Who am I?

So, I've been trying really hard to do the meal planning thing for a few months now.  I'd say that I'm tending to fall more on the side of success rather than failure, but sometimes it still doesn't totally work out.  I've figured out that the key for me is planning 4 meals, figuring that on at least one of the nights we will end up going out/ ordering in and on the other nights we can have some of our stand-by meals--veggie burgers and sweet potato fries, spaghetti and homemade frozen meatballs, Annie's macaroni and cheese, etc.  It is Thursday and I have to say that this week might be my biggest planning success yet!

On Monday, I made shepherd's pie.  It's probably my favorite meal from childhood and the ultimate comfort food for me.  I don't think mine is as good as my Mom's, but we still enjoyed it.  I forgot to take pictures, but let's be honest, you know what it looks like and it isn't all that picturesque, anyway.  We managed to eat have some leftovers for lunch one day this week, too.  Score!

On Tuesday, I made baked salmon with lemon-dill butter, gingery green beans, and whole wheat couscous.

One of the healthier looking meals, I'd say.

Healthy aside from the sort of large amount of butter on the salmon.  I'm new to eating seafood and previously the only salmon I would eat had to be marinated past the point of no return in teriyaki.  This was a big step, but it was SO GOOD.  We will definitely have this again.

On Wednesday night, I made some sun dried tomato pesto with spaghetti squash.

Some of my favorite foods combined!  Can't be bad!

I made up the recipe for the pesto, but it was basically: 8 oz of sun dried tomatoes, a handful of basil, 1 clove of garlic, 1/4 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, a pinch of red pepper flakes, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper, enough olive oil to bring together.  Pulse the first 6 ingredients in the food processor until everything is chopped finely, then turn the machine on and stream in olive oil until it is a pesto consistency.  The recipe makes more than enough for two people, so I froze the rest for another night.

Today's dinner is what takes the cake, though.  It takes the cake because it's 7:05 am and I have already assembled everything for Buffalo Chicken and Black Bean enchiladas.  I know.  It started last night when I roasted some chicken overnight in the crock pot.

Not a bad thing to wake up to in the morning!

The chicken was roasted so perfectly and fell right off the bone.  I pulled the chicken and saved the bones and other stuff from the roasting pot for a future chicken stock.  I took some cues from Megan at Running Foodie and added black beans and more cheese, and she got the original recipe here.  I also forgot to get red enchilada sauce, but I wanted things to be pretty heavily buffalo sauced, so I used a combo of about 1/2 cup pureed tomatoes to 1 1/2 cups buffalo wing sauce.  I also really like cilantro, so I mixed some in with the filling, too.

It's going to be a long day thinking about this.

And this.

Matt might have band practice tonight, so I left this in the fridge with instructions so he can make it before I get home and have something tasty for dinner before he leaves.

I decided that I might as well just go for it and do all the dishes this morning, too.  So, tonight when I get home, dinner will be cooked and there won't be any dishes to do.  This is a major success.  Did I mention that I haven't even had my coffee yet!?!?!  You'll have to excuse me, I'm very proud of myself.

Have a great day!