Meal Planning, Time Saving

King Hubs of the Ingle Castle has been asking me to blog again about my meal planning system. We've recently started a one week instead of two week menu. As you remember, we were eating a different meal every night for two weeks, rinse and repeat. Well now we have a repeating menu every week. Bland as it may be, we're trying to save up to buy a home, so every Monday night pizza night and Tuesday night casserole is worth it.

Now for the meal planning part. Make your menu first. Mine looks like this: 

Monday--Pizza night (also board game night with brother in law and friends)

Tuesday --Poppyseed chicken (which can be made in advance and refrigerated or frozen until you're ready       to cook.This is my night class special)

Wednesday--Taco Roll (easy enough for the hubs to make since I have classes late.)

Thursday--Chicken, rice, peas. 

Friday--Meatloaf (in the crockpot. Cooks while I do my research, writing and errands and is amazing. Served with any of the veggies that Hubs's grandparents send us fresh from their garden.)

Saturday--Sandwiches or out for lunch. (Common time for the hubby and I to share a romantic lunch.) Supper is hamburgers (unless we have a dinner party or plans.)

Sunday--Lasagna for lunch. (Stouffers. Don't judge me, its better than any lasagna I'll ever make. And cheap. For 2.65 it feeds me and the Hubbers.) Chicken fried rice made at home for supper. 

Then make your grocery list to correspond. Be on the lookout for meat deals like the Pick 5 for 19.99 deal at some grocery stores. I save a ton of money doing that. 

I highly recommend planning your meals around your schedule. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I do something easy that the hubs can make or a casserole that I can prepare in advance and bake when I get home. For crockpot recipes, check out these ladies. I use a lot of their recipes to get inspiration for new things or just to wow people when I have company ;)

With love as always, 

Courtney 

A Lot Has Happened... Catching up Part 1

For the most part, I'll make this short.

After my fourth post, I suffered from a ruptured ovarian cyst. It was painful, it was sucky, and I was off my feet for a little while.

One week to the day later, I went to the doctor thinking I had the flu. It wasn't the flu--it was sinusitis, bronchitis, and an ear infection in each ear. While still hurting from the cyst. Again, that knocked me off my feet.

**Author note. If you take Sudafed at 9pm, don't think you're going to sleep. I didn't. Instead, I watched two seasons of Community within 24 hours and then went comatose for about 12 hours.

After dealing with all that, catching up on school and work and financially recovering from not having my insurance yet (the cyst ruptured the day my insurance was supposed to activate), I fell away from the social media sphere for a while.

But I'm back...BOO-YAH!

I've learned in all this that blogging takes work, it takes time, it takes dedication--but it can't take you! Honestly, in order to remain at my Super-Student, Super-Spouse status, I've had to back away from the computer and focus on myself. Granted, this wasn't a very convenient thing, but when is everything convenient. Don't worry, I'll wait.

When I decided it was time to get back to the blogging sphere, I used {never}homemaker blog for inspiration. The post that's dedicated to bloggers keeps me going, and I look at it frequently, as should you.

I'm going to spend the next couple of blogs catching up on all that's been missing. I have a couple of new recipes I tried, I've danced (sorta), I've cried (you'll see why) and we adopted a puppy. So much has happened in our lives that I can't get it all in here. So stick around for the other parts of Catching Up.

As always,
Courtney

When All the Hats Get Heavy...You Have to Rest Your Neck!

So yesterday I spent 12 straight hours at work. I conducted meetings, prepared for more meetings, recorded my radio show, ordered new print cartridges... I even had time to squeeze in a class! With days like that, Super Spouses, the hats get pretty heavy. You start to give out, you're cranky, and before you know it you've had the "WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP!" moment. Though these moments come in high stress, they are highly avoidable. Here's how I avoid the ugly stress out snapping:

1. Delegate. I'm an Executive Producer of a radio show. If I had to prep the host, interview the guests, do the booking, record the liners, meet with the newsreaders, reporters, GM, and record my show all on my own, I'd go nuts. I have a great team that I have to choose to delegate tasks to. I also delegate at home. After a long day and a hot supper, Jeremy does the dishes. I'm not ashamed to ask him because I can't handle everything. Neither can you, Super Spouse.

2. Investigate. Work smarter, not harder. If you investigate the different ways through a situation, you may find a way to prioritize and order so that you see your "to-do" list as a "let's get it done" list.

3. Rationalize. There are 24 hours in a day. You spend 6-8 at work, 2-3 cooking, 2-3 studying, 1-2 on housework. That's a potential 16 hours gone. You can't do it all today, so figure out what can be shortened, compressed, and delayed.

4. Rest. Do it. Take that shower, read that book, tell the hubby to take the calls, put down the textbooks. If you don't, you risk burn out or worse. Treat yourself so that you can treat the people around you :)

Check out the {Never}homemaker. She has even more tips about how to stay healthy and some nutrition tips to help out. I'm following that particular link pretty closely myself. Stay strong, stay healthy, stay Super!

As always,
Courtney

Strategy Saturday!

We have all been there... it's a random night of the week, your budget is blown, you're starving to death and you have no idea what to cook. You'd make hamburgers but you only have the family pack of meat, the rest will suffer freezer burn and you're fighting to figure out what to eat before just throwing in the towel and heading for the closest drive-thru Choke-n-Barf. Have we already mentioned the weirdo smell coming from the fridge? Yea, there's a smell... and it smells suspiciously of last week's tilapia surprise. You're stressed, you're tired, you're frazzled--yup, this sucks. So how do we prevent this? 

I call it Strategy Saturday. In the Ingle house, I pop out of bed around 7:30am (that's late for us), grab my calendar and notepad and kickstart the strategy for the week. What am I planning? MEALS. That was our smelly, frazzled, starving, sucky weeknights happen fewer and further between.

I remember the days living at home. I'd wake up on a Saturday and find Mama at the table, a notebook, cookbooks, and a hand drawn days of the week calendar. I didn't realize until I got married how important that Strategy Saturday would be.

You can take control of your busy Tuesday on Saturday, all by planning your meals accordingly. Here's how:

First, either grab a calendar or list the days of the week. I shop for two weeks, so I set aside the next two weeks on the calendar. Sit down and plan every supper for two weeks. Once you've done that, make your grocery list around the meals. This is meal planning, folks... and it saves you time and anxiety.

Remember to consider your schedule when you plan meals. I have a late afternoon class on Monday, a night class on Tuesday, a late afternoon class on Wednesday and work every day of the week. So my meal planning looks like this:

Monday- Poppyseed Chicken

Tuesday- Crockpot Meatloaf

Wednesday-Chicken Fried Rice

Thursday-Date Night!

Friday-Pork Steak

And you get the point...

This will save you time, money, and frustration. Once you've made your menu and grocery list, shop accordingly. When you get home, plan accordingly. Casseroles can be put together a day in advance and refrigerated until you're ready to cook. Crockpot recipes cook while you're at work. Sounds easy, right? I'm not the only one.. I promise this works! Check out what blogger Jen Jones does for meal planning and more. Once the shopping and meal planning are done, clean house! And I mean, really clean. Throw away the tilapia surprise from the fridge, sweep, mop, CLEAN. That way this week you can relax for once because you deserve it!

Tackle it, Super Spouses. Welcome to Strategy Saturday!

Courtney 

Welcome All Struggling Super Spouses!

We are students, employees, homemakers, spouses, moms, sisters, support groups, soundboards, chefs, cheerleaders and the list goes on. How do we balance it? How do we wear so many hats at one time?

Welcome to Crockpots, Casseroles, and College. Here we will gather together to exchange ideas, give support, suggestions, and learn to balance everything we have going on. I'm going to be sharing recipe ideas with you that will make cooking a lot easier on your busy self, as well as sharing homemaking and managing tips. Together we can go from "struggling" to "Super Spouse!"

A little about myself: I'm a wife, homemaker, student, executive producer, friend, Sunday school teacher, party host, cat-mama, daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, advisor, boss, employee, and more! When I got married 6 months ago, my husband Jeremy had no idea what he was getting himself into. We were swimming in the changes for a while, but eventually I learned a few tips of the trade... tips I'm going to share with you. I'd learn to love more from you, so check out the Hit Me Up page.

To share some of your awesome stories and tips with me you can email me, comment, send me a tweet or whatever suits your fancy! I'm looking forward to all of us to move from "struggling" to "Super Spouse" together.

Super Spouses Unite!

Courtney

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