The kinda/sorta menu planning kinda/sorta worked for a while.
Today, here is what my non-traditional menu planning looks like:
Breakfast:
We always have a meat of some sort. My daughter and husband will have sausage and my son and I will have whatever....leftovers, a hamburger, hamburger sausage.
Instead of making my sausage homemade, I've been buying sausage links from the local butcher shop (cheaper than the grocery store - yeah!) then cooking it on Mondays and Thursdays. Although I pay an extra $.20 per pound, I actually save money because of portion control. My husband has 2 sausage links, my daughter has 1 sausage link. When I made my own patties they would eat more meat.
My husband always eats some sort of grain with the sausage - cereal, granola or PB oatmeal. He's recently discovered that he REALLY dislikes leftover oatmeal. He's the "unpickiest" person I know too so I think it must be a texture thing. I haven't quite figured out how to make oatmeal just for him (I don't eat it and my kids don't like it). I have rolled oats, steel cut oats, oat groats - any suggestions for fresh oatmeal (for one person) that is easy in the morning?
My son will usually have homemade yogurt as well as some sort of meat and my daughter has whatever fruit I cut up. They'll eat Peanut Butter Oatmeal too, but they don't seem to care much if they have that. I don't usually eat breakfast until about 10:00 or so. Today I had a coconut milk smoothie with frozen cherries, spinach, and an egg yolk, 1 piece of bacon, 1 fried egg, brussel sprouts in butter and a half of an apple.
This is a HUGE change from last year at this time where I made some sort of carb every morning for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Not only did I spend a lot of time making those items, my kids ate ALL.THE.TIME.
Lunch:
Everyone is pretty much on their own. My husband usually has lunch provided for him, but today he brought some leftover BBQ'd sausage links and an apple. My kids either have school lunch or a sandwich (money spent on their lunch is NOT included in my grocery budget - the experiment that we're trying is failing miserable, but I won't change it until next school year). Today I will have a sweet potato with butter, a hamburger with sauteed onions and garlic and the other half of my apple.
Dinner/Supper:
I refer to my Menu Plans A, B, C, D (look at the bottom of the page). This has changed a bit though since discovering a dairy intolerance for both my son and myself. I serve hamburgers almost every week and we have smoothie night every Wednesday. I always try to have cooked meat and beans in the freezer. Last night we got home at 6:30 from the track meet and I was able to make tacos/taco salads very quickly because the meat was already cooked. I dumped the cooked meat and beans in a pan, then added a jar of salsa.
I try to keep our dinners at about $8.00. Last week we had fried eggs and bacon. Unfortunately I can't add a bunch of veggies when I do this or it would be the ideal meal. We ended up having carrots and apples, but I usually add/hide a bunch of vegies in our meals.
I collect recipes that I want to try. For instance:
- White Chicken Chili from Tammy'sRecipes
- Fancy Oatmeal for my husband from KathEatsRealFood
- Homemade Clif Bars
, that they plan their meals the night before. I am always thinking ahead/planning ahead. For example, tonight most of the family will be having leftovers, but my son will have a tuna fish sandwich in the car because he goes from track practice to baseball practice to hunter's safety. I certainly have to eat my words - "I'll never let my kid be in more than one activity at a time." Baseball and track will overlap a few weeks and hunter's safety is offered only two times a year. Thankfully it's only 4 days! I hope I've given you ideas if traditional meal planning doesn't work for you!
As far as the single serve easy morning oatmeal, have you tried making homemade oatmeal packets? Like the sugar loaded ones you can buy but you make them your self, instructions can be found at a few different places online and you usually just add hot water or microwave them.
ReplyDeleteAlso,Nfld your fried eggs and bacon night, to add more veggies to the meal, can you try omelets instead of fried eggs and add diced veggies? Or just fold in some spinach leaves into the eggs, this is what we usually do to get some extra nutrients in. Hope that's helpful!
Thanks for your comments!
ReplyDeleteI need to see if it's the microwaving he doesn't care for.
I'll have to try spinach - see if I can hide it! Actually, if I make fried eggs/bacon on smoothie night, I always hide plenty of veggies in that so we would be good. HMMMM! Thanks for making me think. Sometimes I have to do it outloud!