It’s been a weird week here at the Frugal Upstate village homestead. . . First Princess was home sick, now Buddy is home sick.  I’ve had to cancel and rearrange various appointments, errands and whatnot because I can’t seem to get everyone up, moving and well at the same time!

But things are looking up.  I woke up this morning without my back hurting for the first time in about 2 months-so I’m trying to stay off the computer (which I think is aggravating it) and avoid heavy lifting today to see if I can actually be better!

So to keep it easy today rather than researching and writing something new-I’m publishing what I’ve got so far for my big Frugal Skills List.  I know there are lots more ideas out there-s0 feel free to add your ideas in the comments!

Remember-the idea here is to take a more finalized version of the list and create an “index page” where it will live, then as topics are covered or great resources on the web are found I’ll link them-sort of a Frugal Skill table of contents if you will!

Frugal Skill List

Cooking from Scratch

1. baking, braising, roasting,
2. Make your own mixes (Pat from Kitchener)
3. slicing leftover meat/roast it very thin to make “Deli” meat for sandwiches (Pat from Kitchener)

Sewing and clothing care

1. Proper washing, drying & ironing to make clothes last (Pat in K)
2. Line drying laundry (Mary @ Mrs Redo Redo101.blogspot.com)
3. Cleaning “dry clean only” clothes at home (Melissa O from FB)
4. Fixing snags in sweaters
5. Stain removal
6. De-pilling a sweater
7. Mending, hems, replacing buttons, taking in or out a seam
8. Remaking/Repurposing clothing & linens (Pat from Kitchener)

Housekeeping

1. Washing Dishes by hand (Mary @ Mrs Redo Redo101.blogspot.com)
2. Homemade cleaning products
3. Homemade laundry soap

Home Decor (Pat from K)

1. simple upholstery tricks (Pat from K)
2. how to make a drape/curtain (Pat from K)
3. How to paint or paper a room, (Pat from K)
4. Rearrange furniture to best fit the room or mood you want.(Pat from K)
5. shop thrift stores, yard sales, roadside (Mary @ Mrs Redo Redo101.blogspot.com)

Knitting & Crocheting (Gwen via comments)

1. Hats/Scarves/Mittens
2. Dishcloths/Scrubbers
3. Baby Items
4. Blankets/Afghans

Gifts

1. make Christmas ornaments (Mary @ Mrs Redo)
2. Make Cards (Mary @ Mrs Redo)
3. Make Jewelry (Sueellen at  i-dont-think-so.com )

Gardening

1. Growing your own veggies
2. starting seeds (& sharing with others)
3. saving seeds
4. composting
5. planting perennials (Pat from K)
6. growing indoors (herbs, onion & garlic ends etc) (Pat from K)
7. re-purposing items for planters (Pat from K)

Mechanical Knowledge/Maintenance

1. Basic car upkeep (Pat from K)
2. changing wiper blades
3. checking oil & transmission fluid
4. checking tire pressure (Pat from K)
5. knowing your owners manual
6. knowing how to change a tire (Melissa O from FB)
7. Changing your oil
8. Basic Lawnmower/weedwacker/etc maintenance

Home Repairs/Skills

1. refurbishing/repurposing furniture (Joy @ ihavetriedit.wordpress.com)
2. Patching a hole/dent (Melissa B from FB)
3. caulking leaks/drafts
4. basic toilet repairs-new handle, replacing bobber, replacing seat etc (Michelle from FB)
5. Changing a water heater element (Pino from FB)
6. Screen Repair (Melissa O from FB)
7. Unclog a drain (Melissa B from FB)
8. Know where you main water shut off valve and your main power breaker are (Donna from FB)
9. Keeping/organizing/Using warranties on all items you purchase (Christine from FB)
10. Changing faucets (Christine from FB)
11. Installing low flow showerhead (Christine from FB)
12. Cleaning/clearing dishwasher filter (Christine from FB)

Energy Conservation

1. Keeping all north windows covered thruout the winter, blinds closed, curtains pull  (Mary Redo)

Preserving food

1. Canning
2. dehydrating
3. freezing

Fashion

1. Accessorizing on the cheap (Pat in K)
2. How to make/repair jewelry (Pat in K)

Entertainment

1. Use the library (Mary @ Mrs Redo Redo101.blogspot.com)
2. Vacationing on the cheap  (Mary @ Mrs Redo Redo101.blogspot.com)

stay home
day trips

Miscellaneous

1. Knowing how to research  (@superstarsaver)
2. A love of reading & Learning new skills (Gail)
3. Teaching others (Gwen)
4. Staying Healthy (Amyrlin)
5. Delayed Gratification-saying “no” to the “I wants” (Joy @ ihavetriedit.wordpress.com)

I woke up this morning to find out that Princess was sick.  She stayed home from school and, well, suffice it to say that after a while I decided that she needed to rehydrate!

