Meal Planning: Plan C

I have been reading Flylady.net, and fluttering along, and this month's habit is Meal Planning. I like this idea, but really suck at it! But, I do have one standby meal that's easy to do on a moment's notice. It involves boxes and cans and jars and frozen food, gasp! But, when your plan A meal didn't get thawed out enough, for whatever reason, and your plan B plan needs an ingredient that you just used up last night.... well, that's when you pull out plan C.

Take any number of preformed, frozen hamburger patties. The number varies based on how many you're feeding, what you're using it for, etc. I use two for my 3-4 person table. Use a spoon to scrape them and chop them into pieces while you brown them on reasonably high heat. Viola, you've got ground beef. See where this is heading?

Hamburger helper, spaghetti with meat sauce, I even can use this to make squaw corn, which involves draining a can of corn niblets and tossing it in with the meat and a can of undiluted tomato soup. Serve with corn bread muffins if you have time to throw together a box of them.

Yes, it's prepackaged, but it's fast. Serve it with a salad, rolls, or a veggie, and you've got a reasonably balanced meal. You can also buy those prefrozen hamburger patties cheap during the cookout season and store them in your freezer until you need them.

I have two young kids, so meat noodles and a veggie are a staple in our house. I've always said that toddlers can eat their weight in noodles.

I now have two big leftover containers filled with penne and meat sauce, ready for lunch this week. Looking forward to THAT, hugely. And the bath for the toddler, afterwards.

-Vat