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

Meal planning Friday

I love to cook!  I would spend all day in my kitchen dirtying every bowl, dish, piece of cutlery, pot, pan, baking sheet, etc. in the quest to make the perfect meal (I might have said this once or twice before).  Unfortunately when you are working full-time and still want to spend time with your children after you get home from work, the perfect meal is not attainable every night.  Often dinner would be the last thing on my mind, neither Little man's father nor I would remember to take something out of the freezer in the morning, and then neither one of us would feel like cooking - dinner turned into yet another point of contention between the two of us.  After 30 minutes or more of thinking about what to make I would come up with something, head to the refrigerator looking for an ingredient that I knew we had three days ago, only to find it had been consumed in a snack while waiting for dinner to cook yesterday.

I set to the old, faithful, search engine and typed in 'meal planning' hoping that someone, somewhere would at least point me in the right direction to get started.  Salvation came out of that search - there are women who blog about just this type of thing - I knew there was something I liked about the blogging community.  My clicks landed me at thebettermom.com.  In addition to her strong faith and empowering woman through that faith, she publishes bi-weekly, gluten-free meal plans.  Each meal plan is accompanied by the recipes to cook all the meals therein.  This meal planning thing was going to be easier than I thought!

Needless to say I didn't go home, empty my freezer, cabinets and refrigerator of all my food and start with a monumental grocery list - although that might have been fun.  I went home and discussed it with Little man's father - if I do the planning, will you at least cook something from the weekly menu on your nights to cook dinner?  With a few grumbles and groans, he agreed to give it a shot.  Saturday morning, I inventoried the major food groups finding out what we had in the house and started to list a few basic meals that could be made with those items.  Then I thought about how to use up the left-overs; the roast chicken would make a chicken/cheddar/rice casserole or chicken and biscuits.  I quickly had a list of six meals for the following week.  I made out my grocery list with any items I was missing for those meals and then I added in a seventh - try-something-new recipe and added any missing items to the grocery list.

Getting the shopping done was only half the battle, dinner still had to be prepared each night.  Well, my internet search also yielded some pretty great tips, including some on involving your children in meal prep and clean up.  When I was single, I got tired of spending a fortune on lunch everyday so I used to cook up two family-sized meals on Sunday and parcel them out into individual lunch size containers and put them in the freezer for lunches during the week.  By the third week I had a pretty good selection of meals to take with me to work.  Meal planning involves the same kind of commitment on one of your weekend days, but it is centered around prep for the week, not necessarily cooking a week's worth of meals on Sunday while football is playing the background.

This past weeks menu looked a little bit like this:

Saturday - Pesto Pasta w/Italian Sausage, salad, garlic bread
Sunday - Roast Chicken w/oven roasted vegetables
Monday - London broil, baked potato, vegetable of choice 
Tuesday - Chicken/cheddar/rice casserole, vegetable of choice (made ahead or frozen)
Wednesday - Beef stew w/ herb and cheese biscuits (crockpot meal)
Thursday - Ham/potato/bean skillet
Friday - Parmesan chicken fingers w/ herb and blue cheese quiche, salad
Saturday - Tuna casserole, vegetable of choice (made ahead or frozen)

Sunday I made a double batch of cream of celery soup - 1/2 went into the tuna casserole which I made the same day and put into the freezer and half was put into the refrigerator for the chicken/cheddar/rice casserole.  Beef for the stew was cut up out of the roast that I bought at the grocery store and put in a separate storage bag in the freezer.  Carrots, onions, peppers, and tomatoes were cut up and placed in a covered bowl for Wednesday's stew. 

When meat is brought home from the grocery store, we now try to marinate it right away and freeze them with their sauce.  As the meat thaws it soaks up some great flavor.  Little man's father needed only wash a few potatoes and put them in the oven while finishing up chores or playing with Little man.  The meat and vegetables were started at the same time and in less than 20 minutes, a hearty, delicious and not terribly unhealthy meal was had by all .  While we were eating dinner, the rice was cooked for Tuesday's casserole.

After dinner on Tuesday, the meat for the stew was browned and added to the crockpot with the vegetables and remaining stew ingredients.  Wednesday before leaving for work, the crockpot was started.  The Parmesan chicken fingers were frozen after I made a double batch a couple of Sundays ago so we would have a quick meal option.  Quiche's can be baked ahead of time, frozen and reheated, unfortunately this didn't happen this week so the side dish for tonight's dinner will change on the fly.  Saturday, I try to have a quick and easy meal since I am usually running around trying to accomplish an entire weeks worth of chores in one day.

In the three weeks since we started planning meals for the week,  Little man's father and I haven't argued about dinner once, I have managed to follow the sales, stock up on local produce and meats when possible and have dropped my weekly grocery budget to right around $100.  This includes diapers, cleaning supplies, garbage bags, laundry detergent, etc.  This week's grocery shopping and meal planning has been sidelined by a trip to my mother's to check on an electrical problem, but tomorrow morning I will start anew.