Menu plan for the week of March 4

...and just like that, it's March.

In my continuing effort to use up some miscellaneous food items from the cupboard, this week I'm making stuffed shells (using my favorite stuffed manicotti recipe from a church fundraising cookbook), and lentil soup with ancient grains (a Trader Joe's copycat).  I have a half pound of lentils in the cupboard that I wanted to use up, and I thought for sure that I could find a box of "ancient grains" somewhere.  I remember seeing something like that at Aldi, even, and Aldi doesn't carry a huge variety of food.

But I couldn't find such a thing at Aldi, or my regular grocery store, or Trader Joe's, or Target.  I couldn't even find all of the ancient grains for the recipe, which are amaranth, millet, flax, and quinoa, separately in any of those stores.  Not that I would have wanted to buy any of those separately, because then I'd have to figure out how to use the rest of those.  So I bought a small amount of already-cooked farrow (which is none of those ancient grains), and will use quinoa and maybe barley, from our cupboard, and call it good.  At least, I hope we can call it good instead of bad, or gross, or disgusting.

The pasta shells, well, I'm taking a don't ask don't tell approach with the package's expiration date.  I will tell you, though, that the last time stuffed shells showed up on in our menu plan was this time.  Yikes.

Here's what's on the menu this week:

Supper:

• Stuffed shells (our recipe includes ground beef, but this one is similar), salad, green beans
• Lentil soup with ancient grains, rolls
• Nachos with guacamole and taco toppings
• Italian sausage sheet pan meal
• Fend for yourself
• Peppered steak with portabella mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes, grilled veggie
• Pasties

Other:

• Oatmeal cookie treat balls--in celebration of the Littles' first birthday!  (using up some raisins and cranberries that no one else in this household wants to eat.  Not sure if I have cornmeal, and I know I don't have wheat germ, so I substitute whole wheat flour and ground flax for those) 
• Bread machine cinnamon rolls
• Snickerdoodles