Saturday Thoughts...A Hot Week Menu

Clockwise, Bottom Right:  Honey Whole Wheat Bread, Bacon and Egg Macaroni Salad, Kidney Bean Bowl, Garden Pasta Salad, Egg Salad Sandwich    

It was going to be a hot week; my husband had asked for sandwiches with homemade cooked dressing…I had eggs I needed to use too.

So that was the start of menu planning…I knew that I could get two main dish salads for two and sandwich filling for two from a half recipe of cooked dressing.  If you don't want to make cooked dressing (you should try it, it only takes 4 minutes to cook) the best substitute is Miracle Whip.

Here were my choices…Bacon and Egg Macaroni Salad, Egg Salad Sandwiches on Homemade Honey Wheat Bread, and Kidney Bean Bowl.  The Kidney Bean Bowl called for hard cheese like Colby or Cheddar; I added Garden Pasta Salad for later in the week that had a different dressing but also used cheese cubes.  I cut these recipes down to 2 servings.
I steam my eggs 15 minutes, let them sit in ice water 10 minutes and peel them and store them in a sandwich bag until I use them the next day.

I separated these meals with other menus so we had some wholesome variety.  Everything else for the week came from my food storage and freezer.

My grocery list for the week consisted of a fresh onion, 3 apples on sale for 88¢ a pound (the ones we didn't use in the recipe were dessert later in the week), celery, an 8 ounce package of colby cheese, a half-gallon of whole milk and 2 pounds of baby carrots for $10.13. 

No waste, all cooked from scratch, not much time spent in the grocery store.

Right now, our local Fareway store is pretty well provisioned with basics and none of the prices on my list had increased.  They appear to be sourcing things like some eggs and some meat from smaller Iowa and Missouri producers to keep the shelves full.