Welcome to Recipe Monday!

So my friend Carly decided to do recipe Mondays and asked if anyone wanted to join her. I emphatically said "me!" but then realized I have a hard time keeping up with my meal planning and preparation, let alone blogging about meals! I had grand plans of which recipe I would do first but alas this is what I came up with. Anyway, to kick things off here for my first Recipe Monday I have decided I have a confession to make...

My name is Emily, and I like to buy in bulk. Then I like to forget about all the things I have bought, or the meals I have purposed them for, letting them go to waste therefore defeating the purpose of buying in bulk to save money...and then I like to cry about it.

So part of recipe Mondays will incorporate my goal to cook as little as possible and get as many meals out of one session of cooking/shopping as possible. With that said one of the things I always buy in large quantities is potatoes, especially in the winter. My last trip to the store I bought a huge bag of potatoes, carrots, and celery. Then I went to town on hearty winter meals. The first was ham and white bean soup. I used a ham bone my mother in law had given me and then the carrots and celery. The next night was roast chicken with vegetables and rice. The next night was chicken pot pie with home made gravy (an Ina Garten recipe that changed my life, more on that later) using the leftover meat and some of the veggies from the night before. The night after that was pot roast, again using the carrots, celery and potatoes. Yes, a lot of these meals have the same components but they are all so different that no one my family family seemed to notice. (Well besides Kaitlyn who informed me each night that she does NOT like carrots, but she will try one if she has to) By now the only thing I have left is potatoes and I am quite proud of myself for actually using what I bought...what a concept!

But tonight I had no leftovers and no meal planned out. It is times like these when it is so tempting to order in or head to McDonalds, especially on the nights Ben is at work. In the freezer I had chorizo, in the cupboard, potatoes of course :) I fried up the potatoes (cutting them in smallish matchsticks) cooked some chorizo, scrambled some eggs and we had breakfast burritos for dinner! A nice change from the usual breakfast for dinner routine and super quick! Add a fruit smoothie and we called it good. So the point of this recipe Monday is that sometimes you have no plan (okay a LOT of times) and flying by the seat of your pants can be economical and yummy too! :) I promise better meals, and pictures in the future! Happy Monday!