Middle of the week slump

I love reading food blogs.  I am in awe of the time, effort and abilities that these (mostly) women posses.  I definitely don't have it all together like that.  Especially the ones who can sit down and create a 7X3 chart of their meal planning for the week.. Yes.. they can plan out all 3 meals a day for each day of the week.. I cannot do that.. Does one have to become a kitchen Nazi and not allow anything to be used or eaten unless she allows it to be signed out/checked off the list?  If I tried to get that specific I would be setting myself up for a heck of a lot more work.  For example... Tuesday morning I looked into the freezer to grab the last 3 snickerdoodle bar cookies to put into lunches... but there was only 1.. Apparently when I took Maddie to scouts on Monday night he let the boys each have a cookie....So I packed her the lone cookie and scrounged through my shelf for 2 more lone snack bar type items and tossed those into lunch bags.. In the end it helped me b/c in the lunch room, no one know who has which snack bar.. thus.. no fighting over who had a *healthy* granola bar and who had the overly sweet fruity pebbles bar!  

For my own planning and sanity I  try to keep a basic list of what I have on hand main dish wise.. and know what I have on hand for side dishes.. and then let it all fall into place.. Last night after cleaning up dinner I had some time while the kids played cards with daddy so I went to put away some of my newest couponing additions, and did a quick straighten of the pantry shelves.. I grabbed a bag and started to fill it with things I knew I was running low on upstairs, a bottle of shampoo, some splenda, lunch snack items etc.. I also took a moment to think about dinner.  Wednesday I work and will go to the gym right after that.. I arrive home right before the kids do.. So that means crock pot needs to already be in cooking mode.. or it needs to be an easy meal night...

Knowing I had a partial bag of red meat sauce still in the freezer I decided to go with easy night!  I grabbed a box of Dreamfields pasta ( I pay more for this brand b/c it is a  lower carb  product) and a jar of Classico Tomato Basil sauce.  I know I paid $2.00 for the pasta- (that was a sale price I stocked up at)- and I bought a ton of jars of sauce when I had coupons and they were on a great sale.. I believe I paid .50 a jar! To round the meal out I grabbed some Bocca from the freezer.  (Last week the only items I bought at GE were Yoplait cups, Bocca and Sargento Cheese sticks.. all were on a great sale/great gas points and I have lots of coupons...) Kids will have their Bocca Parmigiana with plain Veggie chikin patties and hubby and I will have ours with the Basil Parmesan flavored ones.   

I have not been in the salad mood so I need to check the little bit in the veggie drawer to see if it will be salvageable for dinner.. or if I need to do a purge...

On a positive note I got the oven cleaned out!  I paid almost $5.00 for that spray cleaner.  If I did not work I was going to pitch a royal fit!  Maybe tonight I will whip up some snacks for the kids.