). The Bacon we incorporated into last nights Breakfast for Dinner (and damn it was good, no regrets on that!) and the string cheese? WHAT KIND OF PERSON SAYS NO TO STRING CHEESE? A COMMUNIST, I TELL YOU. COMMUNIST! Ok, so the mini hamburger buns? Well, those I’ll admit were an impulse buy — they were just too cute to pass up. Sliders, anyone?
So as you can see, each and ever purchase was a total necessity, I mean come on. Necessity. The $75 out of my $400 grocery budget on the 6th day of the month, however? Well, it remains to be seen what the consequences of that will be for that goal. You win some, you lose some.