Thanksgiving centers around food, we revel in it, then bask in the glow of full tummies. This week’s menu does not cover the Thanksgiving Day feast. Also, this week I am assuming the usual Clean Out Refrigerator Night, the Thanksgiving Day meal, and a bonus night of leftovers. Instead of the usual six meals, we’re down to four. Next week we’ll return to the usual six night plan. We are also cutting ourselves a little slack this week and using a fancy frozen vegetable side since who really wants to spend another night in the kitchen after Thanksgiving?

1. Meatloaf, rice and peas, steamed broccoli
To save some time on day three, double the meatloaf recipe and use the crumbled leftovers in place of the ground beef in the soup. My family highly prefers the soup made from meatloaf over plain ground beef and requests it frequently.

2. Oven fried chicken fingers, ranch potato wedges, carrot and celery sticks with ranch or blue cheese dressing for dipping

3. Beef and vegetable soup, grilled cheese sandwiches.
What?  There’s no recipe, what shall we do?

• First take a deep breath, then brown a pound of ground beef and drain it really well.
• Place it and 8 cups of water + 3 tsp beef bouillon (3 cubes if you’d like) into a large pot over medium heat.
• In the same pan you browned the beef, sweat (this just means cook over low heat until slightly soft) 1 diced onion, a couple cloves of garlic smashed and chopped, two carrots cut into coins, and chopped celery (Include the leaves if you are a big fan of celery).
• Once they are soft, add this to your soup. If you’d like add 1 small package of frozen mixed vegetables and a 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes, simmer.
• Season to taste with salt, pepper, and thyme.