Now I didn’t want her just to drink plain water because she needed to replace electrolytes as well as the actual fluid.  I also didn’t want to be gone for long since she wasn’t feeling well-so that meant a trip to the more expensive local “Great American” grocery store.  (It’s about 6 aisles-and each of them is only about 200 yards long. Really)

I bought this container of Gatorade powder for just over $5.  I’m sure you could get it for less at a bigger chain store.  It makes 8 quarts of Gatorade.

Now a 16 oz bottle of Gatorade costs at LEAST a $-so for less than the price of 5 small bottles of Gatorade I got the equivalent of 16!  Not only that, but I can make a cup (8oz) at a time, so really it’s about 32 servings.

And since it’s powder, it is shelf stable, so I can just use what I need now (which is hopefully not too many glasses!) and then stick the rest in the cupboard for any future needs!

I’d say that’s the frugal way to go.

It’s time for another Meal Plan!  Let’s plan ahead, cut our chaos and make sure there’s tasty meals on the table for the family!

This week is especially busy here at the Frugal Upstate “Village Homestead”

1.  There is some sort of big appointment every day this week.  I’ve got funeral luncheons to bake for, a social media club meeting to cook for and attend, a shift at the food pantry, a half day school for the kids (in the middle of the week. WTH?), a Dr. appt with a specialist an hour away, and a couple of client meetings.  There’s dance lessons, Odessy of the Mind rehearsal, chorus, Buddy’s first piano lesson, a potluck at church, and of course we also have our usual total chaos on Wednesday night with Hubs at pool and the kids at 2 different scout meetings.

I’m tired just typing all that.

2.  I bought 8 packages of split chicken breasts over the weekend because they were on sale for $.89 a lb.  I baked them this afternoon and pulled the meat off-that’s in the fridge.  Now I’ve got all the bones simmering in the large slow cooker to make stock.  I probably should use some stock and a bit of the chicken meat this week.

3.  I forgot that I canned a lot of green tomato–I need to start using that up!  I’ve also got canned carrots, green beans and zuchinni & tomato that I should start using.

4.  As always my goal is to have one venison, on fish, one meatless, one bean and one soup meal each week.

Taking all that into account here is my game plan:

Monday: Spicy Thai Noodles with Chicken and Green Beans

I made Spicy Thai Noodles to take to a potluck social media networking meeting today, so I just did a double batch, the added a bit of cooked chicken and mixed it in before supper.  I cracked open a can of green beans (from my garden) for a side.

Tuesday: Kids Choice

The kids only have a half day.  I didn’t plan this out well, but I think that I’m going to have Princess help me choose a meal and then have her help me cook the whole thing for supper.  She’s already scrambling eggs and making cheese tortillas, so I think we can step it up a bit and have her start learning more cooking. We will look through a few cookbooks and see what we come up with!

Wednesday: Chicken Soup with Biscuits

I’ll use the stock I made on Monday to make a huge batch of chicken soup.  I mean a REALLY huge batch.  I want to either can or freeze up some extra!  The biscuits will be from scratch to go on the side.  Since I can do the soup in the crockpot this will be a good meal for the very busy day full of driving I have on Wednesday.

This is my soup meal.

Thursday: Vension Steaks with Gravy and Onions, Butternut Squash Bake and Rice

Basic pan fried Venison steaks, homemade gravy, sauteed onions.  I’ll make the butternut squash bake I’ve been grooving on (once I take some pictures I can share it with you all.  Rice for the starch and something to soak up that extra gravy.

This is my Venison meal for the week.

Friday:  No Meal

Friday is the Pinewood Derby for the scouts-everyone is bringing snacky foods and fun stuff for the event.  We won’t have to make an actual meal

Saturday: Pizza!

I’ll make homemade pizza using the Pizza Hut Crust Clone recipe of course!

