Meal Plan Monday

April 4 - 10
 time for new themes

In my ideal world, I sketch out my meal plan on Wednesday when I give the fridge a quick clear out and wipe down. That gives me time to look in the pantry, go to the farmer’s market and have a sense of what I might like to cook for the following week.

The reality is that it’s now Monday morning, the start of a new week, and the first week of a new month. It’s not a big deal because I have a pretty strong rhythm of meal themes, a basic foundation food for each night of the week. Do we always eat those foods week after week? We don’t. Yet I have the basic ingredients, and  I know I can lean back into them if I need to, and at the same time, I have the freedom to cook something completely different if I want to.

I sit down and sketch out my meal plan for this week. Over here I talk about the Anchors of Our Day, with meals as a point in the day we can lean back into, everyday, an anchor that tethers us to a healthy home rhythm.

The changes in our diets have had me simmering over some new general theme for each days of the week. We have several different nutritional and dietary needs: gluten free, vegan and gluten and dairy free. We all began as whole food omnivores with an emphasis on S.O.L.E. food.

As this new path unfolds, it sometimes feels simple and easy to manage, other times it can feel overwhelming with planning and preparation. It does feel great from a health perspective, energizing and nourishing. To try and get a handle on our different and divergent dietary needs, I made a chart of our dietary needs to try and find more common threads, in which each of us feels nourished with one meal.

These past months have been a time of reflection for me with my meal themes. Monday’s Mexican with beans and rice as a base remains a favorite, cheese, sour cream and meat can be options to add or ignore. Tuesday Thai works well. Wednesday’s pasta is out, I’m not keen on using gluten substitutes, they are not so sound nutritionally, and then there’s the concern about rice with arsenic.

My meal themes need a change. This is what I’ve come up with:

:: Monday is Mexican

:: Tuesday is Thai or Stir fry

:: Wednesday is Slow Cooker or Children cook

:: Thursday is Indian or lentils or chickpeas

:: Friday is Salade Composé

:: Saturday is grill or baked beans in winter and or leftovers

:: Sunday is grill/roast/casserole

How do you do with meal planning?

We can inspire each other if you join me by linking below in the comments to a post with your meal plan. 

Hello Winter!

After months of unseasonably warm weather, winter has come blasting in with cold and snow. The temperature dropped into the single digits today and snow has been gusting, bringing swirling snow and brightness to this gray day.

My response, a blazing fire in the wood stove, a pot of beef stew and Downton Abbey.  Does it get any better than that? 

My beef stew is one that I make by doing, it doesn’t come from a recipe. I just sort of feel it out, letting smells and tastes guide me. I begin with carrots, onions and celery, also known as mirepoix, something we talk about in my Warmth in the Kitchen eCourse. 

I sauté the mirepoix in a little warmed olive oil. Before that I heat the pan. I add garlic and thyme too. Thyme is my everything herb. I put it in nearly everything I make. I add sea salt and pepper, as well as whole peppercorns and bay leaves. 

After the vegetables and spices sauté for a bit, I add a few good dollops of tomato paste. I stir it in and let the ingredients meld and warm. 

Once that mixture begins to meld, I add a good splash, or two or three, of red wine. I usually have something full bodied around and use that.

Once those flavors have had a chance to meld, I add beef broth and then the beef, usually a chuck roast from a local farm with pasture raised animals.

Then I bring it to a very gentle simmer, cover it and let it very gently simmer. Then I add carrots and potatoes and when they have cooked through, it’s ready.

One of the secrets to good meat cooking that I learned from the local butcher is that it is best to cook roasts at the lowest temperature possible, slow cooking for a long time if needed. He reminded me that a rare roast is only cooked to 125 degrees. I have found this to work well. 

It’s a little trickier with a pot roast and much trickier when that pot roast is on the wood stove. 

I’ll look for a recipe template to format for you in case you’d like one to download. 

There’s something so satisfying in cooking on the wood stove, in knowing it is providing for warmth of body and soul. 

As a leftover dish, I add mushrooms and make mash potatoes to serve it on. The potatoes drink in all the tasty broth. Need I say more?

How do you stay warm when the weather turns cold?

The Sense of Warmth and Warmth in the Kitchen

Registration for enrollment in October’s eCourse is open!

The Sense of Warmth with Warmth in the Kitchen is a 31 day odyssey into the sense of warmth, on the physical, emotional, developmental and spiritual realm.

Rudolf Steiner described the sense of warmth as one that mediates between the inner and the outer worlds of the human being. We’ll explore this sense and its role in growth and development.

