The Weekend Dish: 8/22/2020
Happy Saturday to you!
I hope that you had a great week and are looking forward to some downtime over the next couple of days.
On my list of things to do this weekend is making a list of all the meals that are family favorites to make meal planning easier as we head into the fall. How do you tackle meal planning? It’s always been an Achilles heel for me, so I would love to hear what works! I recently read about someone who plans and does one large grocery haul per month, with small trips/orders for fresh produce as needed. I’m inspired!
On Brown Eyed Baker This Week
Creamy Peanut Butter Pie – Homemade Peanut Butter Pie starts with an Oreo crust and is topped with a creamy peanut butter filling made from scratch (no Cool Whip!).
Hush Puppies with Spicy Dipping Sauce – These hush puppies are a Southern classic and this recipe is absolutely the best; a simple batter that comes together quickly and only takes minutes to fry up. A perfect side dish or appetizer.
Kentucky Derby Chocolate Bourbon Walnut Pie – This wonderfully decadent chocolate-walnut bourbon pie, affectionately known as “derby pie” is a Kentucky tradition! Very similar to pecan pie in taste and texture with the addition of chocolate chips and a good splash of bourbon, this will become a fast favorite. Whether you make it while watching the derby or save it for a holiday dessert, it is sure to be a crowd-pleaser!
Friday Things #385 – Kids, cookie scoops, Nordstrom sale, Tastefully Simple, memories, a new kids’ show, and more!
Top 5 Most Popular Posts This Week:
1. Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles
2. My Favorite White Bread Recipe
What I Bookmarked This Week
This easy cheesy chicken casserole sounds like something everyone in my house would love.
Super crispy honey chicken for the win!
Oreo truffle brownies, HELLO!
Oh my, yes >> Oven Fried Coconut Shrimp with Thai Pineapple Chili Sauce
This baked chicken teriyaki looks insane!
Have a delicious weekend!
Love the blog! Love the recipes! Love watching your family grow!
But…the website is so busy, that it’s hard to get to the content with ads popping up everywhere.
Am I the sole kvetcher!?
Get Adblocker/Ublock .. this site always has too many ads that make it difficult to navigate.
You should see some other sites. Craaaaaazy amounts of ads, like the Weather Channel among so many others. I actually find this site to be mild on the ads compared to many others. I don’t mind it here, her site is too great to really care about a few ads for me😊
For meal planning I do pretty much exactly what you described above….one big go at Costco each month, then a few smaller stops at markets for produce and smaller items. Even though it’s just me here, I make meals to take to my dad on occasion so I do have to “plan” a bit to keep staples here. Fortunately he’s pretty easy to cook for, not too picky. I’m able to freeze things, share some of the items that I buy in bulk. I just find Costco to be my go to for so many things. I always take a list to stay on track and keep the impulse buying down. I try not to wander too much or it could be trouble if I venture off the list too much😊
My hat off to you for managing and caring for your now bigger family and home. What a blessing in being such a good mommy who is always there for them.
Your posts are a bright spot for me during this restrictive time. When watching your beautiful family grow and change, makes me miss me three youngest grandsons a little less. Plus your non cooking touches, like bookmarks, help me expand my horizons. Keep up the fabulous job of cook, baker, mom, wife and bright spot for those of us who enjoy your hard work and tips. Stay safe.
For meal planning, I use Plan to Eat.
I can import my favorite recipes (many from Brown Eyed Baker) automatically, it generates my shopping list for me, I can change the quantity any time. I’ve used it for several years and I love it! https://www.plantoeat.com/ref/48307778cc
About planning meals, I have a habit of checking out my grocery store specials & BOGOFs. And adding manufacturer or store coupons (clipped digitally in an app) when I can. For example, a sale on pork butt would have me vacuum seal & freeze it & schedule pulled pork sandwiches in the next week or two. I recently grabbed $32 bags 1-1/2# ea of sea scallops, fresh frozen, BOGOF! I made shrimp & scallop scampi with it 2 weeks later. Then, FFY (Fend For Yourself) nights we have leftovers.
BTW, I tracked my savings for a whole year at one grocery store, and I saved over $1,000 this way.
Michelle, One of my favorite features in your Weekend Dish segment of your blog is the “Things I Bookmarked” section. I think we have very similar likes and you always have something in there that interests me. I never would have found these other food blogs on my own and I appreciate the time it takes you to find interesting and delicious content from other great cooks! Thank you!
I used to do a very detailed meal plan – two weeks at a time, right down to planning exactly how much the ingredients would cost so that I could stick to my budget. Now, I shop differently, by buying multiple items on sale and stocking up so meal planning begins by looking at what I already have (shop from my shelves) and then filling in with items I still need.
Two weeks at a time is plenty of planning – food is such a mood thing that I can’t imagine figuring out what I want to eat a month from now!
Whatever happened to your Sunday dinner menu? I miss that, because I’m nosy!
Sunday dinner stopped because of the pandemic. It was a family get together and COVID prevented that.
What Melissa said :) We haven’t hosted Sunday dinner since quarantine began back on March, so I haven’t been sharing a menu.
Happy Saturday! Yes to meal planning! It’s a pain in the butt when I sit down once a month to do it, but the rest of the month I don’t have to think about it again. It’s lovely! I used to do a weekly plan, but much prefer the monthly. It takes me a couple hours ONE morning a month, but then it’s DONE.