Sunday: Leftover Buffet

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Ok, so it wasn’t a great meal plan week when it comes to goals.  It’s late as I type this and I just can’t think of a good bean or fish meal.  Please, if you have a great frugal fish or bean meal let me know!

Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .

I am a woman full of plans.  I have so many things that I want, need and would like to do every single day.

I want to be a good wife, a good mom and a good friend.  I want to grow more of my own food, cook from scratch and have a homey, attractive, organized and clean home.  I want to help more at church, be active in my community and learn new things.  I want to do crafts and projects just for the sheer joy of them.  I want to, I want to, I want to.

And yet some days I feel like I’m slogging through jello.  I get to the end of the day and think “Dang! I didn’t get anything accomplished today.” My massive mental to-do list sits there, mocking me.

I bet many of you out there feel this way too-wether it’s in relation to your journey to frugality, you attempts to be more sustainable, to get more prepared or to move ahead in whatever challenges you personally have.  It can be a very discouraging feeling.

Sometimes I just need to take a minute and remind myself (and all of you) that we can’t get there overnight.  Life is a journey, and we’ve all made progress in our own paths.

So what do you do when you have one of those days where you feel like you have accomplished nothing?  It’s always great if you have a friend or partner there who can support you and cheer you up-letting you know that you are doing a great job.

But it’s not always up to someone else to fix it for us, to make us better.

Sometimes we have to take responsibility for ourselves and how we feel.  We don’t have any control over what someone else feels-what we have control over is how WE feel. So change it!  Take a minute and make a list of everything you’ve done that day-no matter how small.  I guarantee-even though you might not have accomplished what you wanted, you’ve done a LOT.

When this feeling overwhelmed me last week that’s what I did.  I realized hey-I had made breakfast, lunches and dinner for 4 people.  Got kiddos and hubs out the door to start their day with all paperwork, bags, and outerwear (harder than it sounds with the kiddos!) Baked bread.  Done laundry.  Researched online. Written a post.  Taken the dog out 6 times.  Made several runs upstairs with various items.  Swept. . . well you get the idea.

Nothing huge.  Nothing earth shattering. Nothing that seemed important.

But you know what? It was all stuff that needed to be done.  Things that if left undone would have made life less pleasant and less effective for me and my family.

Looking at it that way, I had actually had a fairly successful day.

So cheer up and continue the journey!

Well despite the fact that I never published it last month I have still been tracking grocery prices for our Grocery Benchmark Report.  I’ve decided to improve my format a bit.

Each month I show the last two month’s prices on a set basket of “staple” grocery items.  I price all items at my local ALDI store to keep things simple.  These price columns are followed by a “Change, Year to Date” column (right now I’m just using my data from when I started recording in August.  Once we are a couple months into the year I’ll switch it over to a true YTD) and a “Change since last month” column.

Note:  If a price is shown in green, it’s gotten cheaper.  If it’s in red, it’s more expensive.

January Grocery Benchmark

My guess is that there have been price drops in baking essentials for the holidays-things like butter, flour and sugar are down overall from August.  I’m noticing several animal based products such as whole chicken, eggs and cheese are increasing in price. I’m suspicious that has to do with the huge increase in cost of feed corn-since it’s fed to both cattle and chickens.  (note: I think personally that they are trying to keep milk steady intentionally)   The drop in ground beef also makes sense as many ranchers who couldn’t afford to water their herds during the drought and can’t afford the increased feed costs have sent cattle to slaughter leading to a short term flooding of the market.  Eventually the rebound of that will be that beef prices will go way up.

Remember-prices can vary wildly by region. My desire here is to help us all notice and take action on price TRENDS so we can make decisions about how best to manage our budget for our own households.

Wondering why I’m so concerned about rising food costs?  Because the the price of food at home is projected to rise by 4 to 5 percent this year, and another 2 to 3 percent next year, according to the US Agriculture Department.

Thanks to Malloreigh for the photo that I found on Flickr to create the graphic from.

Brrr. The temperatures have finally started acting like winter here in Upstate NY. As I write this the temperature outside is a chilly 7 degrees! Weather like this makes me crave warm and filling meals like soups, stews and casseroles!

