Avivah Werner

Weekly menu plan

Written by

Avivah

in

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

Comments

6 responses to “Weekly menu plan”

  1. yael aldrich Avatar
    yael aldrich

    Thanks! I have been waiting with baited breath, but did not want to ask you for menus since the baby is imminent (b’shaah tovah u’mutzlachah). When you soak your beans/lentils, you just do it the same way you regularly sprout legumes? And how/why do you soak the flour again? Is this only WW flour or the white stuff too?

    Reply
  2. Avivah Avatar
    Avivah

    With baited breath, hmm?

    I soak the beans overnight, then once a day I rinse them. I don’t add anything to the water, and I don’t use any special equipment – I use a regular large bowl. It usually doesn’t take more than 1 – 3 days; small legumes sprout faster, and if it’s warm they sprout faster, too.

    Flour – I rarely use white flour, and then it’s usually for Purim or to bake for someone else who might not appreciate whole wheat. I soak whatever whole grain flour I’m using (usually wheat, but sometimes spelt) in order to neutralize the phytates; phytates bond with the nutrients in the flour and prevent them from being absorbed into your body. So even though whole grain foods are very high in nutrients, if the phytates are present, you aren’t benefitting fully from those nutrients.

    Reply
  3. yael aldrich Avatar
    yael aldrich

    SO you just dump the flour in water? How much? And for how long?

    And yes, I just wait by the computer for your menus 🙂

    Reply
  4. Avivah Avatar
    Avivah

    Here’s a post where I answered these questions: http://vibrantmoms.com/nutrition/soaking-grains-flours-beans-and-seeds/.

    Reply
  5. yael aldrich Avatar
    yael aldrich

    Hmmm, I see. My husband is severely lactose adverse, so soaking grains with a dairy based medium won’t work (unless I want him in the bathroom all day). Even if he takes Lactaid, he still has some problems, so we eat dairy as a family maybe once a week or less.

    Reply
  6. Avivah Avatar
    Avivah

    You can also use lemon juice or apple cider vinegar as the acidic medium, which takes care of the dairy intolerance issue.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts