I am in love with the concept of thinking ahead. Thinking ahead saves time. Thinking ahead saves money. Thinking ahead saves my energy. I try to think ahead most of the time.
“If I don’t plan, then I plan to fail”. The following are all possibilities for these next couple of weeks. With that said, I think some planning is in order to make the best of the resources that God has given me, yet I will remain flexible to the possibility of major menu modifications, sudden outings, sickness, dinner dates, etc….
Breakfast Items for the Next Two Weeks:
- Natural Commercial Cereal, and Granola Cereal for most of the days: This has been my go-to for the last 6 months or so, especially since Jonathan has gone low-carb. The only carb-infused food he regularly indulges in is the granola, so I have done less steel cut oats to my dismay. I love steel cut oats because they are really healthy and way cheaper than the nutty granola. Tomorrow I plan on making a quadruple batch of Granola Cereal since my double batches aren’t even lasting a week. Honestly, it’s a bit exasperating, so I will try two double batches in two separate Crock-pots at the same time. Don’t get me wrong; I love making our food. I just wished the fruit of my labor stretched out a bit longer.
- Steel Cut Oats: I will make this twice in the next two weeks with leftovers for a day or two to start incorporating this back into our lifestyle. Can you even see the oats in the picture below?? They are there; I promise.
- Saturday Morning Special Waffles: I will adapt part of it to make mine dairy-free, and perhaps make a Spinach Feta Omelet for the family-I will pull out the veggies and eat them without the cheese or eggs. Next Saturday: Protein Pancakes and scrambled eggs for the family. This is often times when we have a sit down breakfast with daddy, and I like our Saturday morning breakfasts to stick with us so we can have a light lunch like a smoothie or leftovers.
Snacks Items for the Next Two Weeks:
- Granola bars: I made both peanut butter granola bars and almond butter granola bars, so we have them on hand.
- Homemade KIND-inspired Bars: It’s time to make some KIND-inspired bars since I haven’t had any since before Christmas.
Lunch Items for the Next Two Weeks:
- Fruit
- Crock-pot yogurt for the family. I may be making it with raw milk for the first time this week.
- Scrambled eggs
- Tuna Lettuce Wraps
- Quesadillas
- Nachos (our #1 go-to lunch meal) with my no-cheese cheese for me, and real cheese for the fam
- Smoothies and Sorbets: I have really been going to town with sorbets lately. We have all been enjoying them.
- dinner leftovers like soups
Dinner Items for the Next Two Weeks:
- Salad, Salad, Salad: I need to be less lazy about adding cut vegetables to the organic greens I buy. I want to experiment in the next couple of weeks with new dressings, too. We do try to have salads every day. Hopefully I will have some new salad dressings to share with you to bring our salads to life. My favorite dressing now is the Lemony Vinaigrette.
- Sourdough Bread: (such a great side for so many meals!) I make this once a week, at least. I have now been adding lots of nuts and seeds to the bread.
- Crock-pot Whole Chicken: Thursday I FINALLY bought my first organic chickens. I bought the 2 pack at Costco at $2.49/lb., spending over $20 for the two together. Ouch! That’s over double the cost I would spend to buy two conventionally raised chickens, but I believe in it. We haven’t had chicken since before Thanksgiving with all of the turkey and ham, and then soups we’ve had around, so last week we had our first chicken in a few months, and now we will go a little chicken crazy. Anyway, I crock-potted both the chickens today with a major twist of lemon; I am so excited about it!! I am freezing the bones to make my first organic chicken broth too, as soon as I build up enough vegetable scraps. Tonight we ate chicken with rolls, a green salad, and some leftover rice. I will shred the rest of the chicken for…
- Chicken Enchiladas: Jonathan told me yesterday that he was getting burned out on soups lately. We had Chili Sunday, Lentil Soup Monday, Chicken & Potato Soup Tuesday, my dad’s Bean Soup Wednesday, and more leftover Chicken & Potato Soup Thursday. Point taken. I have been going crazy using our homemade broth that I haven’t done many real “dishes” lately, meaning the last month or two. So the next few weeks I am going to try to incorporate some older standards. That will be easier now that we have lots of leftover chicken from crock-potting the two chickens. The enchiladas will at least last us two dinners and some lunches for the hubs.
- Chicken Taquitos: We haven’t had these for months, and it sounds so good! I was at a Mexican restaurant today, and I really wanted to get some then, but I didn’t think the deep-fried part would agree with me, so I got cheese-less enchiladas. Baked taquitos sound much more appealing! This should also last us two dinners and a lunch or two for Jonathan.
- Crock-pot Pork Roast: Today I bought a pork roast at WinCo for $1.98/lb. I’ll crock-pot it for this Sunday, and then have…
- Shredded Pork Burritos for a quick leftover dinner another night.
- Crock-pot Ham: I got a ham around Christmastime, so the night before we have dinner guests in (maybe in two Sundays), I will throw it in the crock-pot to have it ready for a Sunday Supper. This will give us lots of leftovers and will give us the fixings to make…
- Ham Soup: Even though we had an abundance of soup this past week I am sure in another week and a half or so JSarr will be excited to have more soup. This should last us at least two days, providing a few lunches for JSarr, also.
- Ham Hot Pockets: I posted this at Christmastime because people typically eat a lot of ham then, but we haven’t had them in months. I kept wanting to have them, but we kept using the ham for other things.
- Lentils: I am experimenting more with lentils, so I’ll see how we incorporate them in the next couple of weeks.