We’ll spend four weeks learning to cook simple meals, mostly one pot, with Stocks, Soups, Stews, and Curries with ingredients that are seasonal and warming. 

It’s like two courses in one, yet interwoven with the practical and the more esoteric.

Recipes can be easily adapted for vegetarian diets and I include vegetarian stocks as well as chicken and beef.

The fee is $35 to keep it accessible to everyone.

If you’s like to enroll, sign up here.

Waldorf in the Home :: Meal Planning

Weekly Rhythm :: The Meal Plan

9 February 2015

If you are a Waldorf parent, it’s likely that you’ve heard of the importance of rhythm, either at a parent evening at school or in the world of Waldorf online. 

If you are new to rhythm, or it still feels a little mysterious to you, you can read more about different aspects of rhythm in the home here.

Rhythm is an approach to organizing our lives that includes familiar routines as well as a sensitivity to the energetic rhythms of our bodies, the seasons and of our own season in the rhythm of life.

One of my favorite aspects of rhythm is weekly meal planning. I love to cook and garden and could easily spend the whole day working on our meals, if I did not have anything else to do. 

But alas, I have lots of other things to do, homeschooling my sixth grader and working on the living curriculum program I offer as well as homemaking, caring for animals, gardening, handwork, getting us all outside everyday, volunteering, well you know, the days are quite full with children.

That’s where the weekly meal plan helps me. Over the years I’ve had a fall back weekly rhythm for my meal planning and it is so helpful for the times when the thought of what to make for dinner just puts me on overload. And I love to cook.

My Weekly Rhythm Meal Plan

Mondays I make beans and rice and turn them into chili, burritos, enchiladas, tacos or nachos. Leftover beans may turn used with heuvos rancheros for breakfast or bean dip with afternoon tea.

Tuesday, I lean on Thai dishes, something I learned to make when we lived in the equatorial Pacific, or Stir Fry. In the summertime, for one of our favorite Thai dishes, I grow long beans, Thai basil and round white eggplant. Other wise with stir fry, I chop whatever vegetables I have and stir fry them with lots of ginger and garlic. I’ll add nuts and herbs if I have them.

Wednesday is pasta day in our kitchen. In the winter I like to bake pasta, with lasagna, baked ziti or my version of the classic macaroni and cheese. Pasta is the only analog food my gluten free child eats. 

Thursday is my challenge. I tend to lean on leftovers or the slow cooker on Thursday. On Thursdays I want comfort food, foods like chicken pot pie, shepherd's pie or a casserole. It can be tricky to prepare them though. That's where the slow cooker, leftovers, lasagna or a dish from the freezer comes in handy.

Friday is our Pizza and family movie night. (My children are 12 and over) I go through phases of making my own alternating with take out. I slip in some winter greens, like arugula with hopes of vegetable-izing the meal.

Saturday might be leftovers or casserole. I grew up with beans and franks and brown bread on Saturdays. I have tried making my own brown bread. 

How to Meal Plan

1. Begin with what your family likes to eat and what you like to cook

2. Look in your pantry, cupboards, freezer
3. Consider the rhythm of your week. Plan something easy on days when you or family members are out for the afternoon or have evening plans. Leftovers, the slow cooker or breakfast for dinner can save the day. 

4. Sketch it out

Once meal planning becomes a habit, you will be able to walk through it in your mind at the store and gather what you need pretty easily.

For children, familiar meals and specific nights, like “Pasta Night” or “Pizza Night” become something they can anticipate with comfort and joy.

Happy Planning and Eating!

if you meal plan and have a link to your meal plan for this week, 

please share the link to it in the comments below

:: 

If you’d like to join this month’s eCourse, registration is still open
 When Less is More :: Create Sacred Space

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life 

Harmonious Rhythms ::   Soulful Parenting with the 3C's :: Waldorf Homeschooling

Rhythm of Our Home :: In the Kitchen

"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul

 than their simplicity might suggest." ~ Thomas Moore

                                                               

.: a day for making stock :.

I like to start the week with a pot of stock. 

First we chop. Into the pot goes chopped carrots, celery, onions and garlic, a bit of meat bone, some peppercorns and bay leaves, then cover with water and wait. 

Little by little good smells slowly emerge and begin fill the kitchen. The good smells fill the house.

I love to start the week by making a pot of stock, so that I have broth ready for Soup Day and broth to use for a quick bowl of noodles and vegetables, as well as broth to slip into a curry or whatever else might benefit from a bit of broth during the week.

