Preventing Monday Madness... Part 1

Happy Monday!

I am sitting here starting to dread our frantic fall.  Our house gets so super crazy once school starts until about November.  My son plays football and baseball in the fall.  My youngest daughter is in cheerleading and gymnastics.  We host Monday Night Football parties and to top it off, my husband works on Sundays and I work home Bronco games.  So to put it lightly, we are crazy once school and practices start.  

I learned some valuable lessons last fall.  First, I'm not sure we sat down for a family dinner once in those 2 1/2 months.  Also, my house was such a disaster that I literally had a cleaning lady quit after an hour in my house.  Embarrassing!!  So I'm tackling this head on this year.  

First thing I did was make up a menu starting on the first day of school.  I made it as simple as possible.  For example, every Wednesday is Hamburger Night.  Whether it is regular burgers or sliders, we're doing hamburger, fries and a veggie every Wednesday.  I think I'll be just buying the preformed freezer hamburgers.  I found an easy oven baked slider recipe over at Reason to Skip Housework.

After I made that executive decision about Burger Night, I figured out most of the Monday Night Football schedule.  I cook for a team every Monday night.  Most of which are easy to figure out:  New Orleans = Gumbo, Green Bay = Beer Cheese Soup, etc.  It's really fun to get together with my friends, eat, drink and hang out.

Then I realized that Fridays tend to be the one day I never want to cook.  But I didn't want to eat out every Friday.  So I decided that every other Friday is going to be French Bread Pizza night.  It's a freezer recipe I found years ago that is not only cheap, but easy.

After that I had to search some of the easier freezer meals that I knew we could eat at least once a month and plugged them in.  Then I tried to find the easiest slow cooker meals I can throw in the morning of and set a timer.  

Here's the list of freezer meals I plan on throwing together this week with links:

Sausage Hash
Crockpot Beef Tips and Gravy
Sloppy Joes Plus
Hearty Black Bean Quesadillas
Pesto Chicken Alfredo
Chicken Club Casserole
Herbes de Provence Chicken
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Chicken Taco Bowls

I'll do part 2 tomorrow and talk about Monday Night Football and Macaroni and Cheese!