Here’s this week menu:
Sunday – breakfast – was supposed to be pancakes; lunch – whole wheat rolls, hummous, fresh peas, baby carrots; dinner – cholent, kasha, sauteed green beans, sweet potato pudding
Monday – b – oatmeal, milk, bananas; l – bread pudding; d – thick chicken-vegetable-noodle soup
Tuesday – b – leftover oatmeal bread, homemade jam; l – cauliflower rice/cheese casserole; d – beef stew
Wednesday – b – buttermilk biscuits, eggs; l – fish, baked yams; d – black bean soup, cornbread
Thursday – b – hot rice with milk; l – leftovers (probably bean soup and cornbread, but whatever else we have, too); d – lasagna
We’ll supplement lunch and dinner meals with the veggies we have on hand. Today I ground up a lot of wheat berries, and will put the flour in the freezer for the oatmeal bread, and biscuits. I cooked a large pot of rice for the casserole and breakfast on Thursday. I’m using the beef that I canned way back around Sukkos time for the first time for the stew, and I’ll be using up some pasta for the lasagna and noodles for tonight’s soup, and the base of the chicken soup will be some very rich broth that I made at the end of last week. I think we’ll make banana crumb muffins for Shabbos morning breakfast, using the discounted bananas I bought this morning for .19 lb (yes, I bought all that they had :)).
Avivah
Avivah,
Your lunches seem to me to be rather sparse. My family likes to eat (b”H)and we do our main fruit eating during lunch (an apple/pear/orange/fruit of the season). Our lunches are usually a sandwich (cheese or sunflower butter – DD allergic to peanuts) or beans and rice or a leftover soup, plus at least one but rarely two pieces of fruit (we eat bananas with breakfast).
Would you be willing to do a menu makeover?
Yael
Oh and I would love a recipe for the banana crumb muffins!
I don’t think that we’ll do a menu makeover, since this is what works for us at this time – I put it here to share, not to impress anyone! We eat fruit usually just at breakfast time, and have vegetables on the side for lunches and dinners. What is it about the lunch menus that seem sparse – is it that they are one dish meals?
This was an interesting comment to me since we have full sit down lunch meals, which is unusual for most people, and what we serve is substantially more than the typical family has for that meal. I can see how someone might think that just one item plus a salad wasn’t much if not taking into account what went into a dish. But one dish meals are far from being just one ingredient! – the bread pudding had lots of milk, eggs, and butter (and we had fruit on the side), and we always make at least 2 – 9 x 13 full pans, which is quite a lot (we almost always have leftovers). And we have a large meal for dinner, too.
Today we had a huge amount of rice/cauliflower/cheese casserole. Maybe it would sound better if I said the ingredients instead of the dish (eg. bread, eggs, milk, and fruit? Or rice, cauliflower and onions, cheese, and milk?). We occasionally do sandwiches, which are nice because they’re much less work, but it doesn’t feel like a real meal to anyone when we have them. I’m not sure what seems to be missing, but like I said, it works for us, and everyone finds what works for them!
And I’ll be happy to post the muffin recipe sometime this week. 🙂
Oops! I meant would you like to do a menu makeover/commentary for MY family. I (coincidentally) fashion my weekly dinner menu plan like yours (Shabbos, one meat meal, one dairy, soup night, fish night, pareve night, leftover night).
As to what I found sparse…I look at your Monday lunch and in my head I say, “Whoa, just bread pudding?” But when you add that there is fruit/salad also it makes more sense. When I make a one dish meal (like spanakopita — a Greek spinach, feta cheese, and egg dish in phyllo dough), I also make quinoa (for more protein since we are not big meat/chicken eaters) and roasted sweet potatoes/carrots (for a different vegetable). Or for example, the fish and roasted yams. I would feel I would have to have brown rice or quinoa or whole wheat bread to fill out (add carbs to) the meal. Please don’t write out the ingredients rather than the food itself — I get good ideas for my meals!
I hope I did not anger you with my comments — I am truly thrilled to meet someone with so many of the same goals in life –it doesn’t happen often enough in my life. 🙂
LOL! It doesn’t sound like you need a menu makeover – your family sounds like they’re pretty well fed. 🙂 And don’t worry about upsetting me – it didn’t bother me at all, and it didn’t sound like you were coming from a negative place.
I am always looking for ways to eat better for less money! I feel like I spend a crazy amount of money (120-150$ a week for a family of 5) and since we don’t eat meat every night like many of my friends, I always wonder what the heck I spend on!!!
We live in an area with no cheap (or basically ANY) kosher meat options, so I just bought 400$ of chicken/meat (1 roast for Pesach)/fish/matza/techina/ground meat and ground turkey/string cheese(the splurge)/spinach (the one veggie I refuse to check anymore!!!) in a kosher food coop. This should last us through Pesach to Shavuos (we have lots of Shabbos guests and hope to have 30-40 people for the sedarim). I could go back to making my own bread, but I feel my schedule is crazy enough without adding that to the mix (although it really isn’t so much time…). Maybe after Pesach. 😛
How much did you pay for the chicken wings? I thought they would be cheap too, but when I price them in Chicago (where I do my big kosher shopping), they seem to be almost as expensive as leg quarters with a lot less meat to bone ratio (something I have recently started to look at — I find that buying a half fresh turkey breast can be cheaper and serve just as many people as the equivalent pieces of fresh leg quarters and I get the rib bones for soup. I just checked my coop and saw the institutional size of wings (45 lbs) is 1.40/lb and the 4lb IQF (individually quick frozen) bags of wings are 1.93/lb and the leg quarters I bought are 2.43/lb. Hmmm, more to ponder!
The chicken wings were super cheap -.69 lb- I haven’t seen them this low for many months. (I’ve noticed a couple of other cuts that are much cheaper than usual, and have a theory as to why it’s like this right now.) You’re right to consider how much the meat to bone ratio is – often it is a better value to get the more expensive cuts. But in this case, the next cheapest cut of chicken was a whole chicken cut in 1/8s, which this week I got on sale for 2.39 lb.
I’ve shared lots of suggestions for various ways to cut the food bills down, and if you apply them bit by bit, you’ll find that your grocery bill will start to shrink. Many people conveniently overlook the fact that I travel almost two hours away every month in order to do the bulk of the shopping I do for the prices I pay – no, it’s not for the meats and cheeses, but I’ve been able to get things a lot cheaper than I could closer to home and then it leaves more room for the more expensive items that I can’t find cheaply. After Pesach you might find it worthwhile to explore bulk or salvage stores that are outside of your immediate area.