This week I’ve decided to make lots of bean dishes.  There are so many kinds of beans and so many possibilities that there’s always a new recipe to experiment with.  I’m planning to do a big shopping at the end of this week, but it will have been eight weeks since I’ve stocked up, so supplies are running low!  But I still have a nice variety of beans and grains.  I’ve bought fresh fruit and vegetables, chicken, and some other odds and ends in the last eight weeks, but I’m looking forward to refilling my depleted pantry.  I definitely prefer shopping at the beginning of the month when I’m flush with cash, though.  🙂  It’s much easier to be relaxed when you know you have everything you need at the beginning of the month, and can splurge afterwards.

Sun- breakfast – traditional granola, milk, pears; lunch – celery sticks with peanut butter; dinner – turkey hash, wild rice pilaf, salad

Mon – b – Amish oatmeal; l – wraps – whole wheat tortillas, cheese, lettuce, tomato; d – barley and white bean salad

Tues – b – buckwheat/millet pancakes; l – barley and white bean salad; d – falafel with techina sauce, salad

Weds – b – pumpking pudding; l – stuffed baked potatoes; d – sausage bake

Thurs – b – cornmeal scones; l – will be out shopping; d – lentil rice mushroom loaf, or CORN if there’s enough in the fridge

The garden production is starting to pick up, and on Friday when I popped into the produce store, I realized I didn’t need to buy anything but lettuce for the salad, since we have cukes, tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini – and there was more than enough for our needs for Shabbos.  That was exciting!  I also have some swiss chard and spinach that I really should harvest.  So our homegrown organic veggies will be supplementing meals from now on.  As far as fruit, I have pears, cherries, watermelon, and bananas, so those will supplement our breakfast meals.  I have some dehydrating and pickling experiments I want to try in the next couple of days with the watermelon.

Avivah

Today my dd14 should be coming home from camp – we’re all so much looking forward to having her back!

As I was planning this week’s menu I was thinking about how much I’ve changed the way I cook over the years.  I used to cook mostly vegetarian except for some chicken on Shabbos, and the meals during the Nine Days weren’t any different than the rest of the year.  But now I’ve gotten used to using lots more chicken and stock, so it was a little bit of a mental adjustment for this week.  As always, I usually note the main dish and supplement with fruit and vegetables that we have on hand.

Sunday – breakfast – whole wheat challah with cream cheese; lunch – macaroni and cheese (leftover from Thurs. dinner); dinner – honey baked lentils, kasha, tomato olive salad

Monday – b – zucchini muffins; l – ricotta cheese pancakes; d – corn chowder

Tuesday – b – grits; l – green beans and potatoes with sour cream; d – pizza (might try making a sunflower seed crust, depending how busy it is that afternoon; otherwise I’ll make a regular ww crust)

Wednesday – b – biscuits with cream cheese and jam; l – celery and peanut butter; d – lasagna, hard boiled eggs

Thursday – (breakfast and lunch are for those who aren’t fasting) b- baked oatmeal; l – leftovers; d – whitefish salad, brown rice

This past Shabbos: Fri night – homemade challah (made with 100% whole wheat), roast turkey, roasted red potatoes, baked butternut squash, kasha, fresh salad, pecan power bars;  Shabbos lunch – chicken, corn salad, lacto fermented pickled mixed vegetables, zucchini relish, fresh salad, watermelon, cake; shalosh seudos -whitefish salad,  tomato olive salad, salads left from other meals (I usually only make one or two different things for shalosh seudos and everything else is what we have in the fridge from lunch or dinner)

We’re starting to get some vegetables from the garden, which is really fun.  The tomatoes are just starting to turn red; today the kids picked a handful of cherry tomatoes and one heirloom black cherry tomato, a handful of green beans, a yellow squash, and a zucchini.  It’s not a lot yet, but it is nice for a snack or to add to the salad.  We can see lots more tomatoes that are green, so hopefully we’ll have a very generous amount once they get started ripening.

I sprouted the lentils at the end of last week, so they’re ready to go for tonight.  I’m planning to make a large batch of granola, which I make according to traditional preparation methods, so today I’ll soak the oats.  Granola isn’t on the menu for the week but I’ll have it on hand, and if one morning we’re short on time, it will be available.  Otherwise, it will be for Shabbos breakfast for the kids.

