My friend, Tara, posts weekly menus. I LOVE it! He, he,he.... I started doing meal plans when I was preggo with Glitter because, among other reasons, I could...and it made my OCD tendencies productive, and it saved money, and i wasn't constantly trying to figure out what to cook at 4:30.
It was FUN! I loved it. I kept all those lists of what I'd made stored "for later use" until we moved out of that house. Then we moved to Atlanta and I was on to my next challenge...... I made it through my ENTIRE! pregnancy with Warrior without making the same meal twice. Got a ton of new and yummy recipes out of that experiment. Loved that too.
Then we moved to North Carolina and I decided to up the ante again. I organized all of our favorite recipes into weekly meal plans designed to make the most use of leftovers and half used ingredients..... I know, you're either shaking your head at my insanity or jumping up and down over someone else being as OCD as you are.
That too was fun. I've got approximately 13 weeks of weekly meal plans that do not repeat any meals. All weeks include side dishes (vegetables and starches) that are varied and palate pleasing. We don't eat carrots every day.... but we do eat them once a week. I make sure each week gets it's "quota of the colors". This was a challenge. I loved it.
THEN, I decided that we needed to up the ante on nutrition. I began re-writing my recipes so that all pre-processed junk was left out (no canned soup cream bases etc.). We became healthier... I was still having fun.
But the fun had to end. As I said in a previous post, this ball got dropped and we moved to frozen lasagna and dollar menu. We got sick, I got lazy, off the wagon we went. Getting back on it has been a difficult challenge. The kids are all wanting to learn to cook and we've done quite a bit of training on that front.
So, what's our new venture? Each kid is assigned one day a week to be "kitchen helper". We are in the process of training them to cook one meal for breakfast right now. Once they get their meal learned, we'll branch out and get creative.... the bigger kids already know how to make their meal and are already stretching their skills... we're working more on balancing the plate!
They are going to take over breakfast prep for a bit once Snow Flake gets here so that mornings can go smoothly and I can take care of the babe. Once she moves to a 4 hour schedule (and we get to summer break) I'll get back in the kitchen with them and we'll up the ante!
For now, here's what we're eating :
1 protein
2 fruits
1 dairy
1 whole grain
Monday: Glitter:
-scrambled eggs
-yogurt
-butter fried apples w/ raisins
-granola bar
Tuesday: Ondepenya:
-cheese grits
-boiled egg
-grapes
-orange juice
Wednesday: Warrior:
-tortillas with cream cheese/peanut butter/ (1 whole which is 2 servings for a kid) banannas... rolled up
Thursday: Electron:
-oatmeal with raisins
-1/2 apple with peanut butter
-milk
Friday: Mommy:
-fried egg
-cheese toast
-milk
-1/2 orange
-1/2 banna
Due to what is available our fruits sometimes change BUT we are adamant about 2 servings of fruit for breakfast and 2 servings of veggies for dinner.... we try to get 1 of each for lunch so that our daily total is 3 each...... we don't seem to have a problem meeting our protein and dairy quota each day... can't imagine why? lol
Ok, you can laugh now but I feel better now that it's written down and I have accountability in this!
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