During the days of deep cold weather, an extra bonus from the stock pot, a cup of warm broth with carrots and ribbon egg noodles is divinely comforting and warming in so many ways.

Do you have a regular homemaking activity for Monday?

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life 

Harmonious Rhythms ::   Soulful Parenting with the 3C's :: Waldorf Homeschooling

:: Meals Plans and Rhythm in the Home ::

Weekly Rhythm :: The Meal Plan

One simple way to help make the week flow with ease is the meal plan. The meal plan makes it easy to shop, plan and prepare meals. It also makes a great fall back during busy and stressful times. 

A meal plan can make all the difference in daily life. When I have a meal plan and use it, I don't have to think about what to make for dinner each day. I've already decided. I've gathered ingredients and been inspired by what I have on hand in drawing it up. Less worry and more time.

A meal plan means we eat healthier food. When I sketch it out, I look at the vegetables we have in our garden and from the farmers market. Our Minestrone at this time of year is entirely made of home grown and local farm vegetables: onions, garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes, cauliflower, tomatoes, broccoli and sweet peppers, rosemary, thyme and oregano. The last bits of basil from the garden garnish it.

The applesauce is made from the apples we just picked. The spicy greens are what's growing best in the cooler weather here. The epazote in the beans is from the garden. If you know of other uses for it, I'd love to know, I have two bushes of it, hanging on, in the garden.

One of the other, unexpected gifts of the meal plan, at least for me, is in reflecting on how much local food we are eating and identifying how to bring in more of it. It also helps me plan what to grow int he garden.

A meal plan is flexible too. If by Saturday, leftovers are too plentiful for our lunches, we'll eat them for dinner and out off the Shepard's Pie.

This week we are talking about meals and meal planning in my online eCourse for October, When Less is More :: 31 Days to Rhythm for a Calmer and More Peaceful home, also known as Rhythm Boot Camp. Click here for more.

If you use a meal plan and would like to share it, please do so in the comments below, or leave a link to your blog where you have posted it for others to see.

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life 

Harmonious Rhythms ::   Soulful Parenting with the 3C's :: Waldorf Homeschooling

The Anchors of the Day

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the anchors in our lives are eating and sleeping. We all eat and sleep, everyday. Babies spend most of their time eating and sleeping. Toddlers eat and sleep. School age children eat and sleep. Adults eat and sleep. We all need to eat and sleep every single day of our lives. It is that fundamental.

We can drift this way and that, into the longer, lighter, warmer days of the year when we want to be out of doors all the time and then into the cold frozen winter of the year, yet it is the two basic threads that keep us firmly anchored through the year: nourishing food and adequate rest. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bedtime. Sleep time. Awakening time. These anchors tether us to a dependable healthy rhythm. A healthy breathing in and a healthy breathing out.

Food and Rest. Eat and Sleep. 

It took me a long time to figure this out. When I began working, three o'clock would come and I would panic and my brain freeze if I did not have a meal planned for dinner. Sometimes I’d wing it and pull something together, other days I’d make a quick dash to the store. Sometimes we ate leftovers or a quick-to-pull-together meal like pasta or eggs. It was stressful.

Now I have a plan. On Saturdays we go to the farmer's market and on Sundays I plan the menu for the week. We have a weekly rhythm for breakfast and dinner. This is what works for me. This is my salvation. My children thrive on the predictability of regular dinner themes, so I made a regular, predictable breakfast menu for the week too.

The anchors help me keep us tethered to the health giving forces of life, the nourishment of gathering around the table, the nourishment of good food and each other. Without adequate sleep or upon getting hungry, meltdowns are more likely to occur. Sleep and food nourish us deeply on many levels.

I incorporate as much S.O.L.E. food into our meals as possible. You might be wondering what is S.O.L.E. food or isn't it spelled SOUL? Well yes, and no. S.O.L.E. stands for Sustainable, Organic, Local and/or Ethical which means seasonal too.

I use a meal plan based on a theme for each day of the week: 

:: Monday is Mexican
:: Tuesday is Thai
:: Wednesday is Pasta
:: Thursday is crockpot and/or children cook
:: Friday is Pizza
:: Saturday is grill or baked beans in winter
:: Sunday is grill/roast/casserole

I experimented with a Thai Beef Salad this week which I'll post on Scrumptious Smidgeon as well.

If there is a person who does not wish to eat what is served, then toast and butter is always an alternative.

What do you do about eating? How do you plan? Is there a rhythm to it? Do you have any good one pot meals with recipes to share?

What are your anchors?