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I finally put together my weekly meal plans!

1K views 7 replies 7 participants last post by  courtenay_e 
#1 ·
I've been needing to get this down forever , and now I finally did it. That's one step down, now I just need to implement it.
Just thought I'd share it here, feel free to critique it and see if I'm missing out on anything. I try to eat in a NT sort of way. I chose this type of plan so it is predictable, yet it can always be different meals and new things.

Weekly Meal Plans

Monday- Poultry Day
Tuesday- Soup Day
Wednesday- Vegetarian Day
Thursday- Cultural Day
Friday- Throw it all together Day
Saturday- Free Day
Sunday- Easy Day

M- Poultry
Meals for this day will most likely be roasted chicken, make gravy with the drippings, then have potatoes or rice and a steamed veggie.
Then de-bone chicken for leftovers and use the bones to simmer stock overnight.

T- Soup
Soup night will be made from the chicken stock, any leftover chicken, and vegetables and
whatever else sounds good. There are lots of good soup recipes out there to try.

W- Vegetarian
Ideas and recipes are endless for this night, but I'm sure we will mostly have a green salad and I'll have soaked beans the night before, and maybe rice or another grain, and a steamed veggie. Or maybe lentils or eggplant stuff.

Th- Culture-
For us this will mean Mexican or Japanese night, mainly. Ground beef will likely be used this night, or fish occasionally. And the leftover beans from the night before will probably get mashed up for refried beans. Occasionally homemade tortillas for tacos, burritoes, enchiladas, mole, chile etc. I also like to try different Japanese recipes occasionally.

F- Throw it all together-
This night I was thinking would be one dish meal nights. Like casseroles, or homemade pizza, or just leftovers. Anything goes.

S- Free to choose day-
This night can be leftovers, lunch meals, breakfast meals, new recipes meals, eating out, another anything goes night.

Sunday- Easy, simple day-
This is the crockpot day! If I can find a good pastured source of roast beef, I'd like to do a one pot meal in the crock pot so I can just put it all in before church and it will be done.
~~~~~~~~~

Breakfasts--
most days will be the soaked 5-grain hot cereal or oatmeal. Some days will be free-range eggs. Saturday mornings, either waffles or pancakes made with sourdough starter.

Lunches-
Either leftovers, miso soup, salad, or sandwiches with leftover meats.

Snacks-
Fruit, smoothies, yogurt, kefir, raw veggies and dips, wholegrain sourdough toast, nuts/seeds.

Desserts-
wholegrain sourdough, flourless, or sprouted wheat cookies, cakes, muffins. Raw cream icecream, custards, fruit pies or other fruit desserts.

3-6 days a week- start the morning off with fresh wheatgrass or veggie/apple juice combo.

We also take cod liver oil or fish oil in the summer. And I have some homemade saurkraut on hand.

I'll make sourdough bread on Mondays or Tuesdays.
 
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#3 ·
Looks Great!!! I need to do something like this too. My only suggestion is you may want to flip soup day with vegetarian day, in order to make sure your stock has enough time to cool to skim the fat off. Also, that way you don't end up eating chicken 2 days in a row, but have a day in between for a bit more variety.
 
#6 ·
To make stock, the bones go in a pot with enough water to cover and apple cider vinegar should go in there also, I think its a couple of tablespoons per 3-4 qrts of water. Then if you choose you can also put a couple of carrots, celery and oinions in the pot. Cover and let simmer overnight. Strain skim the fat and there you have stock to make soup. Or just drink hot


The vinegar, bones and water should set overnight in a cool place so the vinegar can do its work before simmering.

Added to say I am going to make a big pot of stock and then can it for future use. I will be making both deer and chicken.
 
#8 ·
We do almost exactly the same thing. I was a vegetarian for twelve years, then when I was pregnant with my first, I started craving roast beef sandwiches. I know. Really weird. My husband just about passed out...point is, we have many roast choices now where we didn't used to. With sales, this helps our budget, too! We have our "roast" night on Sunday, because we can go to early mass (7:30am or 9am...our children are ridiculously early risers) and stay after for common union and still have plenty of time to put a roast on. I switch week to week what the roast is, which also gives us a variety of soups. We do turkey, pork loin, lamb, ham, chicken, even once every three months or so a beef roast of some sort. I rarely eat beef and my husband NEVER does, however our kids LOVE it, and they love beef barley soup even more. They are 3 1/2 and 2, and they will eat two or more man sized bowls of it at a sitting. Every month or so, we have sunday dinner at some family member's home, and then I make a vegetarian soup that week. I'm irish, so when we have lamb, I make a killer lamb stew later in the week (old family recipe, can't really take credit for it). I also tend to make a pork loin stew when I make pork loin. Don't need the bones for the broth/gravey, I use leftover poultry stock. I also have homemade pizza in varied forms every other friday. Good for you for coming up with a pattern! It really helped us with our meal planning. It really made things go more quickly, and if the menu isn't done, we still have a basis for that evening's meal. Have fun. Get out of the usual ten meals that people rotate between. Check out some good cookbooks (The New Best Recipe, Moosewood cooks at home, and The Vegetarian Kitchen are some of my favorites, among many many others), and try new things once every other week. It'll give you new favorites and mix things up a little. You can be especially creative with "breakfast night" and "vegetarian night."
 
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