Menu Plan Monday 1-18-10

It is so good to be back in the kitchen. During the whole buying/ moving process, we ate from the pantry as much as possible at first (so as not to have to move it) then when things got really busy, we started relying on prepared foods from the grocery and take out. Whew! I'm glad thats over. Its good to be back in the kitchen.

The next month or so are going to be a time of learning for us. Our new home is 30 minutes from the nearest grocery store and almost 45 minutes away from the nearest farmer's market (the only one open this time of year). There will be no running to the store to pick up a missing ingredient or gallon of milk. So experiments are under way and adjustments will be made as needed. For now, the goal is twice monthly grocery shopping. If that goes well, I'd like to try to get it down to one big trip and and one small trip (milk and produce) per month. Anyway, here is this week's menu (I usually put all locally grown/ raised items in bold, but right now, there are not any locally grown items in our menu. Hopefully very soon, that will change):

Breakfast:

*Yogurt with maples syrup and walnuts
*Oatmeal with nuts and fruit (this is the preferred vehicle to get coconut oil into our 9 year old)
*Eggs, ham and grits with fruit
*French Toast (to use up some leftover homemade bread) with maple syrup and fruit
*Homemade crockpot granola with either yogurt or milk and fruit
*Strawberry and Blueberry smoothies

Lunch:
*Leftovers from supper
*Turkey and Cheese Sandwiches (We are using homemade foccacia bread to make sandwiches this week - I'll try to post the recipe - its a favorite here).
*Green salad with what ever is available (my favorite is feta cheese, kalamata olives and walnuts with ceasar dressing)
*Cheese quesadillas (how do you spell that anyway?)

Snacks:
*Grapes
*Smoothies
*Carrots and cucumbers dipped in dressing
*Homemade rolls with honey butter
*Cookies, probably oatmeal chocolate chip (got my kitchenaid mixer back from storage!! Will make a double batch of cookie dough, bake one batch and freeze the rest for later)
*Popsicles (the boys have been asking for popsicles for a while. We make smoothie and freeze it in popsicle molds - we will probably do strawberry this week, but we also really like blueberry)
*Apples
*Hummus and Pita
*Chips and salsa
*Cashew butter on graham crackers

Supper:

We now have freezer space again so for a few of these meals, I am making double batches and freezing half for later.

*Sloppy Joes (freezing half for later) sliders on homemade rolls with a green salad and fruit (probably grapefruit)

*Fish tacos (panfried tilapia) with chipotle mayo and steamed broccoli (I plan to pan fry 2 pounds of tilapia and IF there is any left after supper and lunch, I'll freeze the leftovers and reheat later in the oven - the boys love tilapia and it makes a great quick/ easy lunch- like chicken nuggets, only I know whats in them)

*Green salad with olives, feta cheese and shredded chicken (from the freezer-left over from last week), with homemade rolls (left over from sliders)

*Spaghetti with meat sauce, oven roasted veggies (olive oil, salt, pepper - roast in 400 deg oven for about 45 minutes, tossing occasionally, until nicely browned (we like ours almost charred - so yummy!!) and green salad

*Gyros (ground lamb, spices, garlic, onion - will post recipe once I find it) with lettuce, onion and tzatziki (made with homemade greek style yogurt) on flat bread (will post this recipe once I find it) , hummus and (if our parsley plants survived the freeze and the move) tabbouleh.

*Clean out the fridge, leftover buffet, Yoyo (you're on your own).

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