Meal Planning

Here is my meal planning for the week:

Chilaquiles Casserole - This is the healthiest "casserole" recipe I've ever found and the only one I make with any kind of regularity.  It doesn't even have canned soup in it.  I decided to make it this week because I have a couple of zucchini to use up, as well as some leftover corn tortillas.

Stuffed Peppers - I grew up thinking I absolutely hated bell peppers, especially the green ones.  Turns out I just hated the stuffed peppers my parents made.  These ones are really good.

Spicy Vegetable Curry with Quinoa and Basmati Rice - I threw this together for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  It's a rip-off of a surprisingly good frozen dinner I purchased the week before that.

Pizza - I'm going to make a classic pizzeria-style veggie pizza.  This means homemade pizza dough in the bread machine.

Lasagna - I usually start to get lazy with my cooking come Friday, so this is a dish I can -- should, even -- make a day in advance.  To make it healthier (and cheaper), I use low-fat cottage cheese and a beaten egg in place of the usual ricotta, and I include ground, seasoned seitans and chopped spinach in the sauce.

Veggie Burgers - I'm even lazier on Saturday nights, so I'm planning easy no-fuss stuff for the weekend.  Frozen ready-made veggie burgers.  I didn't buy hamburger buns though, so that means making fresh buns in the bread machine sometime this week.  I wasn't being ambitious or even forgetful with the buns -- I'm just this cheap.

Spaghetti? - I didn't have to buy any special ingredients for this since I keep them on hand, so we'll either have spaghetti or, if we don't cook another night, whatever we had planned to have then.  Or maybe a frozen pizza.  Whatever.  We usually have at least one night when all cooking plans go out the window, so it's good to avoid buying fresh ingredients for seven nights of meals since they probably won't all get used.

I recently ran out of frozen homemade seitans, so I have a double-batch cooking on the stove right now.  We'll need them for the stuffed peppers, lasagna, and spaghetti this week.