Don’t know what to cook?  Try some of these recipes.

Carmel Pecan Cinnamon Rolls - from The Finer Things in Life

Creamy Garlic Alfredo – thanks to Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Crispy Chicken Tenders – thanks to Good and Cheap Eats

Beef Stew – thanks to $5 Dollar Dinners

Peanut Butter Brownies

OK, now that your really hungry go out there and try something new.  Surprise your family with something special!

Today we have a guest post from Kris S.

Hey Savvy Friends!
I wanted to share with you all how I recently used 2 whole chickens to feed my family of six for five meals! Can you believe it? Me either!
After recently deciding to take up a food challenge that would require me to prepare most of our meals from food that we already had on hand in our freezer and pantry,I came up with five meals using two chickens.

Meal 1 consisted of me baking the chickens and serving them with scalloped potatoes and cream peas.
Meal 2 was a rustic soup with leftover chicken, baby red potatoes, carrots, yellow onions and various herbs and spices.
Meal 3 was leftover chicken with noodles, served over mashed potatoes and corn.
Meal 4 was a cheesy chicken pot pie.
Meal 5 was a BBQ chicken pizza.

We did not eat these meals 5 nights in a row but spread out between other meals so that my family would not be sick of chicken or potatoes!
By thinking  of what all I could make with these two birds I feel really good about the meals and my family liked all of the hot and hearty meals during this recent cold streak.

A few other things that might interest you as far as stretching your dollar and your leftovers.
After cooking the two chickens on the first night, I saved the all of the yucky, I mean lovely fat and bones and made my own chicken stock for the chicken and noodle meal. I also used the leftover cream peas from meal 1,  the left over red potatoes from meal 2, AND the leftover corn from meal 3 to make the cheesy chicken pot pie for meal 4!
I also used the leftover scalloped potatoes from meal 1 to make cheesy egg, potato, sausage breakfast burritos!
I did not have any waste from these 5 different chicken meals and feel most proud of myself for taking the time to make a plan and follow it!  )
I hope this was a helpful post for all of you and offered up some kitchen encouragement.
I also have challenged my self to make my entire, ENTIRE, January menu based off of what we have here or with only a couple of little trips to the store filling in with produce or dairy as needed.
Can you say creativity?
Can you say crazy?

Wish me luck!!

You can visit Kris’  blog at Sweet Country Life.

This is my first EVER blog entry, so I will start off very slowly, until I get the hang of this

Tasty Tuesday will feature recipes, menu ideas, and all things YUMMY!  If you love food as much as Ginger and I do, we hope you will enjoy this.   My girls went back to school today, so my life must become more organized and prepared.  Summer has been great, but routine has been lacking, and quite honestly, missed around here.  Even our grocery budget has suffered as a result, as menu planning was sporadic at best, and shopping was more often just quick trips for a few items.  My girls attend a non-traditional Christian school three days a week, and must take their lunches, so I will be planning my menus based on three meals each and every day!  We’ll see how I do!   So, for a painless first post, I will share our menu plan for the next 7 days.

BREAKFAST:  Baked oatmeal with fruit; homemade english muffins with eggs and cheese; Big Breakfast cookies; homemade english muffins with jelly, and yogurt; cereal; pancakes and scrambled eggs

LUNCH:  Wendy’s (we have family lunch at school, and I have kid’s meal coupons from the dentist); Ranch Chicken sandwiches; homemade pizza twists; leftover enchiladas; KFC(after church on Sunday…we have coupons for the free grilled chicken meals); Chicken tenders

DINNER:  Crockpot Chicken Enchiladas; dinner out with Kevin (thanks to dear friends who will also keep and feed the kids ; Garden vegetable soup and homemade rolls (our garden is finally producing!); Chicken Divan; All-Church picnic (chicken tenders and oatmeal bars);  Grilled hamburgers and steamed potatoes