Category Archives: menu plans

Weekly menu plan

frugal strategies, homemaking, menu plans

Shabbos (Sabbath/Friday night)- dinner – challah, chicken soup, chicken, roast potatoes,  carrot/apple/onion bake, warm cabbage salad, beet salad, apple pie

(Sat.)  b- cinnamon bubble loaf;  lunch – challah, techina, hummus, Turkish salad, beef stew, crunchy coleslaw, savory beet salad, Moroccan carrot salad, traffic light salad, baked yams, oatmeal cookies, chocolate cake, rugelach

Sunday – lunch – beef stew, coleslaw; dinner – stir fry, salad

Monday – b – polenta fries; l – meat sauce and pasta shells, salad; d – apple lentil bake (double for tomorrow’s dinner), beet salad

Tuesday – b – eggs; l – butternut coconut curry, rice, carrot salad; d – apple lentil bake

Wednesday – b – rice pancakes; l – chicken pot pie (double and freeze one for next week), beet salad; d – split pea soup, cornbread (double for tomorrow lunch)

Thursday – b- oatmeal; l – split pea soup, cornbread, salad; d – Russian borscht

Friday – b – eggs

The fruits that are accompanying breakfast this week are red grapefruits and apples.  A neighbor invited us to pick navel oranges, two kinds of lemons, and mandarins in her yard last week, and we went through those very quickly!

The kids take freshly baked bread every day for their ten am meal at school, along with some fruit and/or a veggie – usually pepper strips or cucumber; this isn’t listed on the menu.

I use bone broths as a base for all my soups as well as to cook grain or bean dishes.  This adds a lot of nutrients to a meal that would otherwise be vegetarian.  I was delighted last week to stumble on a sale on chicken bones – 4 shekels a kilo, and so I bought all that they had.  As much as that seemed at the time, we go through broth at such a quick rate (three sixteen quart pots a week) that they won’t last nearly as long as I’d hope. And now that we don’t have raw milk every morning, I’ve been thinking maybe we should get into a habit of drinking broth daily to compensate.

I started soaking the lentils on Sunday, so they’ll have time to sprout by the time that I’ll be cooking with them.  I also started a new batch of kimchi, about two and a half gallons this time – the first four gallon batch that we started a couple of weeks ago still isn’t ready, though it’s breaking down nicely and is about two gallons in volume now (the cabbage breaks down as it ferments).  I like to have a cup of the juice as a morning probiotic drink, so that also accounts for the lessening volume!   By making a new batch of kimchi now, when the time the first batch is finished, the second one will be ready.  Cabbage based ferments take a lot longer than pickles or carrots, so you have to plan ahead unless you don’t mind not having any kimchi for a few weeks while a new batch ferments.

Cucumbers are going up in price quickly, double what the summer prices are, but they’re still affordable.   This week I’d like to buy a big batch and make a few gallons of pickles before the prices really shoot up and I set aside pickled cucumbers until they come back into season.  The kids enjoy this a lot, and we have them regularly with our lunch meals, though I don’t list it.

Have a good week!

Avivah

(This post is part of Menu Plan Monday.)

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

Here’s our menu for the week:

Shabbos (Sabbath) – dinner: challah, chicken soup, sweet and sour cabbage, roast potatoes, carrot apple bake, cinnamon buns, chunky applesauce, apple pie

lunch – challah, hummus, techina, carrot salad, savory beet salad, baked barbeque chicken, marinated chickpeas, potato kugel, sweet potato casserole, orange fennel salad, coleslaw, chocolate cake, bon bon cookies, oatmeal cookies

Sunday – breakfast – eggs, avocado, sliced yellow peppers; lunch – hearty vegetable soup; dinner – potatoes, meat sauce, coleslaw

Monday – b – oatmeal; l – chicken pot pie (doubled this when I made it last week), beet salad; d – French cabbage soup (double for following night)

Tuesday – b – polenta; l – butternut squash and chicken bake, rice, fennel salad; French cabbage soup

Wednesday – b – oatmeal; l – chicken spaghetti, carrot salad; d – hummous, chickpeas, fresh vegetable platter

Thursday – b – eggs; l – apple and lentil bake; d – Russian borscht (beet soup)

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

frugal strategies, menu plans

The menu below integrates planned leftovers (I purposely double ingredients when cooking so I don’t do double the work – eg, when cooking chickpeas for Shabbos, I made lots so I’d have some cooked for stew on Sunday).  And during the week if I have a bit of something left over from one meal to the next, I either repurpose into something else (eg some cooked veggies will end up being added to a stew), or eaten in addition to the meal itself as a side dish if there’s enough of it.  My goal is to get to the end of the week with a minimum of food storage contIf I link to a recipe with ingredients you wouldn’t think I’d use, then I’ve taken the basic idea and then adapted it. 🙂  There are very few recipes I use as is, but it’s easier to link and adapt than pay attention to the measurements I use and post my own version.

