Gourmet Momma

   My husband and I have been married for 2.5 years...Already! For the majority of that time we have both held full-time jobs. Mark works at his Dad's construction company and therefore works long hours. I worked at the bank and had a typical office job of 9-5, but often I would stay late to accommodate my customers (aren't I nice?). This meant that there were many nights that both of us didn't walk through our front door until well past 6 or 7pm. After a long day at work I have to admit, I wasn't always the most excited to cook supper. We often would just settle down with a frozen pizza, grilled cheese (a supper staple!), or a bowl of soup. I always hated that we did this. In my mind I wanted to be the wife that always provided her family with a delicious homemade meal that we would sit down to eat together around the table. Well,  when we were both working, we often didn't have a healthy homecooked meal...and we rarely had room at the table to actually sit down and eat a meal. Table equaled junk central in our first and second small apartments! 
   When I went on Maternity Leave in September I promised myself it would be different. No more grilled cheese sandwiches for supper two or three times a week! I knew that my natural go to routine would be to keep providing the quick and easy meals so I decided I needed to become more focused on my supper preparation. I implemented the '1 Week Meal Plan'. I have a friend who plans her meals 6 weeks in advance...but lets face it, I had a hard enough time planning a meal a day in advance prior to Maternity Leave so I wasn't sure I would be able to mentally grasp 6 weeks in advance! For now, I am sticking with the 1 week plan. Every Friday morning I sit down and come up with a 7 day meal plan for the following week (my weeks start on Saturday). I flip through my many cookbooks, scan through pinterest, search recipes on allrecipes.com and check out some cooking blogs (my favorite is Thepioneerwoman - she's amazing! Check her out at http://thepioneerwoman.com/.).  I choose meals for the week keeping in mind my "regular meal nights". My "regular meal nights" are Saturday and Friday. Saturday night Mark plays hockey (yup, I am a 'stay at home, all alone, Saturday night hockey wife'). Since he often has to leave early in the evening on Saturdays to make his games I have decided not to make anything to extravagant for dinner. This is for a couple of reasons; 1. He doesn't like to eat anything too "heavy" before hockey and 2. I don't like to clean up all alone on Saturday nights...I enjoy having my quiet evening in a fully cleaned house. Friday night is our Pizza Night. I try to make different variations of Mark's favorite food - pizza. Other than that I just try to make sure I don't have five meals of chicken or pasta in one week and try to make sure its interesting, fun, and healthy. I also like to try things that are out of my comfort zone (In all reality my comfort zone is grilled cheese so I guess that means everything else is fair game!) and a bit of a challenge. 
   Mark is probably the best person to cook for so I am truly blessed. Food is a true passion for Mark. He gets so excited for supper and is always willing to try something new. He isn't picky which means rarely does he have anything critical or negative to say about something that I have placed in front of him. He really is fun to cook for because I know he will enjoy it. 
   Here's my meal plan for this coming week.
Saturday - Fresh buns with the LTC sandwich (lettuce, tomato, cucumber and mayo)
Sunday - Family get-together: bringing Greek Salad
Monday - New Years Eve: going out for dinner with our good friends Tara and Ken
Tuesday - Pizza night (switched from Friday because of my Oma's wedding)
Wednesday - Herb roasted Pork Tenderloin with vegetables (compliments of ThePioneerWomen)
Thursday - Garlic Chicken with herb roasted potatoes (found on pinterest)
Friday - Oma's Wedding
   This week was pretty easy seeing as we are away for three nights. Now I just use those recipes to buy our groceries. I have also found that by doing this we are spending a lot less on groceries every week and we are throwing less rotten food out of our fridge every week too! Win win! I love having an empty fridge by Saturday morning that I get to clean out (one of my OCD traits - I clean my fridge at least once a week!) and fill up with fresh food after getting groceries Saturday afternoon. We have also decided to try to forgo the snack food on our grocery list. I am in some desperate need of loosing some final baby pounds before my best friend's wedding this coming Spring. This also has helped with cutting down our grocery budget!
   Anyways, I am now off to go grocery shopping with my family! One of my favorite times of the week. Some fun family time spent together, plus Mark and I get a good boost of Parent Pride from all the other shoppers who stop to compliment us on how cute little P is!! How could it get any better?

She really is quite cute, if I do say so myself!