What's For Dinner?

If you follow any foodie-type blogs or people who love writing about food, you will probably come across their meal plan for the week.  I've seen a lot of blogs where each week, they faithfully post what they are eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I think it's always interesting to see what other people are eating, to see if we are in any way similar to other people or if we have these strange tastes, or if they do!  On a recent comment, I was asked to show my menu plan.  I don't have a scanner, nor do I know how to post or link to other documents so I can't do that, although I'd be happy to show you what it looks like.  So instead I thought I'd just list our last two weeks of dinners, just to give you a feel for what we eat around here. 

I think of our meals as pretty plain, normally.  I like to cook simple food, without many ingredients, and it's mostly homemade.  Again, I don't develop my own recipes and I love to get ideas from other people (hence, my most recent adventure in hosting a recipe party, which I'll post about soon).  I have found our kids tend to like things pretty plain.  I'm not sure if that's a phase or just how their tastes are in general.  For example, I tried a new recipe last week making chicken curry which I thought was pretty great but they just ate plain rice.  So, as I'm sure many of you know, wanting to cook a variety of meals can be tricky with young eaters.

When looking at what people eat, it can be somewhate misleading as to what eating 'real food' looks like.  For example, when I say we eat "spaghetti and meatballs," I make my own sauce (normally, unless there's not time and then I use a jar of Muir Glen organic instead), and we use mostly Jerusalem articoke spaghetti or spinach spaghetti or a combination of both.  There are many different varieties of pasta, wheat, spelt, etc...and not necessarily are all of them healthy choices.  I make my own meatballs with beef we get from a local farmer.  We order a quarter of a cow every year that we freeze.  The cows are grass-fed (even with 3 feet of snow on the ground recently, they were out in a cleared space) and not treated with any type of inhumane practice of any kind.   When we pick eggs up from the same farmer, we see them out in the field and say hello, knowing they will be butchered to give us nourishment.  I never buy meat from the grocery store, and probably wouldn't eat it if we didn't have a local source. 

We are certainly not perfect eaters, our kids have much more of a sweet-tooth than I would like (hmmm...wonder where they get that from??) and we do have times where we eat things I know we probably shouldn't.  Eating healthy 'real foods' is a balancing act.

I say all of this because I do want to devote this blog to eating healthy foods and by saying what we eat could imply different things to different people.  But I guess if you had questions, you could email me or comment and just ask.  I certainly don't want to make sidenotes about every dish and exactly what's in it.  But we do try to buy as many foods from local sources or organic sources as much as possible. 

Anyway, as I ramble on and on, here's what we ate for the last two weeks!

Roast chicken, peas, mashed potatoes (I usually make a roast once a month and use the leftover chicken to make chicken salad, or other chicken meals during the week)
Chicken curry, rice
Spaghetti, meatballs, green beans
Wild flounder, sweet potatoes, asparagus
turkey burgers, homemade mac and cheese, carrots
Fettuccine alfredo (with a homemade sauce), broccoli
Tacos, guacamole (and yes, we use tortilla chips instead of shells)
Lentil soup
Homemade pizza (a new weekend favorite...we have it at least 2 times a month)
Chicken enchiladas
Fried rice, egg drop soup (a new recipe, not a family favorite which was too bad because it literally took 5 minutes to make)
Shepherd's pie
Grilled chicken, peas, sweet potatoes
Grilled steak, baked potatoes, green beans

So does that sound pretty normal to you??  I guess I look at what we eat like the same things most everyone eats.  I do try to think about the source of the ingredients as much as possible.  I guess I could do some more posts on my thinking behind that.

Here's what I'm planning to write about soon, in case you're interested in coming back to read more.  I hope you are!  I love to hear anyone who is inspired to make small changes!

My recipe party
Local farmers
Meat sources
Soaking grains
What's for breakfast and lunch?
Avocados
Homemade baby food

Menu Planning Update

Last month, I finally dug in my heels and started planning a monthly menu.  This was one of my goals for the year, to have more organized food plans.  Even though we almost always cook from scratch, I was flying by the seat of my pants way too often.  Here is my original post of how I got started.

I was pretty pleased with the first month.  I enjoyed getting most of my staples in a single trip to our health food store.  There were, of course, some forgotten items and a weekly trip to market for milk and produce, but it did feel like we were shopping less.  I wouldn't say we spent any less than we normally do, but I think with time, I'll be able to get better at that.

I did make a few changes to my monthly planning sheet for March.  I kept the same routine for planning dinners.  I made a list of enough dinners for the month, trying to balance out beef, chicken, fish, and vegetarian meals.  Instead of writing down specific breakfast and lunch meals for the month, I just wrote a generic list of the things we normally eat for those meals.  I'll share those ideas with you soon, just in case you're curious what we eat around here for that.

I also decided to make a weekly planning sheet as well.  I found that only having a montly planning sheet required a lot of moving meals around.  I made a chart that has seven blocks, one for each day of the week.  Then I put a line for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is each block.  I then take my generic lists for breakfast and lunch and fill one in for each day.  I use the master list of dinners and fill those in as well.  I like planning for the week this way because I plan easier dinners for the nights my husband works or if we have something going on in the evening.  It was always hard for me to plan weekly until I made the master month list first.  Below the dinner line I put a section for planning ahead.  So if I need to take meat out, grind flour, or soak some grains (another new thing I'm trying-more on this later), or prep something, I won't forget to do it.  Well, as long as I remember to look! This has made everything go so much more smoothly.

The other thing I put on the weekly planning sheet is a small space to the right of the dinner blocks where I can put any ingredients I didn't plan ahead for or things like fruit and vegetables I might need to get at the beginning of the week.  It's kind of like having a weekly grocery list and since it's right next to the menu, again, it's a lot easier.

Has anyone else given this a try?  I encourage you to do so!

I'm having a recipe party next weekend. Can't wait to share the details of how it goes!