Shabbos (Sabbath) – night – challah, chicken soup, roast chicken, ratatouille, sauteed cabbage, roast squash and yams, cinnamon rolls, stewed pears

lunch – challah, techina, Moroccan carrot salad, pepper salad, marinated chickpeas, baba ganoush, eggplant and red pepper dip, savory beet salad, cabbage/lettuce salad (I have to think of a good name for this, since it’s really good!), squash pudding, potato kugel, onion quiche, chicken, lemon squares, rugelach

Sunday – breakfast – fruit; lunch – chickpea eggplant stew, rice (make double for breakfast on Weds), carrot salad; dinner – potato soup, cabbage salad

Monday – b – polenta; l – Viking stew, beet salad; d – butternut squash soup with dumplings

Tuesday – b – oatmeal; l – chicken with red lentils; d- Viking stew

Wednesday – b – rice pancakes; l – chicken with sesame noodles; d – lentil barley stew

Thursday – b –  fried eggs, pepper strips; l – chicken pot pie; d – CORN (clean out refrigerator night)

Friday – b – oatmeal; l – lentil barley stew

On Friday afternoon, dh went shopping for vegetables, and since I didn’t have a chance to unpack them all that day, I spent part of this morning organizing my pantry.  Though I don’t have the space to store foods bought in large quantities, I have made enough space to be able to take advantage of good sales, so I usually have vegetables left from one week’s purchase to another.  That means putting the older vegetables in the front so they get used right away; otherwise, bargains can easily turn into losses if they spoil before they are used.  And then I take a look at what I have in my pantry and fridge, and plan my menu for the week based on that.

I started a big batch (4 gallons) of curried carrot sauerkraut on Friday (well, let me be honest – I delegated this to ds12), but still need to add some onions, garlic, and purple cabbage to it.  Right now it’s just green cabbage and carrots – but it’s a lot of it!  Fortunately, you can add vegetables to a ferment after it begins fermenting.

This morning, I started a pot of chicken broth to use for the next couple of days. It goes really fast around here, and I miss the free turkey carcasses I used to be able to get, that allowed me to constantly make huge pots of broth for pennies a pot.  What I’m doing now is buying whole chickens, which is the cheapest kind of chicken here (aside from giblets and wings), cut it up and debone it.  Then I put the bones in one bag in the freezer for broth making, and the other parts in another bag.  (I try to keep the white meat separate, since it dries out if I cook it with the dark meat, but is excellent when cooked well.)

With the cold weather coming up, everyone will enjoy hot soups, and I like to use broth as the base for all my soups – it not only adds lots of nutritional value, but it makes a regular soup really, really good.  (I sent a thick potato soup to a neighbor a few months ago, and her husband kept exclaiming over how amazing it was – based on the ingredients in it, he couldn’t figure out why it was so delicious!   Broth, a cook’s best friend.  🙂 )

(As always, feel free to request a recipe if you see it listed and there’s no link.)

Have a great week!

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

I haven’t posted my weekly menu plan for ages!  Ds15 liked to plan breakfasts day by day last year (she was the cook, so whatever she wanted was fine with me!), but as a result, I got out of the habit of sitting down each week to write out my menu.  However, with the changes in our family schedule this year as all of the kids have gone to school, the kitchen is again primarily my domain – dd16 asked if she could prepare dinners, but she’s happy to make whatever I plan.

Whenever I make my weekly menu plan, I take a look first at whatever I have in the house, and then plan based on that.

Dh got an amazing bargain on butternut squash on Friday – three cases of butternut squash for just 15 shekels (about $4)!  That is insanely cheap; to me it’s practically free food.  This was an especially great buy for us, since dh has been on the GAPS diet for over a year and a half, and butternut squash is one of his staples.  Some of them were soft and needed to be used right away, but most were totally fine, and fortunately, winter squashes can stay for a long time if stored in a cool place, so I don’t need to rush to use them up.  The pressure to use them isn’t because they may go bad, but because I don’t have much storage space!

At the beginning of the week, I soaked and sprouted a bunch of lentils and white beans.  And yesterday I was delighted to find chicken giblets on sale for just 5 shekels a kilo, so of course I bought all that was left (about thirty pounds), and cooked them today to package in various ways (whole, sliced, diced) to put in the freezer.   I use them as a stand in for any kind of chicken – they’re so versatile.

