Where there's smoke...

The other night, I made this recipe of pineapple and shrimp skewers.  Yum.  If you look at the recipe, you'll notice you use a broiler, and you can also use a broiler to cook french bread, which is what we decided to do for a side.  In the interest of just using one dish laziness, I laid foil on top of the rack and placed the bread on top instead of removing the rack and putting the bread down in the pan.

Unfortunately, this led to the bread being WAY to close to the flame and yes, the bread caught on fire.  I had flaming bread.  Fail.  In the theme of "waste not, want not", I cut off the burnt part and heated the rest up in our toaster oven.  For those of you that have never tried smoked bread, you shouldn't.  But we ate every bit.

But really, the pineapple and shrimp skewers were fabulous.

Meal planning

I have always liked the idea of meal planning.  It seems to be one of those things that very organized people do that results in meals being eaten before 9pm, and also, allows them to shop for deals and save money.  Who doesn't like that? 

However, if I'm being honest, I suck at meal planning.  I mean, I can totally write out meals for a few weeks at a time, and compile a grocery list, and have the best of intentions.  But then I forget to make sure my meat is thawing at the right time, or, more often, I'm not hungry for what's on the menu.  Granted, what I'm usually hungry for is sushi, but there's usually something else I CAN make at home that I would rather have than what I had planned. 

Blake and I are busy people, and we're always looking for ways to cut our grocery bill, so I am again going to give menu planning a shot.  This time around, I'd like to put together some freezer meals that we can use as backup, and also give ourselves a few days a week to either eat out, or put together something that wasn't exactly planned.   I'm also asking my sister-in-law, Jeni, to do some meal planning with me, so we can help keep each other accountable and also trade recipes.  Do any of you have any suggestions of how to make it easier to stick to a meal plan?  Any amazing recipes I have to include that I won't decide it's not what I want that night?  Any fun meal planning excel templates that would make meal planning more interesting to my list happy self?