I’m also going to grind some wheat for flour for tomorrow’s muffins and the pizza crust and then will have it ready for soaking.  I try to grind the flour fresh, but when I do it a couple of days in advance, I keep it in the freezer so that the vitamins in it aren’t lost – it’s not a big deal to grind it, but taking the grinder out for a small amount of flour is an extra step that sometimes can feel like too much at a busy time.  I’m also hoping to make another large batch of the curried carrot sauerkraut – everyone liked it so much and it was very versatile; we used it inside wraps, tacos, as a salad side dish, and even in bean sauerkraut soup.

Avivah

Sunday – breakfast – pancakes, homemade strawberry/blueberry jam; lunch – crispy nuts, cheese, green pepper strips; dinner – rice and carrot casserole, fresh salad

Monday – b – smoothies; l – tuna salad, baked potatoes; d – black bean burritos

Tuesday – b – polenta; l – devilled eggs, vegetable sticks; d – red meat chili, cornbread

Wednesday – b – biscuits, eggs; l – cream cheese rollups; d – lentil pecan patties, sauteed onions, carrot fries

Thursday – b – Yorkshire pudding; l – celery and peanut butter; d – macaroni and cheese (with whole wheat/flax seed noodles)

In response to request to share our Shabbos menus: this past Shabbos we ate out for lunch, so we only had to make dinner – here’s what we had: chicken, roasted red potatoes, baked butternut squash, pepper-olive salad, fresh salad, almond power bars, pumpkin gingerbread (left over from shalom zachor).  We don’t have soup when the weather gets hot, and usually we have homemade challah but this week didn’t want to bake since we only needed it for one meal, and used whole wheat matza instead.

This week’s menu was planned with the Nine Days in mind, so that I can use up whatever fleishig gravy or stock I have in the fridge.  I made hamburger rocks (way to preserve ground meat) for the first time last week and not all of the jars sealed, so I’ll use the ones that didn’t seal for the chili. Today I’m dehydrating some mushrooms I got on sale, and because it takes the same amount of electricity to run the dehydrator if it’s full or half empty, filled some of the remaining trays with chopped onion.  Dehydrated onion is very useful.  At the end of last week I dehydrated ten pounds of frozen okra (I’m working on emptying out the freezer), as well as all the frozen peas and carrots we had.  It’s amazing how little space food takes up when dehydrated – so space efficient!

On the fermented vegetable front, I started 2 gallons of pickles (got lots of cukes on sale), and a corn and red pepper relish (using up the corn in the freezer).  We still have at least a half a gallon of curried carrot sauerkraut left, so those three will be side dishes for the week. I’d like to try making fermented bean paste this week; it would make a nice light lunch together with some veggies and tortilla chips or tacos.

We have loads of green tomatoes in our garden right now, and hopefully in the next week or so we’ll start reaping some of our bounty!  Basically all that we planted for the summer is tomatoes, several kinds of squash, green beans, and cucumbers.  We’ve picked our first cucumber and yellow squash, and are hoping before long that we’ll get enough veggies to supplement our meals.

Avivah

With the summer here, light and simple meals are once again on the menu!

Sunday – breakfast – rice and milk, cherries; snack- watermelon chunks; dinner – chicken rolls ups, roasted red potatoes, eggplant curry

Monday – b- pumpkin pudding, kefir; s – celery and peanut butter; d – succotash, tri color pepper salad

Tuesday – breakfast tacos (beans, vegetables, cheese); s – green popcorn; d – sauerkraut bean soup (will use some of the curried carrot sauerkraut)

Wednesday – b – muesli, milk, fruit; s – celery and peanut butter; d – chicken tacos

Thursday – b – coconut flour pancakes, homemade strawberry preserves ; s – sauerkraut bean soup or cheese and nuts; d – CORN (clean out refrigerator night)

After seeing how the last couple of weeks I didn’t make a lot of the meals that I planned, I realized I need to adapt how I’m making menus for the summer.  So I’m doing two things this week – cooking extra of each dinner meal so there’s something filling for the next day if anyone wants it at around lunch time, but planning snacks instead of lunches.  Because our summer schedule is more relaxed than during the year, everyone goes to sleep later and wakes up later.  We end up having a late breakfast and by the time lunch rolls around, no one is interested in eating, and it makes more sense to have a snack instead of a meal late in the afternoon.

Today I’m soaking 4 pounds of walnuts, and will dehydrate them overnight.  I’m also hoping to discover where 5 pounds of cheese disappeared to – my freezer is malfunctioning and forming a thick wall of ice over the foods, so it’s hard to find things that I know are there – when it’s time to take something out, I send the kids down with a hammer to chisel the ice away!

