It’s been a while since I’ve shared a weekly menu. When I know that I’ll be sharing it here, it helps me to commit to preparing my menu plan at the beginning of the week and that’s a good thing since having it in place before the the first meals need to be prepared makes the entire week go more smoothly.
Friday night dinner – challah, chicken soup, roast chicken, butternut squash, roasted potatoes, sesame green beans, savory baked carrots, leafy pomegranate salad, cinnamon buns; Saturday lunch – challah, hummous, beef stew, potato kugel, carrot kugel, apple kugel, red and yellow pepper salad with olives, creamy cucumber salad, cabbage/tomato/lettuce salad, brownies; Saturday night – sweet potato carrot cream soup, potato latkes, fresh doughnuts
Sunday – breakfast – eggs, fruit; lunch – creamy yam/carrot soup, potato kugel, carrot kugel, salad; dinner – split pea soup
Monday – b – polenta; l – chili con carne; d – sweet potato pear soup
Tuesday – b – oatmeal; l – chicken with celery gravy and baked potatoes; d – Hearty Tuscan white bean soup
Wednesday – b – polenta; l – shepherd’s pie; d – kidney bean burgers
Thursday – b – oatmeal; l –Hearty Tuscan white bean soup; CORN – clean out refrigerator night
Friday – b – oatmeal; l – CORN
The kids have a sandwich and fruit or vegetables as a midmorning snack at school, and usually have a fruit or vegetable with breakfast. Lunch and dinner are usually served with some kind of fresh vegetables – pepper strips, carrot sticks, cucumber rounds. This week I bought a lot of lettuce so we’ll be having more leafy salads with our meals.
Last week I bought a lot of sweet potatoes – the price is usually too high to include them on a regular basis, but they went all the way down to 2.99 a kilo and I bought three cases (small cases). This is great because they’re so versatile – you can use them in soups, stews, baked and eaten plain, or made into breakfast puddings. Since the weather is cool now, they are able to be stored without spoiling in a cabinet on my laundry porch.
My apartment building has been having some kind of problems with the pipes, so the water has been turned off repeatedly at odd times without warning for hours at a time for over a week. This has made cooking the last two Fridays very challenging, since one week it was off until 1 pm, this week it wasn’t turned on until an hour before Shabbos began. Then when it was turned on I was racing to wash my mountain of dishes with a little trickle of water. I told my kids that it was a Chanukah miracle that the food was cooked and all the dishes washed by the time Shabbos began. 🙂 The reason for mentioning this is that the water is currently off and has been for hours, and we’ve used up all the bottles we filled in advance. Once it’s on again, I’ll be soaking kidney beans and white beans so they’ll be ready to be used in recipes this week.
This past week I stocked up on chicken/meat for the month. When I went into the store I saw whole chickens on sale without a limit on how many could be purchased (usually it’s limited to 4 kilos with a purchase of 100 shekels of items that are not on sale so I get just the amount I can buy on sale – usually two chickens), and bought eight whole chickens. The beef was also on sale, so I got four kilos of that (I use a kilo each week in beef stew for Shabbos lunch) and then six kilos of chicken bottoms at half price (though our family prefers dark meat, it’s much more expensive than whole chickens). I only have the freezer space available in my fridge freezer or I would have gotten more.
The guys at the meat counter know my purchasing habits and asked me if I wanted giblets. I glanced down and saw the price, and told them that since they weren’t on sale I wouldn’t bother this week. They told me they’ll make it on sale for me, so I asked how much? When they said six shekels a kilo, I told them I’d take ten kilos!I cooked up all the giblets in a huge pot when I got home, then bagged them into kilo servings. These make a great addition to all kinds of chicken dishes. (Last year I wrote about using giblets here.)
Celery is such a great addition to winter soups but usually the heads of celery are scrawny and I don’t bother buying them. This week they were huge and leafy, so I bought one to use fresh during the next week or so, and three of them will be sliced up and dehydrated.
Avivah
Its amazing that you use so many healthy vegetables in your menu. I cant imagine my kids eating any of it. How do you deal with any picky eaters? Also, is a soup for supper filling enough?
You’re not the first to ask about if we have any picky eaters! http://oceansofjoy.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/kids-who-are-picky-eaters/
We find soup filling for lunch or dinner, because I make it with the intent that it can stand alone as a meal. I use broth for the base, and depending on what it is boost it with meats, beans, coconut cream, etc – it’s never just vegetables and water. I also make large amounts of whatever I cook, so that people can take until they feel satiated.
I’ve long thought that my family often puts too much into food – cooking time, money, quantities, clean up time. The impact is minimal now but over time might become a problem. The simplicity of what you do is interesting to me. Are there any other side dishes you aren’t mentioning such as bread with dinner or leftovers brought out during other meals? Also, in soup do you think the broth important for nutrition, flavor or both? Thanks!
Sorry for the delay, Sharon, I started answering this the day you asked and was interrupted before I posted it.
There are other things that are served with the meal other than what is listed, but nothing that takes much time. It might be leftovers, bread, vegetables – it depends what we have and what I feel will balance out the meal well.
Even though I knew about the flavor advantages of broth years ago, it wasn’t until I learned about the health advantages that I began incorporating it regularly into our diet.
2 Questions-
1-What do you do when one of your kids asks for something else?
2-How do you dehydrate celery or any other vegetable and how do you store it?
1) It depends. If there’s an option that is okay with me, I’ll tell them they can take some of that – eg tonight I told one of the kids he could take fresh peppers or cucumbers if he wanted something more. “This is what we’re having now” is my standard response, but honestly it doesn’t come up often at all. They usually eat whatever is served. I don’t mind if they tell me they didn’t like something I made, as long as they say it in a reasonable way – I appreciate the feedback and won’t make it.
2) Slice the celery up and put them in the dehydrator. I store dehydrated foods in glass jars. (I recycle glass jars from marinara sauce.).
Your menu choices and planning are quite impressive. I have been following your blog for a while, and have read through all of your menu posts but have been unable to locate a Shabbos menu example. I would love if you could please post one if you are able to do so. I know how busy you are and I thank you.
Hi, Chana, welcome! So nice to have you here!
Look at the top of this menu, beginning with Friday night dinner and you’ll see that I listed what I made for Shabbos. I didn’t include my Shabbos meals for a lot of menus but on a lot of them I did; sometimes I wrote ‘Shabbos’, sometimes I wrote ‘Friday/Saturday’. It’s easy to overlook it because I put it at the beginning of the week instead of the end – I don’t plan my Shabbos menu until Thursday night or Friday, so I list the previous week’s Shabbos meals with my upcoming menu for the week.
Hope this helps!