We’ve switched to a more Israeli way of eating, with our main meal being lunch – most of the kids are home by then, so we usually eat all together.  Lunches usually have salad and/or cooked vegetables, but I don’t plan that in advance.  Our breakfasts are heavier than what seems to be typical here, since it seems most people don’t give their kids much of a breakfast before they leave to school (they eat a 10 am meal in school instead).  Usually what we send for the kids for their 10 am meal is homemade bread/biscuits/pancakes/muffins, fruit, and vegetables.

Sunday – breakfast – (sorry, didn’t write our menu down until today, so the blank spaces are when I can’t remember what we had); lunch – shnitzel (breaded chicken breast), corn on the cob, butternut squash, pickles, and salad; dinner – kasha (buckwheat), soup

Monday – d – vegetable soup, rice

Tuesday – b – coconut rice with milk; l – homemade sesame chicken nuggets, baked sprouted lentils in tomato sauce, coleslaw; d – vegetarian chili

Wednesday – rice pancakes (with leftover rice from Tues. breakfast); l – butternut chicken pasta; d – chili casserole (doubled chili on Tues night with this in mind, with cornbread batter baked on top)

Thursday – b – colcannon or butternut quick bread; l – lentil shepherd’s pie with mashed sweet potato topping (will use the other half of lentils I sprouted); d – CORN – clean out refrigerator night

Friday – b – polenta; l – parmigian express

Avivah

Sukkos menu

menu plans

Here in our lovely new home, we have a small porch.  The only time that’s really a limitation is when it’s Sukkos, when it’s customary to build a temporary hut, where meals are eaten and family members often sleep.

We accepted that our sukka would have to be very small, and there would only be room for about three or four of our family members under the part that isn’t covered by the roof overhang.  Those who weren’t in the sukka itself would be very close by, at a connecting table inside the apartment. But it was disappointing to think of holiday meals without having guests (didn’t want to invite people and not have room for them to sit in the sukka!), or even all being able to sit in the sukka together.

Last week, a neighbor a couple of houses away who has a synagogue in his home offered to let us use their ‘shul’ sukkah.  I almost rejected this idea out of hand as being too much work, but then saw the kids liked the idea.  Their sukkah is nice and large, and we were so happy that we are able to invite guests!  The family has their own sukkah on the other side of the house, so we’ll each have privacy.  We also built a small sukka on our porch to use during the week, when we aren’t having holiday meals.

Here in Israel, instead of two days of holidays at the beginning of Sukkos, there is only one.  So my menu plan below is just for Wednesday night and Thursday lunch.  We’ll be having 23 people tonight, and then 18 for lunch.

Sukkos menu – dinner:

  • challah
  • chicken
  • potato bourekas
  • coleslaw
  • fresh salad
  • matbucha
  • roast sweet potatoes
  • squash kugel
  • crunchy salad
  • fudgy brownie cake
  • snickerdoodles
  • peach compote
Lunch:
  • challah
  • chicken
  • noodle kugel
  • knish swirls
  • onion kugel
  • sweet potato casserole
  • cucumber tomato salad
  • lacto fermented pickles (the first batch I’ve made since arriving here!)
  • crunchy salad
  • rugelach
  • compote
  • cake
Avivah

Rosh Hashana menu

menu plans

I’ve really been procrastinating this year about putting my Rosh Hashana menu down on paper.  I usually keep holidays relatively simple, knowing that people aren’t really in the mood for heavy meal followed by heavy meal.  But somehow this year I started intimidating myself with thoughts of trying out lots of new and impressive sounding recipes, and that left me feeling too tired at the thought to even do anything! So it wasn’t until Sunday that I finally put pen to paper to decide what we’ll be having.

Here’s the basic list:

  • Round challahs
  • simanin/symbolic foods of Rosh Hashana:pomegranate, apples and honey, fresh dates, carrots, fish, squash, (forgot to buy leek), beets
  • chicken
  • potato kugel
  • sweet potato casserole
  • tzimmes (carrot/yam/apple) kugel
  • onion kugel
  • potato knishes (dough from this recipe)
  • roasted butternut squash
  • rosemary potatoes
  • stuffed peppers
  • pomegranate salad
  • fruity rice salad
  • crouton salad
  • avocado salad (still deciding on what recipe to use)
  • apple cake – we made a lot of small pans of this to give all of the neighbors in our building
  • rugelach
  • apple plum compote
Avivah

High protein low carbohydrate snacks

menu plans, nutrition

Someone was recently asking me about what to do with her toddler who is constantly hungry.  After determining that it wasn’t coming from a place of boredom or seeking emotional connection, I suggested that some of his food choices be changed to foods that were more nutrient dense. 