- Cauliflower: I have a head of cauliflower, so I will roast it and have it as is or make it into a soup.
- I also would like to experiment with some crock-pot Thai and Sweet and Sour dishes.
Dessert Items for the Next Two Weeks:
- Chocolate Nut Clusters and 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cups: Time to stock the freezer and fridge with Chocolate Nut Clusters and 3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Cups. The ingredients for these have been out on my stove top since Wednesday waiting for me to make them-oops! Lord willing, tomorrow!
- Chocolate Chip Cookies (with a secret ingredient), D-F, Egg-Free, G-F: We haven’t made cookies here in a long time, especially since I went egg-free and dairy-free in September/October. I need to make some dairy-free, egg-free cookies to have on hand.
I think I may be less verbose in the next Semi-Monthly Menu Musings. Maybe I’ll just write a list. Would that be easier to view like what I did for my Christmas and Thanksgiving Menu Ideas? Regardless for me I think writing this down will cause me to be more efficient (Lord willing:)! Is there a more helpful format that you would prefer? May be the pictures need to be a bit bigger? I’d appreciate any feedback.
Do you menu plan? What are you planning to make in the next couple of weeks? I’d love to hear!! See other menu plans here.
Do you need some other culinary inspiration? Go here for the complete list of recipes.
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Sonja
I found you at the linky party at Sew many Ways. I like that one because it brings in people who do a lot of different creative things. I’m at the opposite end of life from you. No family in the house anymore but me, but I found your post interesting anyway.
I’m trying to eat healthier, but I also have the problem that if I cook something, I have to be able to turn it into multiple meals, and if possible freeze some of it as well. So I enjoyed seeing what you are doing although there is no way I’d be doing it.
Hi Stella, I love turning one meal into many! I always like getting ideas from other, too. We can all learn from each other. Thank you for visiting and your kind words.
I love your approach of “loose” meal planning. I am kind-of like that too, although I haven’t been as consistent as I should be even with general planning 🙂 I’m better if I’m not stuck with a rigid meal plan. Thanks for sharing again at Thrifty Thursday!
Great plan! Sounds healthy and tasty. Here are some ideas for your lentil experiments: Honey Baked Lentils Lentil Rice–3 flavor variations Apricot Lentil Soup Masoor Dal
Hi ‘Becca, Thanks for the Lentil ideas. I will take a look. Thanks for visiting!
Yummy! I have to check out… and pin… some of these recipes!
Hi Becca, Thanks for visiting. I hope I’ve provided some inspirations!
Hello! This is in response to Raechelle’s post up above: You may already know this, but you can take a frozen pancake or waffle out of the freezer, stick it into the toaster and push the “defrost” button, and it pops up hot and ready to eat. I do it all the time for my allergy girls. It’s worth the time ahead having a big pancake bake-off to have those yummy breakfasts in a flash!
Hi Piper!! Thanks for sharing. I actually read this after I made my double batch of pancakes this morning!! Now I have a whole bunch in my freezer and crock-pot steel cut oats going for a hot breakfast tomorrow. Love the quick breakfasts out of whole foods!
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” -Harvey MacKay
Hi Amy, Thanks for the quote!
Love reading your ideas – I think we’re doing a lot that is similar. Definitely trying to go more organic, and rationalizing the cost in terms of – less eating out definitely pays for organic! Adults are trying to do low-carb too, and yes, it is a pain when you can’t use the cheaper, easier oats, right? However, one idea – at least for the rest of the family – when you make your waffles on Saturday, make several extras and freeze them. You can do that for at least 1-2 days during the week, and that’ll save some cost for the kiddos eating granola, and I bet they’ll love the waffles. Plus, making it from scratch hardly costs pennies, so it’ll be less expensive too. (If you’re worried about getting enough protein in there, you can hard boil some eggs, keep them in the fridge for the morning, and my kids love that, too.) You are inspiring me – thanks so much! Finally got around to making the fruit leather last week. I’ll try another snack this week. Much appreciation!
Hi Raechelle, Thanks for sharing! You are encouraging me now to make a double batch of pancakes, waffles, etc…! I really don’t know why I don’t double batch the breakfast foods, since I do on lunch and dinners.
I was just telling my husband that the ground turkey and ground beef costs more per pound than the organic chicken per pound.
We do keep hard boiled eggs on hand.
Yay for fruit leather! It’s such a fun treat!!
Blessings and thanks for visiting!
Yay for Raw milk!!! We love it! We buy ours at the Produce Place its kind of behind Winco on State street going north. Its from the Old Silvana Creamery. It is so good!
I love soup. I am limiting myself to making it only once a week! Mostly because with the girls it’s usually messy!
Also YAY for organic chicken! We get ours at Costco too!
I love making bone broth in the slow cooker!
Also, I have found the Haggen’s rotisserie chickens are totally hormone free and locally raised! It’s good to know for situations when we are in a pinch!
Hi Keri, Yes, we got the raw milk from Chuck when they left. Raw milk is something I believe in too, but I haven’t bought myself yet. Oh the slow transition to healthier eating.
Soup is just soooo easy to make. I know our little Joshua would be happier if I weren’t making so much soup, but it’s so good for you!
Do you think the organic Costco chicken is range-free? I didn’t see anything like that on the labeling.
Slow cooker bone broth really is the best, and it’s so forgiving. Honestly, I have let my broth go a day and a half or two days sometimes when we are extra busy, and it’s probably more nutrient dense because of it.
Thanks for the Haggen’s Rotisserie Chicken tip! Blessings this week!!