Our Summer Suppers

Meal planning keeps me sane.  I can't stand having to constantly run to the grocery store during the week to pick up 4 or 5 items for dinner.  So I usually plan on Saturday's for the week and get the shopping out of the way on the same day.  I love lists and have used them my entire life.  So knowing my list is done and shopping is done really sets me up for a stress free meal time after work during the week.
Even while I have been working like crazy this month, I still planned.  The suppers are just easy breezy...but that is the Summer way of life right???

Here's a few of the ideas from last week and this week's dinner menus:

• Picnics!  We hit our local BBQ stand and head to the Chattahoochee.  I even pack our own bowls to share the stew.   
• Tuna Salad (add boiled eggs and homemade sweet pickles).  Serve as a sandwich or with crackers and fruit.
• Crock pot meals (so we aren't heating up the kitchen and supper is done when I get home from work!) We tried a new cubed steak in the crock pot with gravy.  It was pretty good served up with mashed taters, English peas and frozen buttermilk biscuits.   Another crock pot meal is 'baked' potatoes.  We recently cooked up Field peas all day in the crock pot; added cornbread and called it Yummy!  The next day we ate leftover peas and I cooked up some mac n cheese to stretch the meal out one more night.
• Grilling out - Hot dogs, chicken and hamburgers with baked beans and chips or fries as sides.
• Breakfast - Pancakes with fruit, biscuits and scrambled eggs - whatever you love for breakfast, we will eat it for supper.  
• Sandwiches  - variety:  Deli meat on sub rolls, tomato sliced, banana, pbj - eaters choice and whatever we have in the frig.
• Salads - with tons of toppings: ham, bacon bits, croutons, cheese, boiled eggs.
• Hot Meals - We usually save the hot meals for Sunday in the Summer, like last weekend where we cooked up a huge mess of Salmon patties, 5 lbs of creamed taters, a pan of homemade from scratch biscuits and English peas. We invited the family down for swimming and to help us polish off the fixings.
• Garden Fresh - Veggies, cantaloupe and watermelon.  We really didn't plan a garden this year; so we are picking up items at the Farmer's Market or if we are real lucky, leftover's from the neighbors garden pickings.  However, we did grow a few of these

along with wild watermelons and cantaloupe from last year's seeds left in the ground! 

What do your Summer meals look like? Garden pickings...Grilling outdoors...Same ole Same ole rotating meals?