Back to real food

I miss my garden!  The warm temperatures over the past week have helped the ground inside the greenhouse thaw, if only just a little.  Unfortunately, overnight they are predicting a good nor'easter followed by a couple of pretty frosty nights.  Even though my seed inventory and starting dates are set for each group of transplants for the garden this year; actual yield is still a ways away.  I miss my garden even more at the end of the grocery store and whole foods market checkout process.

Back in September, when I returned to work full time, I focused on weekly meal planning for the family.  One day a week I would sit down, tally the contents of the freezer, refrigerator and pantry and make a meal plan which would use most of what we had on hand and the remaining ingredients would make up the list for grocery store and whole foods market.  The past several weeks have found my freezer unusually well organized.  Too many perfectly rectangular or square packages, intended for quick and easy evening meal preparation, started to take over a lot of the space.  Gone were the irregular packages containing whole chickens or stew meat or venison from this past year.  No uneven bags of chicken broth or peculiarly shaped bags of frozen vegetables.  The cookie jar no longer contained delicious home baked goodies but was filled with perfectly formed off-the-conveyor belt cookies for an after dinner treat.

Peanut butter banana oatmeal cookies
with no added sugar or fat

About two weeks ago I stood in front of the open refrigerator and freezer doors (something my mother would certainly have yelled at me for) and sighed in disgust.  I had gotten lazy and our diets and eventually our health would suffer for it.  That Friday night after both Little man and his father had gone to bed, I headed out to the deep freeze and took stock of what little basic protein and vegetable we had left.  Back into the kitchen for an inventory of the freezer and a thorough cleaning of the refrigerator; pig had a feast Saturday morning of all the leftovers that were not consumed because they were less than remarkable, primarily prepackaged or frozen meals.  I made a comprehensive grocery list and split it between both the regular grocery store and the whole foods market.

When I originally started my meal planning adventure I found thebettermom.com.  This website had some great meal plans which were derived primarily from a whole food approach – very little came from the center aisles of the grocery store.  As I have refined my approach, I have found dontwastethecrumbs.com and 100daysofrealfood.com.  Both are great websites which also take a real food approach to your diet and meal planning.

Homemade applesauce

Staples like granola to add to my oatmeal and yogurt and great sides like vegetable pancakes have joined our meal plans.  Last week we were much better and this week the plan continues for some more delicious, wholesome foods.  My budget hasn’t taken too kindly to my renewed focus on eating health especially with a large expenditure* looming at the end of the week, but after only one week, I am certainly sleeping better.  My evenings this week will be a little busier as my weekly meal prep time was instead spent outside with Little man but it was certainly worth it.

Here’s what our meal plans look like for the last two weeks:

Fresh tomato cucumber salsa

Last Week

Monday - Marinated venison steaks, frozen mixed vegetables, brown rice

Tuesday - Homemade macaroni and cheese with ham, frozen peas

Wednesday – Pot roast – crock pot with potatoes and carrots

Thursday – Chicken fajitas on homemade whole wheat tortillas

Friday – Goulash, Italian bread, vegetable (this got eaten Sunday night after playing outside and making homemade tortillas for lunch and Thursday’s dinner)

Saturday – Leftovers (we actually had baked chicken – there were no leftovers)

Sunday – Stuffed hamburgers with mushrooms, peppers & onions

BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches

This Week
Monday – BBQ pulled pork sandwiches (pulled pork from the crock pot and homemade BBQ sauce), 
tomato cucumber salsa - made from leftover produce - two tomatoes, one cucumber, 1/2 a green pepper, 1/2 an onion, a little lime juice - all just hanging around after last weeks meals.

Tuesday – Sausage, mushroom & kale pasta

Wednesday – Beef stew – crock pot

Thursday – chef’s choice – it was supposed to be butternut squash ravioli’s but I didn’t get them made on Sunday so chef’s choice is either leftovers or what ever is around and thawed

Friday – Chicken nuggets (homemade, breaded, and baked in one large batch – ½ is frozen for a second meal), baked sweet potato french fries, vegetable

Saturday – Chicken and homemade biscuits – normally we don’t have chicken two nights in a row so chef’s choice might get moved to Friday and chicken nuggets to Thursday.

Our meal plan is very flexible, but having all the ingredients in the house to make six meals per week makes dinner much more enjoyable and a lot less time consuming.   Do you plan your meals?

* The big expenditure - Pig should be in heat this weekend, if we can come up with the cash to order sperm by tomorrow afternoon, we will breed her this weekend.  

Goal - $225 - we have gotten together just about 1/2 with 24 hours to go.

     $60 for the sperm

     $108 for the shipping

     $50-75 for the vet visit - since I have never done this before