April 24th - 30th Menu

Last week was another very busy one and between the job and the life I didn't have much relaxation time. I thoroughly enjoyed myself yesterday, though. I spent the morning and early part of the afternoon doing very little then went to a friend's house for dinner. We had a simple yet delicious meal of roasted chicken with plenty of sides, most of which were too high in carbs for me but I did eat a bit of this and a smidge of that and brought some of the leftovers home to eat later this week.

I noticed this morning that my zucchini plants have flowers! I need to move one of the plants to another container but I'm thrilled to see they're flowering. The tomato and pepper plants have no flowers yet and seem to be growing too slowly but I haven't given up on them. We might get some good storms over the next three days and I sure hope we do as my plants need it.

I'd planned to prepare a beef roast this week using Ray's 3 Envelope Roast recipe but when I took the roast from the freezer this morning, it had bad freezer burn. I dug a little more and found four additional packages of beef with the burn. Argh, how maddening! I've used my sister's sealer a few times in the last four months and those items are fine so I'm buying one this week and will try to use it faithfully! She has a method that works for her and I'll do it her way to see if it works as well for me.

As for the bad meat, I was going to trash it but remembered a Freecycle member who used to ask for freezer burned meat for her dogs so I listed it on Freecycle and someone is getting it tomorrow for her dogs. I hate wasting food but at least it isn't going into the trash.

Thanks to the freezer burned beef, my menu for this week changed and here it is, in no particular order except for tonight's dinner which is listed first:

Chipotle fish with vegetables from Sunday's dinner

Chicken and vegetables, more than likely made using Ray's recipe above. I haven't tried it with chicken yet but I'm sure it will be delicious.

Creamy Chicken and Cheese enchiladas made with egg wraps and served with faux spanish rice and a salad

Steak wrap made with Joseph's Lavash bread, thinly sliced ribeye steak, bell pepper, purple onion, and Alton Brown's Tzatziki sauce and served with spicy cucumber tomato salad

Archer Farms California grilled chicken salad

Dinner out one night, probably Italian or Chinese

As a side note, I've managed to gain 4 lbs in the last two weeks! Knowing that my weight fluctuates either way up to 5 lbs and I'm prone to water retention I'm not too worried about it. I still need to lose about 20 lbs but I think it's going to take a major increase in exercise to get there and right now I simply don't have the time so I'll continue to eat low carb, work out when I can, try to get an extra walk in here and there, and watch those 4 extra pounds like a hawk! I've gotten rid of any clothes above a size 12 so I really need to get and keep a handle on this. ;)

And that's it for this week. Join Laura and her many fans at Menu Plan Monday to find out what others are planning to nosh!