This week, as always, I have things to take into consideration while putting together my meal plan

1. Monday was off from school  Tuesday hubs is taking me to Mama Mia so the kiddos are getting to spend the night with their Uncle-since he’s doing me a favor I want to have dinner ready to go (crockpot!).  Wednesday night is scout night, plus Hubs plays pool.  Friday night Hubs has a meeting so it’s just the kids and I.

2.  I’ve got some mashed potatoes that are leftover from the Senior Lunch at church (dude-don’t throw away 2 cups of mashed taters-I’ll find something to do with them).  I’m actually doing pretty well otherwise with food in the fridge-the 3 day weekend used up a lot of leftovers!  I do have a bit too much milk-so something to use some of that up would be good.

3.  I need to start using up some odds and ends in my side by side freezer.  I’ve got fish from my BIL and fish stock I made from bones and shrimp shells a while back.  There is also some tomato sauce frozen in there, and I think a ham bone.

4.  My goals are always to include a fish meal, a venison meal, a meatless meal, a bean meal and a soup meal.  Some of those can double up-like a soup made with fish

Taking all that into account here is my game plan:

Monday:  Blue Cheese Stuffed Burgers with Sweet Potato Fries and Green Beans

The kids were off from school so I asked them what they wanted and this was it!  I did buy the sweet potato fries frozen–the stuffed burgers are just two very thin hamburgers with about a tablespoon of blue cheese sandwiched in between.  Then you squeeze the edges together so all your cheese doesn’t ooze out.

Tuesday:  Chicken Stuffing Casserole with Gravy and Green Beans

I’ll make the chicken stuffing casserole in the slow cooker so it’s all ready for Uncle to serve to the kiddos.  The green beans are leftover from yesterday’s diner.  The gravy I am ashamed to admit will be out of a packet.  It’s a quick, easy and tasty dinner.  And their should be leftovers for our lunch the next day!

Wednesday:  Fish Chowder with Impossible Beer Bread

I’ll make the fish chowder using some of the fish from my BIL and the fish stock I have frozen.  I’m sure I’ll toss in dehydrated corn & veggies as well!  I didn’t get around to making the Impossible Beer Bread last week, but now I’ve got it in my head so I need to make some!

This is my fish meal and my soup meal for the week.

Thursday:  Hunter’s Pie

Hunter’s Pie is Shepard’s pie made with venison instead of beef!  I’ll use venison from the freezer in the pie and then use the leftover mashed potatoes from the luncheon as the topping!  I really don’t need a veggie side as I make the pie heavy on the veggies inside, and the taters on the top are the starch.  So it’s a one dish meal.

This is my venison meal for the week.

Friday:  Pizza

Homemade pizza made with the Pizza Hut Crust Clone of course!

Saturday:  Pork Ribs, Rice and Butternut Squash bake

I’ve got some ribs down in the freezer from my 1/2 pig (maybe I need to add pork into my goals eh?)-I’m going to try them in the crockpot via a recipe a longtime reader & friend gave me!  Rice will be a good general side (maybe I’ll get fancy and do it some different way).  I’ve got a ton of Butternut Squash still-so I’ll make a bake with it again.  If I like the recipe this second time I’ll post it for you guys soon!

Sunday:  Homemade Baked Beans with Sweet Northern Cornbread and Glazed Carrots.

Homemade Baked Beans on a Sunday evening is a New England tradition.  Of course they usually serve it with that really sweet brown bread that comes in a can these days (if you don’t know, don’t ask) but I’ll make my Sweet Northern Cornbread instead.  The carrots will be dug from the garden-now that we’ve got a snow cover I’m interested to see how much effort it takes to dig out those deeply mulched carrots.

This is my meatless and my bean meal for the week.

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Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .

Need a new calendar for 2012?  In keeping with my frugal philosophy and my favorite price point I’ve rounded up a fabulous selection of 18 FREE printable 2012 calendars from great sites all around the web.

Want a monthly calendar? Got it.  Year at a glance? Got it.  Wallet sized? Got it.  Something pretty enough to be a gift? Got that to!

Here they are:

My Owl Barn has an amazingly customizable 12 month calendar.   45 artists created original owl artwork for inclusion in the calendar.  You can either choose which picture you want for each month or go with the present 12 month calendar!

Brilicious created a beautiful and colorful 12 page monthly calendar featuring graphic designs and bright pantone colors.

The Graphic Garden has three completely different country style monthly calendars to choose from.  If country is your style, you are sure to find something you love.

