January Dinner Club

Remember the Dinner Club we girls did for awhile about a year ago? I LOVED it. I MISS it. I incorporated several of your delicious recipes into our family meals and now my kids love them too. I have debated starting up a family food blog we could all access and post our family recipes... then I decided since I don't keep my family blog updated there's no way I would stay on top of a second blog, even just adding a few recipes a month.

So, instead I decidedto occasionally add our Menu to this blog and I'm really, really, REALLY hoping you will add some of your menu's and recipes to your blogs! Then I can still benefit from your amazing recipes!

Several months ago I started planning specific weekly menu's and it has made dinner time SO much simpler. I use lots of recipes from blogs that I follow and on rare occasions I actually look forward to dropping everything to fix dinner. :)
I broke our nights into "categories", we have "Taco" Thursday (which is really just "Spanish Food night.) We have a soup night, Brinner (breakfast/dinner), Crock Pot night and one night that Mike is "in charge".
So! Here's my menu for the week of January 9th:

Sunday - FHE Dinner @ the Biggs (Desert - Snickerdoodles & Toffee Cookies)
Monday - Crockpot BBQ Chicken & Oven Potatoes
Tuesday - Ham Hock & Beans w/ Tortillas & Cheese (Soup Night)
Wednesday - Veggie Patty Rice Bowls
Thursday - Chicken Enchiladas (new recipe I want to try)
Friday - Mike (Frozen Dinners) - Girls Night Out (Cinderella)
Saturday - Corndogs OR Leftovers

Hamhock & Beans: Sort, rinse and soak 1 lb of beans the night before (about 12 hours.) Drain water and pour beans into crock pot. Add a meaty ham bone or 1-2 hamhocks. Pour 6 - 8 cups of water over beans, depending on how "soupy" you want your finished dish. Cook beans on high for one hour, turn crock pot to low and cook about 5 more hours. During the last hour of cooking you can add some onion and/or garlic powder to your beans ... or just enjoy the flavor of the ham. Remove the ham bones from your beans, pull off any meat that "stuck" and shred the meat in the pot (if necessary.) We like to add cheese and eat with warm tortillas OR we make cheesy quesadillas. Then I freeze the leftovers, if there are any, to use in a recipe next week, they are great in taco's.

Rice Bowls: We heat up frozen veggie patty's (from Costco) on the stove and stir fry frozen or fresh vegetables with some teriyaki sauce, in a wok. Cook rice. Put 1 cup of cooked rice in a bowl, top with a scoop of stirfry vegetables and a veggie patty cut into chunks. Add a little more teriyaki or sweet and sour sauce. My kids love this! I like it with a few peanuts thrown on top.