Here you go!

• Monday:  Copycat Olive Garden Chicken & Gnocchi soup, garlic bread
  
• Tuesday:  My husband’s birthday!!  We went to our favorite sushi restaurant, yum yum!
• Wednesday:  Teriyaki chicken (used my quick cooking method, and cooked in teriyaki sauce the last couple minutes of cooking), brown rice, green beans
• Thursday:  Charity’s fettuccine
• Friday:  Steak (just hit it with some steak seasoning and cooked it on the George Foreman), ricearoni, brussel sprouts
• Saturday:  Zesty shrimp & pasta, salad
• Sunday:  Hamburgers, grilled asparagus, banana splits

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Some more ideas for you:

• Sun:  Dinner at my cousin’s house.  She made artichoke chicken.  I brought strawberry daiquiris.
• Mon: Southwest salad (romaine, rotisserie chicken, corn, avocado, shredded cheese, black beans, topped with ranch dressing mixed with bbq sauce)
• Tues:  Cod on George Foreman grill, green beans, pasta roni
• Wed:  Avocado Stuffed Burgers, salad
• Thu:  Avocado Stuffed Burgers, chips & salsa (yes, we really did like these enough that we had them two nights in a row!)
• Fri:  Zesty Shrimp & Pasta (we could seriously eat this once a week for a year and not get sick of it!)
• Sat:  Valentine’s Day…we went out to eat

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Well Merry Belated Christmas and Happy Belated New Years to everyone!  Let’s get caught up…Christmas was absolutely great, much better than I expected.  I was sick on New Years…lame.  And now that my family has gone back home, I figure it’s time to start blogging again (okay, they left a week ago, and yes I could have blogged while they were here because no they didn’t actually stay with me, but hey what can I say, it was a busy holidays!).

Here’s one idea I wanted to share with everyone for the next time you want to have friends over for “dinner.” My cousin, bless her heart, provided room and board, and entertainment, etc for our family while they were in town from Canada.  So, when it came time to dinners for ALL of us, she got pretty creative a couple times.  We all got together the Sunday before Christmas and she decided to have an appetizer fest.  We all brought a yummy appetizer.  And I decided that’s the perfect thing to do for entertaining!  It was simple for each of us (less stress is always great over the holidays), we were all filled, there was great variety (something for everyone!), and most important, my cousin didn’t have to slave over the meal or spend a ton of money because we all brought something…share the load people!!  This was also great because there were a few of us coming and going that night, so it was perfect to just keep this spread out so everyone could take as they please when we arrived, in between our board games, etc.

Here’s what we had at our Appetizer Fest:

• Avocado Eggrolls (a copycat that my cousin made from one of our favorites at The Cheesecake Factory.  I’ll get it from her & post it soon cause they’re amazing!!)
• Pumpkin Pie Dip
• Orange Julius
• 7 Layer Bean Dip (I don’t have the exact recipe that my cousin used, but this one looks really good and it was rated extremely high on allrecipes.com.)
• Salsa & Cream Cheese
• Pumpernickel Dip
• I brought Italian Chicken Sticks with 2 dipping sauces: marinara sauce & homemade honey mustard sauce

Some other ideas for an Appetizer Fest:

• Artichoke Dip
• Black Bean & Corn Salsa
• Crab Dip
• Mini Bagel Pizzas
• Buffalo Chicken Dip (I haven’t made this yet, but it was rated one of Recipezaar’s top 100 recipes of 2008 (#28) so I figured that’s pretty dang impressive.  I plan on trying it, so I’ll let you know how that goes…but definitely let me know if you try it before I do!)
• P.F. Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps (Also haven’t made these but they were also one of Recipezaar’s top in 2008 (#2!) and I love the originals so I’m definitely going to try these soon).
• Awesome Bacon-Tomato Dip (Okay, so I haven’t made this one either, but it’s also rated really high on Recipezaar.  I usually don’t post recipes I haven’t tried, but I’m just trying to give you ideas here!)

The only thing I’d recommend if you’re going to throw an Appetizer Fest is to maybe find out from people beforehand and plan what you make around that.  Like if everyone is doing savory stuff maybe make brownies and cut them up small and cookies so there’s something sweet too.  Or if everyone is doing dips do chicken strips so there’s something hearty enough to make it feel like a meal.

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So here’s last week’s meal plan for you

• Mon: Mexi salmon with mango salsa, emerald rice, salad
  
• Tues: Pot roast, sweet potatoes, salad
• Wed: Salmon with pecan crunch coating, mashed red potatoes, 24k carrots, salad (with mandarins, toasted walnuts, & poppyseed dressing). We had some friends over for dinner, and she brought a delicious poppyseed cake! I’ll get the recipe from her and post it.
• Thu: Oriental chicken wraps, leftover mashed potatoes, salad
• Fri: We got food to go from the Pizza Factory. I got a pasta dish called CHAZ, and it was really good, but it also seemed pretty simple, so I’m gonna try to make a copycat. I’ll let you know how it goes!
• Sat: We went over to our friends’ house for dinner. They made these yummy cheeseburgers that were stuffed with pepperjack cheese, and they also made mozzarella sticks and fries. I brought yummy peach dessert.

