Weekly cooking day

My hubby and I have always enjoyed cooking from scratch. It was no big deal when it was just us, (which didn't last long) and had a lot of free time or even when we just had one kid. Our free time started to disappear, but we still wanted to cook our "from scratch" meals. Our kids know what real food is. They usually will not eat food from a box or even snack foods that are loaded with sugar and artificial flavors. (We definitely do eat kraft mac n cheese and a frozen pizza every now and then) So we decided to turn Monday into our cooking day. We have been doing this for the past 3 years. This is the day we make enough meals, snacks, and breads to last the whole week. Yeah, we make a huge mess in the kitchen this day, all of our silverware and every single mixing bowl ends up dirty, but it makes preparing meals so much easier and we have way less dishes to clean during the week.
What do we usually make? Well, we always make homemade tortillas, a big pot of vegetarian chilli, granola bars, a quick bread, treats, snacks, enchiladas, pizzas, lasagna, soups, hummus, and the list goes on. We usually make enough to freeze for future use. We our always good to our future selves!
Our menu for this week was: homemade tortillas, vegetarian chili, carrot bread, chocolate clusters, and fattiar. (Labanese meat pies) We still have enchiladas, granola bars, and oatmeal cookies in the freezer if we need them. As a nursing momma, I am hungry all the time. So I really love having all these healthy and yummy foods ready to go. Sometimes the kids will say, burritos again!?! But they always gobble them up. I love that we are still able to eat healthy meals, but not spend hours in the kitchen preparing them on a daily basis. I also love that my kids know what "from scratch" means and prefer meals made by us and not from the frozen food isle. I hope they will continue this tradition with their own kids!

My hubby is part Lebanese and I love Lebanese dishes. We make grape leaves, kibby, hummus, and mujaddara on a regular basis. Here is a recipe we use for the meat pies aka: Fattiar. You can also use spinach and other veggies for the filling.
From: Favorite Syrian Recipes Cookbook
Recipe for Fattiar
Dough:
4 cups flour, (we used 1 cup heirloom red fife and 3 cups unbleached white)
1/2 pkg. dry yeast
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1+ cup water
Mix wet ingredients together, add to flour, knead well. Form dough into lemon sized balls. Cover with dish towel. Let raise for about an hour or until double in size.

Meat and potato filling:
3 cups ground beef
3 cups grated raw potatoes
1/2 cup grated onions
1 T. salt
1/3 tsp pepper
2 T. lemon juice

After grating potatoes, rinse well. Mix all filling ingredients together.
When dough is ready, roll out into circles about the size of a corn tortilla on a floured board. Place about 2 TBSP of filling in the center of each circle. Pinch sides to make a triangle. Bake on oiled pan at 375 for about 20 minutes. ENJOY!
Is there something your family does weekly to make life easier? Do you have a favorite food/recipe you can't live without during the week?