{Monday Meal Plan} Edition September Soup Night

Last Monday I started reading through the whole Bible.

In 4 months.

While I've done this in a year (before I had children), this is going to be super speed. Taylor challenged a couple of his guy friends to do it and didn't ask me to join them so I wouldn't feel pressured since I'm so busy.  I told him I don't have time to read for an hour each day, but then it dawned on me if I'm following the Word made flesh, why not spend a big chunk of my day reading the Word? It should be my priority - my house will get cleaned eventually and my kids can listen along with me for some of it. I listen to the dramatized version when I am nursing and when I clean up my kitchen after meals.

Even though this is a huge time commitment and I have a really busy schedule (you know, changin' diapers and all), I found that somehow the Lord seemed to create more space in my days last week.  I've felt less hurried and harried and still have been able to stay on top of all of my responsibilities.  Soup Night (explained more in detail below) resumed this month after a summer hiatus and Taylor was amazed to find when he got home 30 min before it started that the house was calm and peaceful, kitchen was clean, soup was made, and I wasn't frantically scurrying around our flat doing last minute cleaning.  And that, my friends, is a miracle.

So, if you want to join us, you are not too far behind to jump in because they accidentally included the Apocrypha on the original plan, so it will be shortened once they take it out, and it won't really feel like you're a week behind.  Email me if you want the plan!

And for the other plan:

Meal Plan:

Monday: Chicken Piccata - I am in love with chicken piccata though this is my first attempt at making it.  It's a healthier version than you can find on allrecipes.com because it doesn't call for butter, but it was still delicious.  Taylor asked me if I would make this once a week.  And we all know with my raw chicken phobia that that is unlikely, but he loved it so much, I just may.

We even had dessert because my friend, Tamara asked me to teach her how to make cookies.  She is from Chile and isn't familiar with this type of baking, so we made these together.  She wants to make cupcakes next week because her daughter's b-day is coming up, so if you have any good cupcake recipes, please send them my way!

Tuesday: leftovers - we took the leftover BBQ chicken, shredded it, and ate it on baked potatoes with cheese and sour cream - yum!  I love being able to change up my leftovers enough to make it feel like a different meal without having to do a lot of work because if you have to do a lot of work, it kind of negates the point of leftovers in the first place...right?

Wednesday: Every first Monday of the month during the school year we host "Soup Night" in our flat for our community.  Our friend Andrej says, " you know that song, Everybody's Working for the Weekend? That's how I feel about Soup Night." So getting back into the swing of cooking for possibly 30+ people was a bit intimidating especially since this was my first attempt to do it as a mother of 2, but the Lord blessed this flat with rest and both kids took 3 hour naps that overlapped almost the whole time.  And I've learned a few things over the past two years of hosting this:

Chop everything the night before.

So literally all I had to do this morning was pour everything in the pots and let them simmer.  It was so easy, a 2 year old could do it.



So I enlisted one:

Beyond excited to help Mommy cook -
don't worry Tutu and Mia, my stove isn't on!:)

Proud Little Chef

We made Pasta e Fagioli (above) - I omitted the beef and pasta (wasn't sure what to call it when people asked me what soup it was :))

and


Potato Chowder - I omitted the corn.

That's a lot of soup y'all.
This is before the yummy cheesy goodness was added.  I only had one serving left of this soup - I think it was a hit!

After tripling each recipe, we had one and a half recipes worth of Pasta e Fagioli left and one serving of the chowder left.  Since we typically have  soup leftover, I added the beef and pasta to the Pasta e Fagioli for Thursday's dinner, so we'd feel like we were eating a different meal.  I froze the rest.

Saturday: Spaghetti - I make a ton of sauce and then use what's left to make Lasagne the next day.

Sunday: Lasagne, duh.
My mom has the best ever spaghetti and lasagne recipe she gleaned from an Italian neighbor way back when. I'm waiting on a text to see if I can divulge these recipes. :)  I make them often, so they'll show up eventually if she says yes!

Happy Monday!