menu planning and menu planning subscriptions for TF?

[doulawoman]

Just wondering is anyone has used the menu mailers from here: http://www.cookingtf.com/products/united-states/  ??

were you happy with them?

I am swamped and feel so disorganized and I'm still pretty new to TF and sometimes trying to figure it all out from the NT cookbook is too time consuming and oevrwhelming (more than one recipe at a time) how do you meal plan? esp snacks and ...breakfast...and...lunch...lol

[Magelet]

For breakfast, we have only 2-3 things we usually make, which makes it easy. We basically always have porridge. Sometimes we have oatmeal, sometimes polenta. Sometimes savory rice porridge (congee) cooked in broth. We soak a big batch of oats or polenta, and leave it in the fridge so it can get cooked up pretty quick in the AM. Sometimes we'll do smoothies with raw milk, an egg yolk, a banana, and a bit of yogurt or buttermilk, but not always. We don't really plan breakfast, we just always keep the stuff for our porridge on hand.

Lunches, we pretty much always do leftovers from dinner, so we try to make enough to have leftovers. If we don't end up with leftovers from dinner, we usually stir fry some cabbage and cook up some rice for lunch. (We always keep a big bag of rice, and a head of cabbage on hand.)

We've found some pretty good tortillas that are limed, and don't have crap in them, and we've been keeping those, and some hot sauce and cheese on hand for quesadillas. Also, cheese sandwiches for snacks. Keeping cooked rice on hand so I can grab a bowl, or make some fried rice. Bread and butter. a chunk of cheese, dipped in some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. That's what I've been eating for snacks lately. They're all pretty easy.

I know a lot of folks on here have liked the cooking TF menu planning mailer. If you are having a hard time coming up with TF meals, it might be a good idea for a while, to help you build up a repetoire of meals. To menu plan, we basically pull out our old menu plans, and sometimes some cookbooks, and just decide what sounds good, and plan them out for the next week. We'll usually throw in about 1 new recipe (either from a cookbook, or created on the spot)

[JMJ]

Are those krankedyann's menu planners?  She showed me a sample when I first started TF, and it was quite helpful for me to get started with my own menu planning, thinking about how far in advance I needed to start soaking/sprouting, etc.

I've gotten so that I mainly just have certain things that I keep on hand that I prepare more when I am running out - cooked rice and meat, pate, crackers, soup, extra broth, soaked and dried nuts, sourdough bread, kefir, kombucha, etc.

Then, I also keep around some prepared/easy to prepare foods - raw and frozen vegetables, pickled herring, cheese, dark chocolate, fruit, sauerkraut (eventually I'll make my own), eggs, canned oysters and sardines, brazil nuts, flax and chia seeds, etc.

I also keep around raw ingredients to be able to make and season a wide variety of things - raw honey, spice rack, unrefined salt, seaweed, ACV, wine/wine vinegar, ghee, coconut oil/water/milk, cow milk, butter, olive oil, maple syrup/sugar, bulk nuts, beans, popcorn, etc.

I've seen a big difference with the amount of time I'm spending in the kitchen since I adopted this simpler method of planning.  Soup is the only one I really have to think much about because I have to plan ahead which soup I'm making to buy the right ingredients, soak/precook if necessary (usually beans), and leave some time to make it.  The rest of the things, I just buy when I'm running out, and I buy a variety of produce in season.  It makes throwing something together pretty easy, and if something happens that I don't have time to cook, I can easily grab something out of the fridge for lunch or grab some cheese or nuts for a snack.

[mamakah]

Thanks for the link, I haven't seen that one.

I signed up for "The Nourished Kitchen" menu plans and love it. Here's the link:

http://nourishedkitchen.com/shop-nourished-kitchen/simple-dinners-healthy-meal-plans/

[laohaire]

I just ordered her Volume 1 book - a collection of 16 mailers over 4 seasons. Since it hasn't arrived yet, I can't give a full review, but I did recently try two recipes from her sample mailer and loved them. One of the two recipes scored rave reviews from my superfinicky 5 year old. Seriously, batting .500 with her is utterly awesome. I've made that recipe 3 or 4 times since, already, and DD eats well on the nights I serve it. (I also like the other recipe so much that I am secretly if guiltily glad for DD's leftovers, which I always enjoy for breakfast the next day). While TF is in some ways expensive (and some ways not), Kerry Ann keeps costs in mind with her mailers, and tries to make sure all of a thing is used (so you won't just buy something and use half of it and try to figure out what to do with the other half while it goes bad... she'll try to have that other half used in the next day's recipe).