What's for Dinner this Week?

Can menu planning be considered a hobby?  Something I love doing is planning our menu and grocery list for the week.  We have found that lack of planning results in a lot of unhealthy choices and eating out.  While eating out is fun, it is expensive and sometimes often we have restaurant regret!  To stay within our $100 weekly food budget, it's easier to buy more interesting foods to cook than have someone cook them for us.

In order to spice up our weekly menu, Chap and I resolved to try a couple new recipes each week this month.  We have a lot of random staples hanging out in our pantry at the moment.  Including a lot of different flours.  Which is odd.  Because we don't bake.  Ever.  Anyways...

Here is our menu for this week!  We call it our "dinner wheel" because nailing down specific days for meals was too stifling for us.  We plan a couple of specific days based on schedules and prep needed for certain dishes, but otherwise we choose within our menu daily.  Links are provided to recipes we are using!

Dinner Wheel Week of 1/12/2014

Indian Enchiladas
Chickpea Pizza with Sausage and Peppers
Crockpot Cilantro Lime Chicken
Pesto Pasta with Broccoli
Winter Chili (maybe with venison tenderloin in the crockpot)
Sprouted Lentils with Tilapia
{Saturday night - out for a friends' birthday!}

Because the pizza only called for one ounce of mozzarella, I'm using the rest in this breakfast recipe:
Kale and Chorizo Frittata 

For lunches we eat leftover dinner items and salads with fun toppings from the fridge or pantry.  Snacks are hummus and raw veggies, fresh fruit, nuts, and sometimes cheese and gluten free crackers.

We were treated to a great surprise at the farmer's market this weekend - Italian parsley was 4 bunches for $1!  Yes, 25 cent bunches of parsley.  We are making tabbouleh for snacks for sure!  We will also be sure to spice up our hummus this week with extra parsley.  Mmmmmm!

Our grocery total this week was about $85, which means we will be using our entertainment budget for dinner Saturday night!  I'm pretty sure we will be quite entertained!  This means we can roll $15 into next week's budget, and the extra should give us enough for a fun date night!

I hope these recipes turn out well - I'll be sure to let you know!