Menu Plan Update for Friday the 16th and a little about our eating habits

So, I started on a three week (or so) menu plan to use up stuff in our house.

A little about our eating habits...
We are family of four with one pre-teen boy and one early teen boy that is growing like crazy. Generally all four of us eat three meals and snacks at home a day. Mom is a vegetarian though the rest of the family is not.

I generally plan out a weeks worth of dinner meals and grocery shop for those meals and pick up items that are on-sale/have great coupons for beyond the list. I do not specifically plan breakfast and lunch.

Everyone makes their own breakfast which is usually cold cereal, oatmeal, homemade granola and yogurt, homemade bread/toast or fruit or whatever seems interesting. Lunch is "from the frig" with left overs. Mom and Dad are usually good about eating left overs and I try to have salad in the frig too. Older son prefers to have sandwich and yogurt but younger son does like to make a box of mac and cheese. Both will eat lots of cut-up fresh vegetables at lunch.

Sunday we participate in a potluck meal at church so the meal plan is for lunch and not dinner like the rest of the week. Sunday night is popcorn and whatever else you find in the frig or what friends may bring when they come over to play games.

Update for Friday, January 16th
I had picked up two containers of ricotta cheese at Aldi. They don't always have this at my Aldi and my family likes dishes with ricotta cheese.

I had about 8 manicotti shells and a package of lasagna noodles that I picked up with a coupon or Ibotta rebate or something awhile ago so that was the inspiration for this evenings meal.

I had planned to pick up some sauce, but Friday morning I found myself with a tray of sliced tomatoes that needed to be dealt with immediately. So I make a sauce in the pressure cooker with the tomatoes, some frozen red onion, frozen chopped celery and some spices (including basil from the summer).

The cheese filling consisted of ricotta cheese, a box of frozen spinach, egg, garlic salt and a jar of marinated artichokes. I had enough filling and sauce for the manicotti, a pan of lasagna and then four lasagna noodle "roll-ups". Only a few noodles left over!

My family enjoyed it! Almost the entire lasagna was left over.