Beef Week Menu Plan: 5 Family Fast and Friendly Meals

Everyone who knows me knows that cooking is not my forte. Not that it’s not a priority, but I typically buy dinner out 2 to 3 days out of the week because it’s easier. I’ve never been much of a cook, but I am learning that it doesn’t have to take a lot of time to prepare healthy yet fast meals for the family that they will enjoy.

This week’s menu plan was all about beef—my brood loves meat and so do I (if you are a vegetarian or vegan, this post isn’t for you! LOL). There’s so much that you can cook with beef, so making a menu plan for the last 5 days hasn’t been that hard at all.

This week’s Beef Week Menu Plan looked like this:

(1) Beef tacos and nachos with cheese and fixings

(2) Slow cooked beef stew

(3) Slow cooked roast beef, baked au gratin potatoes, and peas

(4) Spaghetti with four cheese sauce and beef

(5) Leftovers

Two of the meals were slow cooked, therefore, after prep time, it pretty much cooked on it’s own without much help from me. I labeled these as fast meals because once you add them to the slow cooker, you are set. Slow cooked meals are easy to throw in on low temperature and cook while you are at work, running errands, blogging (LOL), etc.!

All of the beef listed above is lean and purchased from a local butcher.

Monday Day #1 Beef Tacos and Nachos

Tuesday, Day #2 Slow Cooked Beef Stew

Wednesday Day #3 Slow Cooked Roast Beef

Thursday, Day #4 Spaghetti w/ Four Cheese Sauce and Beef

Friday, Day #5 Leftovers

So here are a few tips from the meals prepared above:

• For the beef stew, I always brown my beef first in a skillet on the stove before making the stew. It makes the meat more tender.
• The pot roast I purchased came pre-seasoned and brined from a local market here called Schnucks. You can purchase a pot roast in a bag that is already seasoned from the store butcher or in the meat department.
• Also for the beef stew, I always use Mrs. Wylers Homestyle Beef Stew. My mom actually used to use it too. It’s wonderful, and you can also add your own ingredients to it to make it your own. I add potatoes, corn, and sometimes peas.
• Add noodles to the beef stew to make it even more heartier.
• For leftovers for the week, you can take the leftover roast beef and make sandwiches with plenty of fixings!

Each item above in the menu plan is less than 400 calories per serving as well!

So now, I must plan next week’s menu plan. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know!