Last month I spent a big chunk of my monthly budgeted funds towards expensive bulk goods (lots of nuts, nut flours, and dried coconut), so I don’t have much left for this week to spend on fresh fruit.  That’s fortunately not a big deal, since we have all of the canned fruit that I put up last summer to enjoy now – peaches, pears, apples, cherries, and blueberries.  I also have some frozen blueberries and strawberries (yes, in the ice encrusted freezer :)), so there won’t be much opportunity for deprivation in the three days before I restart my monthly budget.   This is one way I see the benefit of shopping and cooking the way I do – even when the money budgeted for food is finished but the month isn’t, I’m never out of food.

After I go vegetable shopping this week I’d like to make a couple more fermented vegetable recipes.  I haven’t made pickles yet this summer and my kids love those.  If I find some inexpensive tomatoes and peppers then I’ll make tomato pepper relish from Nourishing Traditions – that was also popular last time I made it.  These supplement our dinner meals as written above, even though they aren’t noted.  Fruit and milk or kefir supplement the breakfast meals.

Avivah

This week I’ve made some nutritional upgrades to my menu, though I don’t know how immediately apparent it will be just looking at my menu.  I want to increase the amount of coconut oil and bone broths we eat daily and minimize grains and flours.  Instead of grains as a side dish, I’ll be increasing the amount of vegetables served with the meals, in addition to regularly serving fermented vegetables with the lunch and dinner meals.

I do some of this to a degree but not nearly as much as I’d like to, and now is a good time to improve our nutritional habits since I’m easing back into actively running things.  I’ve been sleeping late in the mornings, and breakfast hasn’t always been what’s planned but what is quick (oats with milk and eggs are our typical easy breakfasts).  For that reason we haven’t been soaking flours before using them since to do that you have to prepare ahead, and we’ve gotten into the habit of using the freshly ground flour as is.  There are worse things a person could eat, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

I’m also noting in the menu the fruit and milk/kefir being served with breakfast, as well as the vegetables being served with the other meals (though I don’t generally plan which vegetables to serve until the night before – it often depends on what most needs to be used).  I realize that leaving that out gives the impression that our meals are more sparse than they are.

Sun – breakfast – shakes; lunch – green popcorn; dinner – turkey hash, roasted yams, peas and carrots

Mon – b – coconut pudding, cherries, milk; l – cauliflower quiche (double recipe), sliced tomatoes sprinkled with fresh oregano; d – zucchini beef bake, brown rice

Tues – b – banana/peanut butter shakes; l – cauliflower quiche, Mexican corn and peppers; d – Avgolemono (Greek egg-lemon soup), falafel balls, Israeli salad

Weds – b – breakfast tacos, kefir, fruit; l – green beans and potatoes with sour cream; d – stuffed cabbage soup

Thurs – almond blueberry muffins, milk, fresh pineapple; l – stuffed cabbage soup; d- CORN (clean out refrigerator night)

Today I’m planning to soak the raw pecans I bought a few days ago, and then they can dehydrate overnight.  I’ll soak some flour for banana bread, and hopefully get some fermented vegetables going – I want to try a couple of new recipes.  I’m pretty wiped out today, though, and the 5 oldest kids are out, so what I want to do and what I actually do may end up being very different. 🙂

Avivah

It’s been so nice to have received food from friends for dinner in the last couple of weeks, which is why you haven’t been seeing my regular post on my weekly menu plan.   It’s such a nice thing to send people food after birth – I felt so nurtured, and so did my children.  I appreciated not having to cook three meals a day, and the kids enjoyed getting different food than we usually have – just having someone else bring something made it seem more special to them.  (After receiving variations of pasta and cheese dishes almost every night, they concluded that it must be what people make for big families.  They weren’t complaining, though – they enjoyed it.)

