Meal plans and the week ahead

I had thought this week would be a somewhat normal week, with Kevin home from Germany. He got home Thursday evening. When he went in to work on Friday, though, he was given the option to go to Rogersville, Tennessee (near the TN-Virginia border) for at least the next four weeks. In the automotive world, when you are given choices like this, you basically have to take them if you want to ensure job security. They're basically testing your loyalty to the company. If Kevin says no, he'll either never get a promotion, or he'll risk being cut during one of the next rounds of lay-offs. And in the automotive world, you're not given all of these opportunities to travel unless you're thought of highly... they won't waste their money sending someone around the nation/globe if they don't see potential in that person. So being asked to do all this traveling is a good thing... but it sure makes life at home different. My job just got insanely busy with our budget boilerplate language for a project I work on, so from now till May 1st, we're going to be absolutely slammed at work. So its definitely not ideal timing, but that is out of our control. We'll manage through it, we always do. :)

So anyway, Kevin leaves Wednesday for Tennessee for at least the next four weeks... and it could be longer. After the Tennessee thing, it sounds like he'll be in Mexico again for a week or two, and then in Lafayette, Indiana for a week or two. So it doesn't sound like Carson and I will be seeing much of Kevin through the end of the calendar year.

With Kevin gone so much, you won't see as many new recipes here and the menus will probably all be super easy and maybe even somewhat boring. I'll have to refer back to lots of prep-ahead techniques that I haven't been using much of lately. Otherwise, Carson and I will never have a good dinner on the table in a decent amount of time.

Last week, my friend, Lina, and I signed up for a scrapbooking class that starts this week... and runs four weeks... so basically this is the only week it looks like I'll be going. Its on Monday night. Tuesday, I had planned to go hang out with some moms in our town, but I've canceled that since it'll be our last night of normalcy during the week for a while. Wednesday, Kevin leaves in the morning and I'll be taking Carson to his swim class in the evening. Saturday is my cousin Megan's baby shower, so that will take up a good part of my day. Hopefully Kevin can fly home Friday night and not Saturday morning so he has some time with Carson.

I was able to make and can a few batches of pearsauce last week. This was my first time canning with bosc pears and it was much easier than using bartletts. I think bosc pears should be labeled the perfect canning pear. They're crisp enough when ripe to use an apple peeler/corer with ease and they don't turn to mush when you cook them down. Even though there are still lots of bosc pears on the trees in our orchard still, I'm going to have to call it quits on the pears this year, I think. I can't take Carson out to pick them with me since he follows me up the ladder, and with Kevin gone and with it getting dark earlier now, I won't be able to get out to pick anymore this year. So I guess I'll have a short canning break before I make a trip to a local orchard for seconds on apples to make lots of applesauce. I think I'll take Carson to an orchard on my next flex Friday so I can get that started.

This week, I won't have a lot of time for extras. But I do hope to squeeze in just a couple easy ones. I want to prep a bag of whole grain pancake mix and I'd also like to bake pumpkin pie muffins so I can re-stock my muffin stash in the freezer. I also want to swap out some pictures in our frames in the hallway since I haven't updated them in awhile.

So, anyway, here's the plan for meals this week...

Sunday - Lina, Sean, and Vayla are coming over today since the weather looks good (instead of yesterday with the rain). We'll be having lunch together. We're having crockpot broccoli cheese soup (with broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots all from our garden); beer bread; fresh cut up apples and pears; apple pie. For dinner, I'll make lamb chops; mashed red potatoes with spinach and onions in them; and organic store-bought applesauce.

Meatless Monday - I am going to my scrapbook class tonight, so Kevin and Carson will be on their own. I'm going to bake a crustless quiche (with broccoli, spinach, carrots, onions, cheddar, and swiss) on Sunday so they can just warm it up tonight. They can open up a jar of home-canned peaches to go with it.

Tuesday - mexican lasagna; watermelon

Wednesday - I will be in Detroit for meetings during the day and we have swim class tonight, so we need something portable to eat in the car. Sliced co-jack cheese; sliced summer sausage; crackers; raw carrot matchsticks from the garden; peanuts; apple slices.

Thursday - I'll be in Windsor, Ontario all day for meetings. We'll have leftover mexican lasagna; organic store-bought applesauce

Friday - We'll probably eat at my parents' house since my mom is watching Carson.

Saturday - I'll throw something in the crockpot before I leave for the shower in the morning so dinner will be ready. TBD at this point. I'm debating between chilupe, or just a pork roast with potatoes and carrots from the garden.