One of these goals was to become a better menu planner, meal preparer, and grocery shopper. When I don't plan and prepare ahead, I let the stress of every day get in the way and end up with lots of good healthy food going bad in the refrigerator while I head out for a tub of hummus and some carrots or crackers.
For three weeks, I've planned a menu, grocery shopped on a specific budget (even used a few coupons) and prepared meals (or at least ingredients to make easy meals) ahead. As a result, for three weeks, I've had good healthy homemade meals.
At this point, I've mostly been using cookbook recipes (some new, some tried-and-true) and making up very little. At least through the winter, what I'm trying to keep in mind as a basic plan is one soup, one salad, and one something else. Since I'm just cooking for me, that works great. As the year progresses, I'm even hoping to plan in some freezer friendly ideas
So my question is this - are you interested in hearing about the menu planning? I guess included in that would be some recipe reviews, possibly some new recipes, lessons learned, some failures and some successes. It will probably be a once a week post, but it might be split up a little so that I can give new recipes some extra attention. Just a warning, there are a few recipes you will probably get REALLY tired of seeing on the menu list. At the top of that list would be the caesar salad from Appetite for Reduction.
Here's an example of what I did one week:
A batch of chipotle lentil burgers with sweet potatoes cut to make baked "fries"
A batch of hummus
Chopped broccoli for40 clove chickpeas and broccoli later in the week
A jar of Caesar salad dressing
A batch of Arabian Rice and Lentil Soup (one of my favs!)
Roasted vegetables and pine nut cheez for pizza later in the week
Bonus: Extra bread crumbs and chipotle peppers to go in the freezer for future use
I promise if I'm going to blog on the menu, I'll try to take more appetizing photos than this one.
By the way, I'm also doing a project 365 blog this year. If you're interested in keeping up with that it's at http://drsimpson365.blogspot.com/
4 comments:
scI love your photo actually-It looks realistic-like what we'd pull out of our fridge. Your other pictures of food look so appetizing-I wanna come thru the screen! :)
I'd love to hear more about menu planning - it might give me a kick in the pants to do more of it. :)
It would be great to hear about your menu planning. I find that I don't waste food if I have an plan about what I am cooking for the week, it doesn't always pan out this way though. Would love to hear your thoughts about cookbook recipes you have tried too. :D
i too am on board and would love to hear about your meal planning, Dawn! our pup julie is going through chemotherapy right now so we're budgetin like crazy and have really gotten into meal planning lately. we're finding not only does it save us a ton of money, but it's so much more healthy (and tasty!) for us, too!
p.s. the arabian rice and lentil soup is one of my favorites. and a few weeks back i made the chipotle lentil burgers (and the pineapple collards) for a friend (she's an omni) and she loved them both. hooray for AFR, too!
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