This week I’m unusually low on groceries only three weeks after doing my monthly shopping.  I bought two cases of sweet potatoes that were supposed to last for at least six weeks but rotted after two and had to be thrown away (note – there apparently was some kind of problem with the quality, it’s not that I bought too much or stored them improperly; I’ve been buying like this for two or three years with no problem, and the store is refunding the entire purchase price), the 10 gallons of milk are finished until the next shopping trip, I bought 30 dozen eggs and they’re finished after 3 weeks (when I expected them to last for at least a month as they usually do), there’s hardly any hard cheese left….and with dh eating according to the GAPS diet, I’m going through vegetables faster than usual.

So I’m just about out of some basic staples and this week will be a real pantry challenge for me.  My goal is to make ample meals three times a day for 10 – 11 people each time, without spending more than $25 on some vegetables and eggs for the week, otherwise only using what I already have in the house.  The menus below are based on those ‘ground rules’.

Shabbos (Sabbath) – dinner – challah, chicken soup, roast chicken, ratatouille, butternut squash fries, roast potatoes, fruit cobbler, chocolates ; lunch – cholent (beef stew), kishke (stuffing), chicken wings, broccoli apple salad, carrot raisin salad, brownies, mock oatmeal cookies

Sunday- breakfast – grits, grapefruit; lunch – beef stew, salad; dinner – quinoa with roasted garlic, tempeh (fermented soybean curd), and stir fried vegetables (onions, napa, snow peas, butternut squash)

Monday – b – coconut rice; l – millet cheese cakes; d – Nancy’s chili (new chili recipe I’m trying out)

Tuesday – b – johnny cakes with homemade strawberry jam; l – Georgia peanut soup homemade bread; d – fish and chips, coleslaw

Wednesday – b – peach and berry cobbler, cream; l – soup and bread; d – hot dogs and baked beans

Thursday – b -breakfast tacos; d – vegetable pilaf with cashews

Friday – b – banana nut muffins

I only listed the main dishes for the most part since I won’t know what veggies I’ll buy until I see what is a great deal.  But there will be some sort of vegetables at all of the lunch and dinner meals.

Today we started soaking three different kinds of beans for this week’s recipes: 2 pounds of pintos, 2 pounds of kidneys, and 2 pounds of navy beans. In the morning I’ll drain them and they’ll be ready to begin sprouting.  I also started (well, to be accurate I asked dd15 to start them) soaking nuts: 12 cups of cashews and almost 4 lb of walnuts. Cashews don’t need much time to soak – if you leave them too long they get slimy – so I’m going to put them in the dehydrator before I go to bed. Then in the morning I’ll take them out and put the walnuts in to dry.  Have I recently mentioned how much I love my dehydrator?  🙂

I’m thinking about getting another sourdough starter going; it’s been a while since I baked any sourdough.  It takes about a week to ‘grow’ your starter so you really can’t spontaneously decide you feel like making sourdough one day!  The bread that I’m planning to make midweek will be whole grain but not sourdough.

I did a mega batch of fermented vegetables last week – four gallons of cortido (ethnic sauerkraut), and 3 or 4 gallons of green beans.  The cortido should be ready this week and I’ll see how it compares to our favorite, an adaptation on the basic curried carrot sauerkraut recipe I shared a while back.

(This post is part of Menu Plan Monday.)

Avivah