A Week of Pretending to be Mom

I had always thought it would be fun to prepare dinner for a day.  And I did once or twice.  But those were simple meals, like "brinner" or Hamburger Helper.  So I decided to make REAL dinners for a whole week.  Starting Sunday, I will make dinner every night, ending on Saturday.  (This will actually be easier to accomplish because both of my brothers will leave to Boy Scout Camp on Sunday, so I will only need to prepare meals for three people instead of five.)  Today I put together my plan.  I used these two cookbooks to get the recipes:

The first thing I did was decide what I wanted to make over the course of the week.  I ended up with these:



Sunday:

   Sandi's Chicken Salad

Monday:

   Meat Loaf

Tuesday:

   BLT Soup

Wednesday:

 Greek Salad

Thursday:

   Beefy Cream Cheese Roll-Up

Friday:

   Curried-Basil Chicken

Saturday:

   Crustless Chicken Pot Pie

Afterwards, I combined all of the ingredients so I would know exactly how much of something I would need.  (As it turns out, 4 of the 7 recipes required Green Bell Peppers!)  I then went through our kitchen with my mom and crossed off anything we already had. 

(Sorry, you probably can't see what any of that says...) 

Then, I put the remaining ingredients into a much neater list, and put the name of the meal(s) that required that ingredient next to it.

Most of the ingredients we still needed were vegetables, so I couldn't buy them all at once or they would spoil.  To solve that problem, I put all the ingredients in order from when I need to buy them, according to the day I will make the meal.

I completed my first day of shopping today, and bought everything on the list except for the bean sprouts, which I couldn't find.  I spent a total of $22.79.  It helps that we already had a lot of chicken in the freezer, so I didn't have to buy any of that.

I will make my first meal on Sunday.  Can't wait!

(And to all the moms reading this:  I know that cooking isn't the only thing you are responsible for.  You still have all that other fun stuff like cleaning and dropping kids off at school and birthday parties.  So I'm really not pretending to be Mom.  I'm just cooking for a week.  :)