Then today I shared my thoughts on insomnia with someone else whose child hardly sleeps; melatonin production is connected to serotonin production, which in turn is affected by diet.  What basic changes in diet need to be made to support serotonin production?  Adequate proteins and fat, which generally means removing some carbohydrates from the child’s diet (most kids have very high carbohydrate diets – lots of grains, flours, dairy, and fruits) – and even when some of these foods are seemingly nutritious, there has to be a suitable balance of quantities. 

I’ve also been asked to share ‘primal’ meals and snacks, so with all of these situations in mind, I’m sharing some suggestions! There are many more possibilities, so these are just to get you thinking in that direction.

Meals:

  • soups with protein and veg (eg. turkey, carrots, onion, celery)
  • omelets, fritatas, hard boiled eggs, scrambled, cooked with butter or coconut oil, and served with veggies
  •  sausages, hamburgers, salmon/tuna patties, steak, chicken, fish, meatloaf
  •  fries – carrot, squash, sweet potato
  •  salads with proteins and nuts, any combination
  •  steamed vegetables with butter, olive oil
  •  tacos/wraps with lettuce replacing flour tortilla
  •  egg salad, tuna salad, chicken salad
  •  eggplant parmiagan, shepherd’s pie (can replace mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower)

 

Snacks:

  • sunflower seeds, sliced almonds, walnuts, mixture of nuts with some dried fruit
  •  celery with nut butters (almond, peanut, sunflower, cashew) or cream cheese, topped with raisins
  •  avocado chunks
  •  string cheese, diced cheese, diced meat
  •  hummus and vegetable sticks
  •  berries and cream
  •  devilled eggs
  •  cottage cheese and unsweetened applesauce

 Muffins, pizza crusts, breads can be made with nut/coconut flours – I’ve posted a pizza crust recipe made with nut flour and some other suitable recipes as well.  I think I posted one that was a veggie base – you can blend steamed veggies with eggs and bake it to create something that you can spread stuff on as you would with a sandwich.  (edited to add- sorry, I just checked and either I didn’t end up posting it or I can’t find it now.  Here’s something very similar to give you an idea of what I mean – you can use steamed and blended greens or broccoli instead of the cauliflower for other options.) 

And funnily enough, after I had written this post and was preparing to link to Real Food Wednesdays, I saw that the theme of the day there is Grain Free/Low Carb!  So be sure to check out the post there as well as the additional links for what I’m sure will be lots more fantastic ideas!

Avivah

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

menu plans, miscellaneous

We’ll be going to our monthly homeschool group activity this afternoon and will get home just in time to get ready for dinner, so I wanted to use part of the morning to get a good start on our Thanksgiving preparations this morning.  Our menu so far is:

  • roast turkey
  • cornbread stuffing balls
  • mashed potatoes
  • roasted yams
  • cranberry sauce
  • salad
  • sauteed green beans and matchstick carrots
  • pumpkin pies
  • brownies

So far, we have 5 pans of brownies finished (courtesy of dd10 and ds8, and when I went into the kitchen I discovered that as I was writing this, ds3 took a small pinch out of the top of four of them;)), pumpkin pie filling made for several pies (ds11), flour ground and ready to start the pie crusts, a pot of potatoes boiling (ds8 peeled them all) and two 14-lb turkeys stuffed and basted (I’ll roast them when I get back).  My mom is bringing the stuffing and yams so when we get home we just have to make the crusts and bake the pies, prepare the mashed potatoes, and make the vegetable side dishes.  I’ll do the salad tomorrow so it will be fresh.  Later tonight I’ll also do some preparations for Shabbos so that Friday can be a pleasant day instead of rushing around. 

Every year that we’ve been doing this I’ve had a slightly ambivalent feeling about all of these Thanksgiving preparations, since we do this mostly because it’s important to my in-laws.  (To be clear: I think having an annual day to consciously express gratitude is a beautiful idea, and I’m not in any way opposed to Thanksgiving.   But I grew up having Thanksgiving weekend rather than one day and that would be my preference if it were up to me.) But it’s a lot of work for me and of course there are the usual Shabbos preparations to do for the next day.  The first year or two I grappled with some feelings of resentment that I was doing something I didn’t really want to do for the sake of others and didn’t feel much appreciation, which is obviously not a very positive mindset.  I moved towards accepting it as something nice that I can do for my in-laws, which was much more positive and allowed me to smile at them when serving and cleaning up and really feel the smiles!   However, this year I realized that a higher level would be to embrace it rather than just accept it.  Every opportunity to create family rituals and memories is something to appreciate and use to your advantage as a parent, and realizing that this is something for me and my family as much as for them is very helpful in having an even more cheerful perspective about all of the effort involved.  It’s an opportunity for our children to be with their grandparents creating shared memories, something I never did with my grandparents since they lived so far away.   