Creative Mama made this pretty “doodle” style monthly calendar with plenty of room to write in all your important dates and appointments.

Skip to My Lou created a gorgeous 12 month calendar that is pretty enough to give as a gift.  These long and narrow calendar pages print two to a page and have to be trimmed down.

Creative Mama also created these adorable Kokeshi doll mini calendars.  These print out 6 months per page and then are trimmed to size.

The Wedding Chicks  created these monthly calendar pages with the intent that they be customized with personal photos and then used as a “save the date” card for a wedding-however you could easily customize and print out all 12 months and make your own personal, stylish calendar.

We heart DIY used an animal based “doodle” font to create a fun but simple monthly calendar that prints two months per page.  Perfect for a child or those who are children at heart!

The Nest Effect has a basic calendar that does what you need it to-gives you a month at a time, plenty of space to write in and a bit of style via color that goes just a bit beyond basic.

Speaking of basic, this Project Management Calendar is bare bones but functional.  They also have on the site a yearly planning calendar that prints on one page with each month going across horizontally-very nice for certain types of planning.

Mr. Printables “Month”-sters would be adorable in a toddler’s room, nursery school or kindergarten classroom!  Each month is a different “Month”-ster

Sprik Space made two different versions of this chic, graphic year at a glance calendars.  Each one can be printed in 12 different colors.  That’s 24 different choices!

Living Locurto created two beautiful year at a glance calendars-one that can be framed and placed on your desk,

and then she made this amazing table top version that stands all by itself!

Redstamp‘s colorful and typographic year at a glace calendar prints in a landscape format.

Don’t Eat the Paste has a more ornate version of the year at a glance calendar that’s saved from being over the top by it’s simple black and white color scheme.

Clementine Creative‘s colorful “notebook paper” calendar prints out 6 months to a page.  She recommends printing it out on each side of a piece of paper and laminating the whole shebang.

And finally, Gatterwe has this tiny year at a glance calendar that prints out in business card size.

Enjoy!  And remember-these lovely folks created these calendars and offered them for free, so if you print any of them out take a moment to leave a comment on their blogs to say “thanks”~it will mean a lot.

Hello there loyal Frugal Upstate readers (and newbies who are just stopping to say hello)!

Today is data entry for tax prep day for me.  Blech.  I hate bookkeeping and taxes and accounting and all that stuff.  I’m much more a creative person (in case you couldn’t tell) although I am really good at organizing projects and such. . .

Long story short-I’ve got to sit here and do the not so fun part of work today-so instead of an informative post by me, I’m going to ask you all for help!  Yes, help!

You see a brilliant idea came to me in the shower this morning (as so many ideas do).  I was thinking about how so much of living a frugal, sustainable and prepared life is about having skills and skill sets that enable you to be frugal.  I want to not only continue to build my own skills, but to help you all identify and build skills that will help all of you live the best life possible while staying within your means.

Ok, that’s great and all. . . but where do you the readers come in?

Well, I thought it would be fun today to come up with a big, huge list of every single skill we can think of that is helpful to frugal living.  Then I’ll roll it all up into one big sort of outline type list which I will post (and add to as folks come up with more).  As I either find great resources or write posts myself that pertain to those skills I’ll go back and link–that will make the list one big huge frugal living index!

So what do you think?  What skills can you think of?  Here are a few to get started that come to mind for me in the 2 minutes I have before I have to get my butt off line and start data entry.  blech.

(note: don’t be afraid to add very specific sub skills-ie under cooking might be “how to bake bread”)

Cooking from Scratch

       baking, braising, roasting,

sewing

      Mending, hems, replacing buttons, taking in or out a seam

Gardening

    Growing your own veggies, starting seeds, saving seeds, composting

Changing your own oil

Preserving food

     Canning, dehydrating, freezing

OK, I can’t wait to hear what you all come up with!

It’s time for another “Ask Frugal Upstate” episode! This time Laura asked if I had ever done indoor gardening-specifically growing herbs indoors.

How about the rest of you?  Do you grow anything indoors?

Do you have a question you’d like answered in an “Ask Frugal Upstate” segment? I’d love to hear it! You can leave a comment below, make a comment on the Frugal Upstate Facebook page, or use my contact form.

Christmas is well and truly over, school is back in swing and the Frugal Upstate household is busy with plenty of different types of work and fun. Menu planning, as always, making things easier!