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Here’s last week’s meal plan for you:

• Monday: Fish tacos (the easiest fish tacos on the planet!), spanish rice (rice-a-roni)
• Tuesday: Teriyaki Salmon (just a quick dinner, I just cut up the salmon into bite-sized pieces and sauteed them in this sauce I got from costco (it tastes like teriyaki sauce, but it’s thinner, it’s called Yoshida’s, and it’s delicious to marinade or cook any type of meat in)), leftover spanish rice, salad
• Wednesday: I was at girl’s camp…we had pot roast, baked potatoes, & corn
• Thursday: Girls camp again…pizza & ice cream sandwiches
• Friday: Cashew chicken (another bagged freezer meal…yeah, it was one of those weeks!)
• Saturday: Macaroni Grill’s chicken scalloppini, salad
• Sunday: Chicken salad sandwiches

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Here’s last week’s meal plan:

• Monday: Chicken rosemary ravioli (just one of those frozen bagged things…it was pretty yummy!), salad
• Tuesday: Hamburgers, fruit salad
• Wednesday: Savory crescent chicken, salad
• Thursday: Ate out at Chilis
• Friday: Ate out at PF Changs (my friend took me out for a belated birthday dinner, yum!)
• Saturday: Teriyaki salmon, salad, rice-a-roni
• Sunday: Chicken divan, salad with mandarin oranges, toasted walnuts, & poppyseed dressing

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Here’s last week’s meal plan for you:

• Monday: Salmon with pecan crunch coating, brown rice, peas & carrots
• Tuesday: Steak, pasta roni, broccoli grape salad
• Wednesday: Marinated chicken (just broiled it), sweet potato fries (didn’t love the recipe I used, I’ll let you know if I find a better one!), salad
• Thursday: Leftovers
• Friday: Out to eat to our favorite sushi restaurant! (oh, SOO good!)
• Saturday: Mexican lasagna, salad (with romaine, avocado, tomatoes, beets, croutons & Italian dressing), heavenly hazelnut pound cake
• Sunday: Spaghetti, salad (with romaine, mandarin oranges, toasted pecans, & poppyseed dressing)

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Here’s last week’s meal plan for you:

• Monday: Family BBQ/potluck. We had hamburgers, & I brought a thing of frog-eye salad (that’s usually what I bring to potlucks, people love it!)
• Tuesday: Zesty shrimp & pasta (man, we LOVE that stuff!)
• Wednesday: Margarita pizza (pizza with tomato, basil & mozzarella cheese)
• Thursday: Tortellini with shrimp & vodka sauce…I just cooked some refrigerated tortellini, and cooked heated some pre-cooked shrimp in a jar of vodka sauce (you find it in any grocery store by the other jarred spaghetti sauces…it’s lighter than normal spaghetti sauce and has a sweeter taste), added some basil, & called it a meal! We had some friends over for dinner, and they actually loved it!! I was surprised at how good it turned out, seeing that it was from jarred sauce! I served that with a salad with romaine, toasted pecans, mandarin oranges, & poppyseed dressing. We had lemon bars for dessert.
• Friday: Pulled pork sandwiches, greek salad, leftover lemon bars.
• Saturday: Burritos
• Sunday: Dinner at my cousin’s house. We had cafe rio pork salad & fruit pizza.

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Here’s last week’s meal plan for you!:

• Monday: Chili Mac, Salad
• Tuesday: Tacos, Salad
• Wednesday: Turkey Soup, Croissants
• Thursday: Lemon Salmon Pasta (you’ll probably notice there isn’t a recipe posted for this one. That was on purpose…I found a new recipe, tried it, and did not love it (sauce not so great)! But, I did like the idea behind the pasta, and most of the main ingredients, so I’m gonna tweak this recipe a bit and try it again soon, and when I do I’ll post my revised version!)
• Friday: Girls weekend at a cabin…my cousins made yummy Thai food!
• Saturday: Girls weekend at a cabin…we made a turkey roast, mashed potatoes, & caesar salad with my aunt’s famous caesar salad dressing. For snacky foods, I made Shanelle’s corn and black eyed peas salsa, and my cousin made a simple fruit dip.
• Sunday: Chicken Croissant Sandwiches, Salad, Dumps

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So, here’s last weeks meal plan (the actual plan included a few more make-at-home meals, but it ended up being an even busier week than usual…so some of the things I was going to make last week got pushed to this week!):

• Monday: dinner at my father-in-law’s house (he made a frozen shrimp scampi pasta)
• Tuesday: chicken enchiladas, green salad
• Wednesday: leftovers
• Thursday: fish tacos & cilantro coleslaw
• Friday: eat out
• Saturday: one of those take & bake pizzas you get from Costco (busy day!)
• Sunday: stouffers mac & cheese, salad, blueberry muffins (sad that we had mac&cheese for dinner, I know, but my husband LOVES the stuff and he was craving it!)

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