Meal planning like a champ

I've been doing lots of Googling lately about first time cooking, being married, how to utilize your kitchen and bla bla bla. Almost everyone says that meal planning makes your life easier, and it makes sense. You know in advance what you'll be making every night so there's no "what are we having tonight" moment while you stare helplessly into the fridge.

I feel you Ein. 

I've been meaning to get around to planning dinner out in advance, but we moved in two weeks ago, and the priority in the last 14 days has been to get everything out of the boxes, start making our house look like ours and get settled. Well, now we are settled, though making the house look like us is still pending. We were a bit generous with how much money we'd have left after bills, so some of the things we were hoping to buy (like a dresser, side tables, TV stand, picture frames, lamps...) have to get pushed back. That smaller budget is part of the reason today is make a meal plan day. We're on the last stretch of the groceries we bought when we moved in, and with limited money to restock until next Friday, a plan didn't seem like such a bad idea.
So, for your reading pleasure, here is our dinner menu for the next seven days. I'm not quite at the 'whip-up-your-own-recipe' cooking level, so these are all links to recipes I found online; credit where credit's due. I'll inevitably be tweaking these as the week goes on, but that info is for later posts.

Tonight: Chicken salad. Mine won't be shredded chicken, mostly because I have no idea how to do that...
Friday: Dijon pork chops. I made these last week and Mr. Idiot loved them, so I'll make sure to take pictures this time and give you hungry lot the deets.
Saturday: Tacos. It's Saturday, which means it's time to get crazy, so I'm making this one up as I go.
Sunday: Amish fried chicken with rice (or maybe potatoes)
Monday: Spaghetti and meatballs. I might go out on a limb on this and make my own sauce. We'll see.
Tuesday: Chicken nugget spaghetti Don't judge me on my use of frozen nugs, okay? You gotta use what you got, and I've got chicken nuggets.
Wednesday: Cottage pie. I'm really excited about trying this. My mother makes a mean cottage pie, so we'll see how mine measures up.
Thursday: Mustardy pork and apples. I know this is a lot like the dijon pork chops, but I'm adding apples this time, and I'm going to try these with it instead of mashed potatoes.

So there you have it. I've eked out the supply pretty much as far as it will go, and according to these calculations, we'll have exactly 1/2 a bag of nuggets before Friday. But then it's shopping day! My favorite day!
Stay tuned to find out if the chicken salad is enough for Mr. Idiot's capacious stomach, or if he ends up making himself a sandwich.
Happy cooking!