First 2012 meal plan

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were delightful. We had a lovely time celebrating with friends and family. The little guy was thrilled to receive his very own play kitchen for Christmas, thanks to my in laws' Craigslist-stalking skills. He is adamant that he is going to be "a cook" when he grows up!

I took a few days of rest to recuperate from a spill that inconveniently occurred mere days before my final 5K of 2011. I ran/walked/trudged it anyway, with a friend and her 9-year-old (his first race!), clocking my second-slowest 5K time ever. We had a blast!

And to keep life really interesting, we decided to take advantage of our (previously) uncharacteristically warm and snow-free winter to do some much-needed work on the house and garage. You can see that as soon as work began, our nice-weather luck pretty much ran out.

Now it's time to get back on the proverbial track (that is, if you, like me, indulged more than normal throughout the past month). The best way for me to do that is to go into a week with a solid meal plan--not just for dinner, but also breakfast, lunch, and snacks. This is especially important for me this week, as The H is braving the elements and heading to Wisconsin for work. I find it much easier to stick with a plan when there actually IS a plan, funnily enough. I'll keep this list posted on my refrigerator for easy reference.

Sunday - GF pizza topped with a conglomeration of leftover odds and ends from the week's events (marinara sauce, black olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, bacon, onion)
Monday - minestrone soup from my favorite vegetarian cookbook
Tuesday - coconut black bean soup from the same book, a new recipe for me
Wednesday - local beef burgers and oven-roasted potato wedges
Thursday - homemade version of the little guy's favorite Chipotle meal, "rice and beans and cheese"
Friday - chicken and artichoke flatbread pizzas on garlic naan

Breakfasts - Better Oats apple cinnamon oatmeal with added chia seeds, green smoothies (post-run), leftover baked oatmeal, hardboiled eggs and wheat toast, homemade granola with almond milk

Lunches - leftover pizza, leftover soups (I may freeze portions of minestrone in order to get a jump on next week, too), shrimp and orzo, lentils and brown rice, leftover chili on top of sweet potato, Cara's sweet potato buffalo bites