I was woken up by an early morning phone call by a friend inviting me to take a walk, and since Rafael also woke up from the ringing of the phone, I decided to take her up on it. I popped him into the stroller, had a pleasant morning walk, and then after getting home, made breakfast for everyone and by 9:30 am was able to sit down to plan the menu for the coming week.

There are weeks that I don’t plan my menu in advance, and though things always run more smoothly when I do, when it comes to the Nine Days things don’t go well at all if I don’t pre-plan. That’s because some of my quickie meals like baked chicken aren’t an option to fall back on this week, and vegetarian themed meals take more planning.

At least half of our meals during the week usually include chicken, so completely meatless meals are a significant shift for us.

Here’s our plan for the coming week.

Sunday: lunch – oat walnut burgers; dinner – vegetarian stuffed potatoes (toppings: sauteed onions and garlic, black beans, diced tomatoes, shredded cheese, sour cream)

Monday: l – lemony lentil salad with feta cheese; d – falafel, yogurt

Tuesday: l – tuna patties, potatoes; d – sweet potato chili, cornbread (gluten free)

Wednesday: l – tuna pasta salad (I make two versions – one has rice noodles for those who are gluten free); d – chickpea pot pie (will post recipe in a day or so)

Thursday: l – bean/rice/cheese burritos (I plan to have the kids make the tortillas since they enjoy that kind of thing); d – chickpea peanut stew

I currently have three large pans soaking: one filled with lentils, one with red beans, and one with chickpeas. Every couple of weeks I soak and cook a large amount of two or three kinds of legumes and pop them in the freezer in meal sized portions that can then be easily defrosted for quick use.

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On a different note, for the first time in a long time I made yogurt! My kids like having yogurt for Shabbos breakfast (along with cornflakes, granola and milk) and when I saw 2 liter containers of milk for 6.90, decided to do some yogurt making. Since I hadn’t made it in so long, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out. In fact when I froze part of the large batch that I made, I learned that it’s not something to do in the future – it completely changed the consistency!

I simplified the instructions I posted years ago in How to Make Yogurt. I used one small container of yogurt for the starter for four liters of milk, then covered the heated pot of milk with starter well and left it on the counter overnight. (Look at that post for details of the process so that these changes will make sense.) That was it! Since the weather is warm, there was no need to put it in the dehydrator or cooler to keep it warm.

Speaking of the dehydrator, that’s something else we’ve pulled out for the first time in years! I took it out with the intent to dehydrate chicken for my daughter and son-in-law to take on their two month trip to Thailand (they left this past week). Unfortunately, the fuse for the transformer blew right before I started and I couldn’t get to the store to buy a new fuse in time to prepare the chicken for them.

I bought a bunch of nectarines on sale and some were starting to get soft; I told the kids they could use those along with some overripe mangos to make breakfast shakes which they very happily did. Since the dehydrator was already out, ds12 then asked me if he could make fruit leather. I told him to go ahead and blend up the fruit, then spread it smoothly on the silicon sheets and put it in the dehydrator. He made a delicious batch of fruit leather with it – it’s so empowering for kids to see that they can make things like this on their own!

In other news, I’m planning an ambitious home renovation project. I’ve been thinking about how to do it frugally (of course!) and with minimum disruption to our family.  Thinking about all the pieces of this project has taken a huge amount of head space but I’m bit by bit putting the mental pieces together. We plan to begin the day after Tisha B’v, in just one week. More about what I want to do and why in another post!

Avivah