Meal planning

Last year I took a class called Eat Your Roots taught by Amanda at www.mydailydiner.com.  Amanda encourages eating local, whole foods without artificial preservatives.  Her class really changed the way I cook, shop for food and plan our meals (as in it made me actually plan our meals).  I think adopting her style has been one of the best changes we've made to improve our health.


Every week, usually around Thursday, I come up with a meal list for the following week. Usually I plan about 4 meals a week and have leftovers of one of those meals at least one night.  I find that we eat much better and spend much less money on food this way.  For the most part I plan our meals, buy only what we need week then we eat what I buy!


I do all my food shopping on Saturday morning.  First I hit our local farmer's market, which is thankfully open year round, for our fruits, veggies and eggs.  Then I do the rest of food shopping at Whole Foods or sometimes Trader Joe's.  


Most of my big cooking I do on Sunday.  This lets me cook when I have time and feel like it.  When I get home from work during the week I just have to put things together and do a minimal amount of cooking.  


This week, because I'm trying out this not-eating-meat-thing, I'm making almost all new recipes.  I don't usually do that but these struck me as interesting.

Sunday: Vegetarian pasta bake and winter fruit salad.  This pasta dish is made with lentils in the place of ground beef.

Monday: Miso soup for me, Spaghetti O's for Hubby since he won't touch tofu.  I don't consider Spaghetti O's a whole food but Hubby is perfectly fine believing these cans grow on a tree.  He'd eat them every day.

Tuesday: Leftover pasta bake, salad

Wednesday: Broccoli rice casserole and salad for me, rice casserole (with the broccoli picked out) and sausage for Hubby

Thursday: Portobello mushrooms stuffed with pine nuts & feta and salad for me.  I don't know what Hubby is eating yet.  I didn't quite think this meal through.

On a side note, I'm not really sure how me not eating meat for the month is going to work for Hubby.  He pretty much despises all vegetables although he's gotten much better over the last year.  Normally I do NOT cook two separate meals because that just irritates me.  Generally we can find enough common ground in our food and I just make a veggie or salad for myself.  But I realize this no-meat thing is entirely my own idea so I'll probably end up making some sort of separate thing for him on occasion.