Menu Plan Monday, December 1-7

If you don't want to read my Thanksgiving Menu recap but just came for Menu Plan Monday, please scroll down:) You can view more Menu Plans each Monday at www.orgjunkie.com. Also, you can click on this link for another post she did today and you will see some great information for making freezer meals. Whether you are a newbie at this or if you are a wizened old timer, you will find a compilation of helpful tutorials, tricks and recipes including making a month of meals. I will definitely be going back there after we have eaten alot of the stuff I froze this summer and actually have room in a freezer again!

Thanksgiving Menu In Review: I noted on last week's post that I did not make the snickerdoodles. I also did not make the green bean casserole as we already had more salad than we could eat.

The frozen turkey I brined with a homemade brine and smoked on our Traeger grill was the crowd pleaser. Everyone liked the free range, Williams-Sonoma brined turkey too. But for the added expense, with the obvious preference by most for the smoked turkey, I think I will save some bucks next year and buy 2 (humanely raised) frozen turkeys and smoke them both.

The apple pie was a first try recipe and it turned out wonderfully.My little girl and I made it together ( as we did most of the meal). The crust recipe turned out perfect. I will use this crust recipe even for other pies. I will be posting pictures on our family website later this week.

This week: I have a couple gallons of extra milk this week as one of our subscribers could not come and pick theirs up. So I actually get to make some things with milk. You'd think with our own cow I'd have lots of opportunity to do so, but we don't keep enough of it for ourselves to get to do this very often. So I will be making butter and cheese this week as well as some creme fraiche (as requested) for my MIL. I also started a buttermilk culture for a turkey brine and kept a quart of it for later. I will probably use this for pancakes or some other treat for the kids for breakfast.

I also finally found a sourdough crock for a reasonable price so am excited to start a "sponge" or "mother".

Monday: I will be on the run this evening taking kids to activities. Soup in crockpot. Trying a new turkey based soup for Soup's On! Saturday.

Tuesday: Maple Chile Glazed Pork with brussels sprouts

Wednesday: Teens to youth group, eat dinner early, White Sloppy Joes on homemade buns. I will again let the breadmaker do most of the work for the buns, but will let them raise longer as we don't keep our house very warm. I am going to "invent" a white sloppy Joe sauce using leftover turkey (frozen for freshness) as the base and will post a recipe of some sort later if we like it.

Thursday: Christmas Outing with friends early, dinner on the fly

Friday: Nacho Spuds

Saturday: Loaded BBQ Potato Casserole
I will make my own BBQ sauce and cook the pork outside on the Traeger that morning. The pork will be great for my college aged son to take in wraps for lunches next week too.

Sunday: Dinner in crockpot so it will be ready to eat when we get home from church. Also, 2 of our sons have a class today and for the next four weeks so we can't be as leisurely as we normally are on Sundays. Crockpot Barbeque Beef and Bean Burritos

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for "Pantry Raid: Thanksgiving Cleanup Edition".

Have a "get the Christmas lights up but revel in the true meaning of Christmas" kind of week!