I am really, really tired of not being ready for dinner and being too tired to make lunch all the time, so it is time to get serious.  Three things I know for sure I want to make for dinner this week are meatloaf, chicken fajitas, and polish sausage, onions, and peppers.  We have all of the ingredients for those except a lime and cilantro for the fajitas and cauliflower to make riced cauliflower to use in place of bread crumbs in the meatloaf as I can no longer find rice crumbs or gluten free bread crumbs.  They are always sold out.  Although if I can find them I will use them instead of caulifower.

If I am making meatloaf, it is also easy enough to make meatballs at the same time.  So I can put two extra meatloaves in the freezer for dinners in the future and then I can do a quadruple batch of meatballs.  I can simmer some of them in sauce and pack them into lunch containers for lunch prep for the fridge and then one can be divided up into lunch freezer containers, and 2 batches can be divided up for spaghetti dinners in the future.

I can make a couple double batches of fajitas on sheet pans in the oven for a total of four, one for dinner, one to divide up for lunches in the fridge or freezer, and two to freeze for future dinners.  And then do the same thing with the polish sausage meals.  Any lunch meals we have too much of will be frozen, but we are feeding 4 people.  I will have carbs available for those who wants them, like spaghetti for the meatballs and tortillas for the fajitas or sausage and peppers and of course fruit.  I just won't be eating that.  I will add zucchini on the side of my meatballs and sauce, though.

Then my son wants one other chicken dish for meal prep, so know I am going through some recipes to try to figure out something that will be good for dinner and yet also meal prep for lunches well.  Maybe something in the Chinese stir-fry range.  It's been a while since I've done black pepper chicken and I've got a bag of stir-fry veggies that really need to be used up.  I'll have to buy some more chicken.

I can't believe I am this close to being out of chicken.  I have one package of boneless, skinless thighs, six whole chicken breasts.  That should be enough for all the fajitas, so I need enough for the stir-fry.  Otherwise I only have one package of thighs and one package of legs in the house.  That is so low on chicken for me.  I'll have to find a good sale soon.

As for tonight's dinner, that will likely be stir-fry, because all the other meat will have to thaw out and will take forever before I can start assembling anything.

I do need to buy fruit and some veg, though.  We are down to 2 oranges, 4 regular kiwi, 5 yellow kiwi, and 2 apples.  So we need bananas, more oranges, a couple apples of a different variety, a pineapple if they are ripe, a mango, some tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, green onions, a leek, cabbage, a lime, 4 lemons, and maybe berries.  Maybe even a guava.  I've never had a guava, but I like all the other tropical fruit, except starfruit, so why not?

Berries are out of season so an extreme luxury.  It won't be blueberries sadly, if I buy some, because the last several containers I have bought have been so sour despite being fully blue they taste like they should be pink.  Like they've been died or something.  I don't mine tart sweet,  But tart isn't the same thing as sour.  The strawberries haven't been ripe, just the blackberries and raspberries and I don't like raspberries.  So berries are conditional, but at least the blackberries taste good, they are just the most expensive.

I am going after the more tropical fruits, because they are in season, and they are packed with vitamin C.  My daughter is sick again and I am trying to keep from getting sick.  There is only so much taking a vitamin can do for you and I always feel like you get your best vitamins from food.  I just wish I'd been well enough to harvest our rose hips at the right time this year so I could make tea with them now.  I might still find a few that are good if I look, but most will be no good.

Anyway, that's me again, sharing my thought process as I figure out my grocery list to meal prep, to save money in the long run, cook at home, and get the family to stay out of the take out line.