Menu Plan Monday- April 27
Short and sweet, here is my menu plan for most of the rest of the week. I am going to go until at least May 2 before I shop (completing my month of "Eating from the pantry and freezer" throughout April). I may or may not add some plans in for this Sunday with what I have, or I might wait until I shop. We'll see. 🙂
Breakfasts:
Oatmeal (raw milk, honey, cinnamon) x2
Waffles with homemade blueberry syrup
Toast and eggs
Sprouted English muffins and smoothies
Homemade soaked granola (I'm going to try out a recipe I was given, combining it somewhat with this recipe) with yogurt and berries
Dinners:
Cream of Broccoli/Cauliflower Cheese Soup
Chicken Sausages, millet, random veggies (depending on what's left!)
Macaroni and Cheese (with brown rice pasta, raw milk and raw cheese), carrot sticks
Spicy Meatloaf (Nourishing Traditions), brown rice, salad (brought by friends who are coming over)
Spaghetti squash with tomato sauce
Butternut Squash Soup with sourdough bread
Menu Plan Mondays are hosted by Organizing Junkie.
Has anyone else continued to eat mostly from their pantry and freezer this month? How has it gone for you? Did you save money? Do you feel like you still ate well?
When I ate from the freezer/pantry last November & December we did save a few hundred dollars. I don’t believe we ate very well, though – mostly due to poor planning. The biggest struggle was that after a couple of weeks we had nothing fresh or lacto-fermented so no enzymes. We really started to feel it and stopped at 6 weeks, 2 weeks short of our goal. Now that I am sprouting and lacto-fermenting more I think it would be doable if I put those things into heavy rotation in our diet.
As an aside, this Thursday I am starting a weekly gathering for those interested in local foods, gardening etc. It is called Food Roots and I would love it if you could join in with a post of your own. I love reading your gardening posts.
Well it didn’t work out so well for me in one sense, but I guess I did okay in another way. I saved no money at all in the end really…but I sort of did if you count the fact that I started this month minus 50 dollars because I overspent last month by really poor planning… I still have $15 left for this last week and I already did groceries. So I guess I managed to save $75 for the month, but it only shows as $15. However that is fairly good for me as I always find it SO hard to stay on budget, especially with the rising food costs and a 3 year old who eats a lot now.
This next month actually may be rather harder to stay on budget though since I allowed myself to run out of a lot of things this month, and made a list of those things we now need…so I am not sure how it worked out overall but I now need to fit those things into the regular budget for May. The good thing is that we ate a lot of things that otherwise I didn’t want to really eat (mental note is not to freeze that much pumpkin or peppers this year!)
So in the end it wasn’t as productive as I was hoping but it did teach me better budget skills which I needed to learn (often I would go over a few dollars here or there and then have to figure out something else to take it out of…NOT a good idea and something that my husband talked to me about).
Okay, I know the idea is to make most everything yourself, but do you ever use anything prepackaged or convenience foods? like a Kashi waffle, for example? I’m sorry I’m sure you’ve probably already answered this question somewhere, but I’ve only recently begun following every post.
I really am amazed that you can accomplish so much.
I would love to have your home made blueberry syrup recipe. Do you care to share it?
I tried doing a modified method of this challange because I don’t make everything from scratch and I don’t have a largely stocked pantry or freezer.
I typically budget about $100 a week for groceries for a family of 4. I keep trying to find ways to cut this amount and this challenge helped A LOT!!
I made most of our meals from the pantry and freezer, used up most of the stockpile and only spent between $30-$40 a week on other groceries (primarily fresh produce and dairy, a few snacks, lunch meat and diapers are included in that).
Eating “primarily” out of the pantry and freezer really made me prioritize what we truly need and what we can do without! It made me use things that were not only taking up space in our rather small abode, but also that were being overlooked.
I don’t think that we could ever not go to the store on a weekly basis because we need the fresh produce and dairy products. But I think we did really good and we put the money saved towards paying off our credit card debt (almost FREE!!).
Thanks so much for the inspiration and I too would LOVE the blueberry syrup recipe if you are sharing it!! 🙂
You know, Jamie, I do “convenience foods” in a different sort of way. I definitely don’t have the time and energy to always be making everything from scratch. What I do instead is try to double or triple recipes when I make them, and then I can serve homemade foods in a matter of minutes.
A good example of this is my waffles. This week I will make them from scratch as I don’t have any in the freezer. But I always double the recipe, and freeze everything we don’t eat. So the next time I need a quick and easy breakfast, I pull out my “convenience” frozen waffles. Same for the blueberry syrup. I made a huge batch and froze it.
I did NOT make the sprouted English muffins, though, if that makes you feel better! I buy the Ezekiel brand by the case every once in a while when they’re on sale, and that is a little splurge that we enjoy! 🙂
And yes, I’ll post the blueberry syrup recipe. It’s on my list of “posts-to-write”. 🙂
Thanks for the tip! I am trying to take “baby steps!”