Meanwhile, it’s dd15’s birthday in a few days and when we prepared the envelope to send her birthday cards to her, we found that all of the cards that were laboriously created over three weeks ago (so it would get to her in time for her birthday) were accidentally put in recycling.  🙁 🙁  So right now, the older four kids are preparing new cards for her, something totally different than what they did before.  They told me they recorded themselves showing her the original cards on dd’s camera, so maybe we can get a cd made to mail to dd so she’ll see those as well.  I’m so disappointed because everything was done three weeks ago in time for the party we held to record for her, and now after all of our advance planning, she’s not going to get anything in time for her birthday.  And even worse, her dorm closes for Chanuka so everything that is mailed at this point will arrive after Chanuka, so nothing will get to her in time for her birthday. 🙁  Even the present we sent with a classmate’s mother that I was sure would be given to her personally on the second day of Chanuka (a day after her birthday) is in question, since the mother won’t be visiting the school with the dorm being closed.  Dd15 is the one who makes all the birthday cards and cakes for everyone else in our family (even in her dorm now she does a lot of that for other girls!) and it was especially important to me that she know how much we were thinking of her on her birthday.  Ds17 called me to get her address since he wanted to send her a letter for her birthday, so hopefully that will arrive in time.  It just goes to show that the best of plans can be waylaid.

Well, we better eat some lunch so we can get everyone out and ready for our homeschool meeting on time!

Avivah

Sukkos menu

menu plans

It’s been a lovely Sukkos so far!  Here’s a list of what we’ll be making for the last two days of Sukkos and Shabbos.  Since I’ll be mixing and matching for meals, it’s easiest to just list the dishes.

homemade challah

Mains:

Side dishes:

  • potato kugel
  • creamy noodle kugel
  • broccoli onion quiche
  • squash-apple bake
  • curried lentils
  • kishke

Salads:

  • cauliflower salad
  • jicama and avocado salad w/Thai vinaigrette
  • colorful green bean salad
  • tri pepper salad
  • fresh salad (lettuce, cukes, tomatoes, etc)
  • beet salad

Desserts:

  • vanilla ice cream w/ crumb topping
  • lemon ice cream
  • caramel chocolate nut bars
  • peanut butter squash brownies (flour free)
  • cherry cake
  • gingersnap cookies

Misc:

  • techina
  • maynonnaise

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

I have gotten so off track the last few weeks with weekly menu planning!  I’ve been intending to make a menu plan for the year with rotating bi-weekly choices so that I don’t have to take time out every week for it.  The idea was to simplify and reduce the time spent on menu planning.  But I haven’t created that one size fits all plan (I think because mentally I rebel a little at the idea of limiting myself only to 14 basic meals) and as a result, recent meal times have gotten short shift and been inconsistent in quality.   Fortunately, no matter what, I plan for Shabbos (Sabbath) and holiday meals, so those have still been well-organized. 🙂

Here’s the menu plan for this week:

Monday – breakfast – cream cheese squares; lunch – millet cheese cakes, vegetable sticks; dinner – vegetable-lentil soup

Tuesday – b – quinoa oatmeal squares; l – potato soup with dumplings; d – tuna quiche

Wednesday – b – ginger rice; l – (doing my monthly shopping and will buy something); d – pizza, salad

Thursday – b – quinoa porridge; l – Meditteranean lentils; d – falafel with tahini sauce

Friday – b – polenta; l – leftovers

It’s so nice when the weather starts to get cool and soup can go back on the menu!  Filling, relatively simple, and so many variations.  As the weather moves closer to winter, I’ll be scheduling more soups, but this week is the first time in months that I’ll be making soup for a weekday meal.  I’m looking forward to it!

Though I like using beans, not planning meals has led to not using many legumes, since they take a bit of advance planning to maximize their nutritive value and digestibility.  Beans add so much variety while being a super budget expander!  When I recently saw green lentils on sale for .79 for a box of 1.5 lb (actually, they were double that but some of the boxes were marked .79 so I requested to pay that for all of them), I bought all that they had – about ten boxes.

As always, meals are supplemented by whatever fruit and vegetables I have on hand.

Have a wonderful week!

Avivah