But eventually it’s back to regular life, so here is this week’s plan 🙂 :

Sunday – brunch – bread pudding (great way to use up leftover challah so it doesn’t sit around all week :)); dinner – turkey, rice, salad

Monday – b – pumpkin muffins; l – omelettes, salad; d – deli roll, baked sweet potatoes, steamed zucchini

Tuesday – b – hashbrowns, eggs; l -split pea soup and cornbread scones ; d – best vegetarian meatloaf

Wednesday – b – baked oatmeal; l – vegetarian meatloaf ; d – chili, crudites, dip

Thursday – b – polenta; l – Mexican lasagna; d- CORN (clean out refrigerator night)

I’m doubling up on the amounts I’m making for dinner this week in the middle of the week so I can serve planned leftovers for lunch the next day and keep things simple.  Dh went vegetable shopping this morning, so we’re now stocked up and have plenty of fruits to supplement breakfast and lots of nice veggies for fresh salads.  Everyone especially appreciates salad in the summer.  He also got a lot of ripe bananas because since discovering how easy it is to make banana ‘ice cream’, it’s become a staple around here.  I’ve been enjoying mine with spirulina mixed in, but the kids have no interest – they think the green color it takes on after mixing in the spirulina looks disgusting.

Avivah

I haven’t posted my menu plans for the last couple of weeks – I got out of the rhythm because of Pesach, but I’ll try to get back to it.

Sunday – brunch – french toast; dinner – baked acorn squash stuffed with brown rice pilaf, marinated tomato salad, pepper salad.  Ds15 and ds10 have baseball games on Sunday afternoons, so we have a late brunch and then dinner as soon as they come home to accomodate their schedule so they can eat with us. (Plus several kids end up going to watch their brothers, so hardly anyone would be home to eat if I served lunch, anyway!)

Monday – breakfast – cranberry scones (I’m thinking of serving this with sour cream and blueberries or cherries that we canned last summer); lunch – stuffed baked potatoes (stuffings: beans, shredded cheese, vegetables); dinner – corn chowder

Tuesday – b – hashbrown bake; l – omelettes; d – honey baked lentils, millet

Wednesday – b – Amish oatmeal; l – colcannon (cabbage, potatoes, milk); d – sloppy joes over whole grain bread

Thursday – b – Dutch puffs; l – rice and cheese burritoes; d – CORN (clean out refrigerator night)

Remember when you read the menus that fruit and milk are included for breakfasts, and salads/vegetables are included for lunch and dinners.   A couple of weeks ago I prepared a bunch of fermented vegetable relishes – 4 quarts of ginger carrots and 2 quarts of tomato pepper relish – which we serve in small amounts at meals.  If you don’t already know about fermented veggies, they’re great for the digestion.  I also add some of the leftovers from one meal for the lunch and dinner following to whatever is planned.  This keeps me from having a fridge full of leftovers at the end of the week and also adds more variety to the meal than is written above.

Today my food prep for the week will include soaking all beans and lentils for the week, so they’ll have time to sprout before I cook them.  Sprouting maximizes the nutritional value of legumes and makes them more digestible.  I also want to shred a bunch of potatoes for the hashbrown bake – if I try to do something like that in the morning, breakfast would be served at lunch time!  I’m also thinking of shredding other potatoes and putting them in the freezer, to make my own instant hashbrowns – you know, the way you can buy shredded frozen potatoes at the store.  That would be convenient, don’t you think?  Most of the breakfast prep takes place the night before – that consists mainly of overnight soaking of flour for baked goods, and if the next morning a baked dish is planned, combining everything in the pan so in the morning all someone has to do is turn on the oven and put it in.

Avivah

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

Last night my husband did some kind of clean up of the computer system, so I couldn’t get on to post.  But my toddler has helped me put this here in a timely way, by waking up much, much earlier than usual this morning.  🙂  So today I’m enjoying being awake in a very quiet house with just him – I got a load of laundry in the washer, another in the dryer, wrote up my weekly menu, and it’s still silent.

Sometimes it takes me a lot longer to plan my menu than other times, but I started by pulling a couple of the meals that didn’t happen last week (due to being out one afternoon and having a lot of something left over one day from the night before) and stuck them in for this week.  So this took just a few minutes.

Sunday – breakfast – french toast (I think – I was up late and then on the phone for a long time with a few people, so I wasn’t there); lunch – sandwiches; dinner – chicken, kasha, green beans

Monday – b – low country cream style grits (perfect for making on a day when I have lots of time before everyone wakes up – it’s easy, but cooks for an hour); l – sandwiches; d – split pea soup, cornbread

Tuesday – b – hash browns, eggs; l – leftover split pea soup; d – chickpea and peanut stew

Wednesday – b – french toast; l – cottage cheese pancakes, baked yams; d – shepherd’s pie (using deboned turkey from homemade stock)

Thursday – b – pumpkin streusel muffins, l – pizza; d – salmon patties, rice

As always, breakfast is supplemented with milk and fruit, other meals are supplemented with whatever veggies I have on hand.

Avivah