First of all, I said last week that I wanted to post the cost of each meal last week at the end of the week, and because we were didn’t adhere to our menu plan for dinners, I’m not going to do it.  I’m sorry about that – it would have been fun!  Between the kids noshing veggies from the garden every day and dd accidentally making a huge recipe of lentil rice mushroom loaf (that lasted about four meals instead of two), we didn’t need to cook as much as usual.  Which is just as well, because as it is people sometimes think I’m lying about how much we spend a month and our costs last week were probably 50% less than average and I wouldn’t want to tempt some others to disbelieve me.  🙂

We’ll be leaving on our annual camping trip after lunch today and will be gone the next few days.  In preparation for our trip, last night I made several pickled recipes to use up the vegetables in the fridge so they wouldn’t go bad in our absence.  I made 3 quarts of tomato relish (we’ll take one jar with us), 3 quarts of garlic pickles (also taking one of these), and 5 quarts of zucchini pickles.

We didn’t decide where we’d be going until 10 pm Sunday night – the fallback option was to go the place we went last year but as much as we enjoyed it there, everyone voted to try something new this year.  The size of our family complicates finding campgrounds that can easily accomodate us, since generally they won’t let so many people into one campsite, regardless of how large the site is.  We’ll have to get two campsites at the new place we’ll be trying out tomorrow.
It’s on a peninsula off the Chesapeake Bay, an area we haven’t been to before, and we’re all looking forward to exploring there .

This week’s menu plan is looser than usual because of the camping trip.  The kids do most of the packing; we loosely plan breakfasts and dinners and bring along a bunch of other food to fill in the gaps.  But I’ll share what it is so far with you:

Shabbos – dinner – challah, baked ziti, chicken cutlets, yellow squash curry, broccoli/zucchini quiche, apples and watermelon; lunch- baked ziti, roasted chicken salad, potato salad, sweet potato pie, broccoli/zucchini quiche, fresh salad, sweet and sour carrots, pickled Japanese radish, zucchini relish, pesto, beet salad, watermelon, kokosh cake ring

Sunday – brunch – vegetable omelets, yogurt; dinner – Shabbos leftovers (this is good since we’re leaving the fridge pretty empty while we’re gone)

Monday – b – not yet sure; l – chili

Camping trip:

• breakfasts – instant grits, quick oats, eggs
• lunches – sandwiches – tuna salad, peanut butter, cheese
• dinners – eggplant parmesan; beef hot dogs, baked potatoes; hamburgers, yams, tomato relish, pickles
• snacks – watermelon, smores

The kids have packed also canned vegetables like corn and peas, dried fruits, and some other miscellaneous things.  In addition to the watermelon we’ll take apples and maybe some pears.  We can also take jars of cooked ground beef and beans that I’ve canned to make a quick dinner with, but the kids aren’t sure they want to take glass jars since my ds who will be 2 next week is very…..active. 🙂 We usually take a lot of potatoes and yams so there’s enough to supplement several meals, serving them in different ways.  If there’s time before we leave, we may bake some biscuits or a couple of loaves of Cuban bread to take with us.

I’ll try to post a recipe or two from those requested last week before we leave.  Have a wonderful week!

Avivah