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Originally Posted by Grace and Granola  This sounds like the diet of my dreams! I would love to hear more about what you feed your family, if you're open to sharing! A few ideas for each meal of the day? PM me if you'd prefer!
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Hi Heather!
First, I must give a lot of credit to my DH. He cooks far more meals than I do. I tend to do the research and he implements it, if I help in the transition. Now that the disclosure has been given
, here is a sampling of meals we eat:
breakfast
~ scrambled eggs and bacon
~ bulk oatmeal (DH eats it with milk, cinnamon, and brown sugar. DD & I eat it with cinnamon and fresh fruit, such as strawberries, blueberries, peaches, etc. She usually adds milk and I rarely do. I like raisins and cranberries, which I soak first.)
~ fried eggs and sausage (DH & DD will eat these with a slice of cheese all wrapped up in a whole wheat tortilla. I just eat the eggs and sausage. When DH makes homemade English muffins, I'll eat a breakfast sandwich and will he. DD doesn't care for English muffins, so she'll have a wrap, if we have tortillas, or she'll eat them plain.)
~ homemade pancakes (DH and I make a variety of pancakes with whole grain flours. My fave is banana oat pancakes. DH's fave is buttermilk with wheat germ. DD eats any and all pancakes. DD likes them plain. DH eats them with "maple" syrup. I eat them with butter and fresh fruit...sometimes I make berry sauce/syrup.)
dinner
~ sausage or chicken medley (DH will chop up a variety of veggies, such as red peppers, parsnips, carrots, asparagus, Yukon gold potatoes, etc) and toss 'em on a jelly roll pan and roast them in the oven with onion and garlic and olive oil. If sausage is the choice, then it's either turkey kielbasa cut up and cooked with the veggies OR it is locally made sausage (variety) and grilled outside. If chicken is the choice, it is cooked in a pan in small pieces or sometimes grilled. Either way, it is served as one dish, all combined together. Often served after a salad of raw veggies.)
~ protein and veggies (The most common dinner is our house is a formula: meat of some sort and I use this term loosely - fish, pork, beef, chicken - often grilled or cooked in a pan and a salad of raw veggies - as an appetizer - and 2-3 steamed veggies, such as broccoli, spinach, carrots, etc. Once in awhile, our veggies will be low and we'll eat rice as one of the side dishes. Wild/brown/long-grain combo is our favorite, but we've been enjoying basmati recently.)
The above are our most common meals, by far, but we also eat random soups I make with my homemade bone broth. I just make up new soup recipes spur-of-the-moment with whatever we have on hand. Sometimes they have leftover rice or pasta tossed in for frugality. Mostly, though, they are veggie soups with some leftover meat bits. DH will occasionally make some type of biscuit to go along with the soup, but I usually make my soups hearty enough to stand alone as a meal.
Last night, I made up a quiche recipe. DH fried up some bacon for it. I cooked down 4 different greens and then shredded 4-5 more veggies directly into the filling. I did make a crust, but this could have been crustless. I made two quiches at once and froze one. DH is working from home today and we all three had dinner last night and lunch today from one quiche.
We have a CSA (farm share of local, organic, fresh produce). We share with another family and pick it up once every two weeks. We get lots of unusual veggies and have learned to cook whatever we get. There was an adjustment period, but it is really fun! Salads, soups, quiches, frying in bacon grease/butter/garlic/onion, and roasting in a medley are our favorite ways to handle the randomness of the types of veggies. We also grow some produce in our tiny backyard. All this leads to high veggie consumption.
As for categories, I have a basic list in my head (and was on paper on the fridge for a year or two) that I encourage all of us to get each day. DD knows this by heart and is responsible for her own lunch/snack packing for school (age 9 now, but since age 6). AT LEAST one food item from each of the following groups goes to school with her every day:
protein and healthy fats
calcium
veggies
fruits
whole grains
Obviously, she eats more than one of each in an entire day, but this is the minimum for school. She is really good at doing it with a variety of foods that she likes. She is also allowed to bring one "extra" food, which is something not in one of the above categories (refined grains being an example, which is pertinent to this thread). Since she gets at least one veggie at school every day and we eat quite a few at dinner every night, we focus on fruit and non-meat protein sources for snacks. She has no issues with calcium foods even though she doesn't drink much milk. Healthy fats can be an issue for her, but we've worked through those for the most part now. Although I don't call attention to it by a specific category, I do discuss fiber with her and in our family as a general topic.
I hope this helps!
I'm sad to do it, as I LOVE homemade bread in particular - there's a loaf of wholemeal pumpkin, herb and poppy seed bread taunting me from the freezer! - but such is life.
So there have definitely been meals in the past that were a meat/vegetarian dish over rice, with peas and corn as the only veggies on the side! And going even earlier into my cooking past, I'd often double up on rice and bread, pasta and bread, pasta and potato salad, bread and potato salad... Fortunately DH doesn't have much of a stomach for carbs, and has weaned me off it. I still might make chapattis with the rice for an Indian meal, but we have that rarely.
