Weeknight Wackiness

Yup, summer is definitely over – my youngest daughter is already home sick with a cough and a fever and it is only the second week back at school! Amazing how quickly those germs get passed around. Luckily, over the long weekend I planned ahead for our weeknight dinners and got everything I needed from the store.  Here’s the plan:

Tuesday (free day): Made chicken pot pie for dinner. While that was cooking I also made meatballs in red sauce to have with spaghetti later in the week. Originally I planned on making the meatballs over the weekend and freezing them, but that didn’t happen.

Wednesday: We will get home at 7 from my non-sick daughter’s skating lesson. I will cook some spaghetti noodles, heat up some meatballs, heat up some good bread that I put in the freezer when I bought it, throw together a salad while those cook/heat and we will have dinner together by 7:30.

Thursday: We get home around 6:15 from Girl Scout meeting (assuming everyone is feeling better by tomorrow!). I have about 3 servings of the chicken pot pie left over and we will have lots of meatballs and bread left. I can either cook some more spaghetti noodles or people can have meatball “subs” on the bread. It will be a pick-your-own leftovers dinner.

The key to making it work is planning. Going to the store over the weekend, making sure I have everything on hand for the week and getting the 2 meals made on the day we have no activities ensures that everything goes smoothly. Remember to use up any leftovers in the fridge within 4 days. If you plan on keeping them for longer than that just put them in the freezer immediately.

Here’s the recipe for the Meatballs in Red Sauce.