This is a mid-month update to one of my major goals. At our house, we made up a meal plan that would use up all the remaining meat in the freezer – 7 weeks’ worth. The plan is to go vegetarian for a month after that, and see how we like it.
The amusing thing is that we had bought a package of 26 dinner sausages at Costco and had to come up with a way to use them all in 7 weeks. So the sausage meal plan so far has been:
Week 1: just one traditional meal of sausages with mashed potatoes
Week 2: made a macaroni and cheese casserole that would normally have chicken and broccoli in it, but substituted sausages and peppers. The sausages were traditional “English banger” style but with maple. This lasted for 3 meals and we actually enjoyed it all 3 nights. The next night we went out to dinner at il Mercato and I ordered a penne dish with roasted pumpkin in it. There was an ingredient in the dish I didn’t know by name – salsiccia – which I thought might be salsa? You guessed it, it’s sausage! LOL! It was made on-site. And I liked it very much.
Week 3: today we had a stirfry of sausages, perogies and peppers. The sausages were my favourite “toulouse” style (made with white wine and a little garlic).
Now I have to be honest and say that to my great surprise, I am not tired of sausages yet. In fact, because we are having meat dishes every evening (much more so than we used to), I might be acquiring more carnivorous tastes! So it might be even harder to go veg at the end of the 7 weeks.
For the next 4 weeks our line-up is:
Week 4: Lentil shepherd’s pie with sausage (will last for 2 meals)
Week 5: Italian sausage soup (2 meals)
Week 6: “Pigs in Blankets” (sausages baked in biscuit dough)
Week 7: Last of the local kielbasa with pasta and tomato sauce
There is one thing I am dreading. We have only 2 chicken breasts left and they are earmarked for a chicken apricot curry. After that…no more chicken for 4-6 weeks until our vegetarian experiment is over. I have a feeling I will be craving chicken stir-fries.
So that is the tale of our Super Sausage Meal Plan to date. I will omit the expected sausage party jokes 🙂
PS – I would highly recommend the 5 lb package of assorted sausages from Costco ($16.99 Cdn)!
Photo credit: http://food.chatelaine.com/Recipes/View/Roasted_sausage_dinner
An Exacting Life 
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Interesting, we love sausages, although I personally only like the English bangers, dh on the other hand loves the hot Italian sausages. Next time I am passing Costco, I may pop in and check these out.
Gill
The package from Costco is marked with what’s inside: maple, toulouse, Mexican, Italian, maybe one more? The Italian ones are mild and the Mexican ones are moderately spicy.
No thanks to the monster pkg! Only Frank likes sausages.I will eat them very occasionally.
We would normally have sausages about once a month so the package would last a year!
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I buy the Costco packages, great value. I guess the one thing that I don’t like about them is that they don’t identify which ones are which. I’ve found meal planning and only buying/eating the planned items worked well. I was doing a nutrition plan called Simply for Life and I loved it but fell out of the habit during an extended out of town trip and never “got back on the wagon”. I’ve subscribed to a weekly meal planning service called emeals and they have a vegetarian menu option. It arrives in my email once a week with menus, recipes and a shopping list.
I have heard good things about SFL. They use real food and not pre-packaged, right? So far I haven’t found a meal plan service that offers really hearty meals. their main meals look like lunches to me 🙂
Yes, SFL is real food. It’s very protein rich though for the first 3 weeks, and no carbs for suppers usually. I found that initially hard since we were a meat and potatoes/rice/pasta family. But after the first 3 weeks I honestly did not miss the carbs at supper since I was allowed them anytime at lunches. I’d lost 35 pounds and went from a size 16 to a size 8/9. Sadly, I got out of the habit of the meal planning and do haphazaard suppers planned on the go while I’m rushing down the supermarket aisles…probably gained back most of the weight, not quite all, but most.
Thanks for the info! I am not a big protein eater, but I know it really suits some people.
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