Meal plan - Week of 2/4/2013

Hello there!  As of today, I'm back on the meal plan wagon.  (I feel like this is going to be a wagon that I'll easily jump off of and back on).

The week before last, we were on a cruise, so you can only imagine how yummy and decadent the food was there!  Then, last week, being the types of people we are, Don and I jumped into super strict eating.  I am eating "clean" (which means only "natural" foods... no processed foods, no enriched flour products, no sugar) and Don is eating Paleo (like my food, except no complex carbohydrates either (except for fruit)).  One of my goals this year was to eat clean for 8 weeks in a row to see how I feel.  So I'm one week in now.  I don't know that I feel much better yet (I think my body is still detoxing from ALL THAT BREAD I ate on the cruise), but I notice small things like my stomach doesn't "pooch" out quite so much.  Oh, and I lost 3 pounds this week!  (woot!)

So here's the meal plan for this week:

Monday - Pioneer Woman's Steak Bites and roasted fresh green beans
Tuesday - Curry Chicken (recipe below)
Wednesday - Taco night at church (so, I'll probably have some of the meat and add it to my salad I make from the salad bar and add my own olive oil/vinegar dressing)
Thursday - Chili
Friday - Mexican "buffet" (I'll cook extra lean ground beef on Thursday, then I'll have black beans, baby spinach, avocado, etc. so we can put together our own Mexican bowl... I'll probably add brown rice to mine as well).
Saturday - Italian beef
Sunday - leftovers

Here's my recipe for Curry Chicken.  I usually make a double batch ahead of time and freeze it until I'm ready to make it.  We've had it multiple times and it's one of our favorite meals (and definitely my favorite crockpot meal!).

Curry Chicken - Taken from Kojo Designs

IN THE BAG- 3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs*, 2 lbs. of chopped butternut squash, 2 medium onions,chopped, 8 minced garlic cloves, 1 oz fresh ginger, 2 T curry powder,1 t ground coriander, 1 t ground cumin, coarse salt

You can fix up the "In the bag" portion ahead of time and freeze.  When you're ready to cook it, you do the remainder of the recipe.

TO COOK- Add the contents of the bag and a can of coconut milk to a slow cooker and cook on low all day. 25 minutes before serving, add another can of coconut milk and a bag of frozen peas.

TO SERVE- Garnish* with chopped cashews and cilantro (except if you’re us and you hate cilantro- then just garnish with cashews).

*I have always used the chicken thighs in the past, but I think I'm going to try it this week with chicken breasts.  I don't usually garnish it at all, but I serve it over brown rice.  It's delicious!

Have a great week!