This week’s considerations

1. Tuesday Princess has dance right at suppertime, Wednesday is chaos as usual with scouts for both kids in two different places (thankfully close to each other) and Yankee Bill playing pool. I’ve got a Dr. appt one afternoon, tax appointment another and a full morning at the food pantry as a volunteer on Thursday. In particular Tues & Friday I need simple easy to get on the table meals.

2. I’ve got 2 chicken breasts in the fridge, a head of lettuce and about 2 cups of chick peas to use. Also I didn’t wind up making the breakfast casserole last week, so I still have plenty of eggs.

3. I’m doing the church lady meal thing again-we’ve got another parishioner home from the hospital who needs a couple of very simple, bland meals. I’m thinking something chicken and rice based. I’ve also got to find time to make a cake for the church’s senior luncheon on Sunday. I’ll probably do that on Saturday.

4. Buddy asked to make homemade gnocchi sometime soon. He’ll be home without his sister for a while this afternoon-she’s got after school activities, so maybe he and I will roll gnocchi together! I can take pictures and get a post out of it as well!

4. My goals are 1 fish, 1 venison, 1 meatless, 1 bean and 1 soup meal. Remember-those can double up (fish chowder would be a fish & a soup meal for example)

Taking all that into account here is my game plan:

Monday: Gnocchi with Pesto or Red Sauce with Salad

Buddy and I will make gnocchi together this afternoon. I”ve got pesto cubes in the freezer from a bumper crop of basil 2 years ago to toss over it. I’ll make a very simple salad-lettuce, celery, some carrot from the garden. Maybe I’ll try draining a can of stewed tomatoes & adding those-I can’t stand buying tasteless tomatoes at a premium price in the winter so I avoid it if at all possible! The good thing is that I can take extra gnocchi with a bit of butter and Parmesan over to the lady who needs a bland-ish meal.

This is my meatless meal for the week.

Tuesday: Crockpot Salsa Chicken with Tortillas, Rice and Refried Beans

The recipe for Crockpot Salsa Chicken is so simple as to almost not be able to be considered a recipe. Great for a day when I’ve got conference calls, appointments, kids heading to dance etc etc etc (ad nausem) with tortillas and rice the meat can either get rolled up burrito style with some shredded lettuce and the rest of those stewed tomatoes, or else tossed over some of the rice. The refried beans are out of a can, but hey-they taste good.

Wednesday: Breakfast Casserole

Since I didn’t get the breakfast casserole together last week I’ll make it this week. Again-it not only will be tasty, but I can make a second smaller pan of it to take over to that lady.

This is actually a second meatless meal.

Thursday: Curried Chickpeas with Rice

Yes-I know I made this last week. You see it was a new recipe and I made some drastic adjustments while cooking since I thought the intial dish was far too bland (which may have been the fault of my really old curry powder). Anyway before I can share it with all of you I really need to make it again to ensure that it comes out consistently the same. And hey-I’ve got to use up the rest of those chick peas so what the heck (I made them from dried instead of using canned).  I’ll put some sauteed carrots fresh from the garden on the side.

This is another meatless meal-plus it is my bean meal for the week.

Friday: Venison Vegetable Stew with Homemade Beer Bread

I know I usually do pizza on Fridays-but I’ve got a busy Friday planned so I don’t know that I’ll be home in time to get the dough into the doughmaker and have time for it to rise and cook etc. Instead I’ll push that off a day and I’ll go ahead and get some soup started in the crockpot. That way it can cook “low & slow” all day with the flavors melding, and all I need to do is whip up the beer bread when I get home.

This is my venison and my soup meal for the week.

Saturday: Pizza Hut Crust Clone Calzones

We’ll have our pizza calzone style using the pizza hut crust clone recipe. I’ll have time on Saturday not only to make it but to let each kiddo make their own!

Sunday: Old Fashioned Salmon Loaf with Baked Potatoes and Green Beans

Old Fashioned Salmon Loaf uses canned salmon. Sometimes I even substitue in some (or all) canned tuna instead. I’ll make hollandaise sauce to serve over it (maybe even the real stuff instead of the packet?) and then do simple baked potatoes that can be cooking at the same time as the Salmon Loaf. The green beans are canned from our garden this summer.

This is my fish meal for the week.

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Are you interested in learning more about menu planning? Check out my post “Why Plan a Weekly Menu” .