Menu Plan Monday - Aug 23

So we are plunging into another week, finding ourselves closer to our due date (just 8 1/2 weeks away!), and finding our schedules absolutely crazy.

This week we have childbirth class on Monday night, a baby shower for a friend on Tuesday, and our usual equipping class / home group for church on Wednesday.  Thursday is my late night at work (till 7), so Thursday and Friday evening we have absolutely no plans, and we are not going to make any!

Because of this, there are no food experiments this week, or trying of any crazy new things.  We're trying to keep it pretty simple so we do not go crazy (and I do not get too behind on keeping up with the cleaning).

I only have a few more weeks of work left; a prospect which has me very enthused that maybe I do not have to burn myself out entirely just to get our house ready for a baby.  As much as there is left to do regarding turning our "this is where everything that does not have a home goes" room into a nursery, I am leaving most of it until I am no longer working.  With Third Trimester exhaustion setting in, it just seems to be all I can do to work full time and keep up with dishes.  My midwife said I was a bit anemic again, and I have been taking Hema-plex for a few days.  I certainly do feel better already, but I am not expecting to feel as great as I did toward the second half of last trimester, so I am not going to push it.

Without further ado, the menu plan:

Monday - Taco Night!  Whole wheat tortillas, ground beef, tomatoes from our garden, and the rest of the typical taco fixings.  We make our own taco seasoning, and we love it!

Tuesday - Pork Stir-fry with Brown Rice.  The pork is from our own "home grown" pig :)

Wednesday - Spinach & Cheese Frittata (with farm fresh, pastured eggs)

Thursday - Crock-pot Chicken Pot Pie.   It is not really time for such "winter foods," here in GA, but we were looking for a tasty crock pot dish and this sounds delicious :)

Friday - Leftovers

Saturday - Fried Chicken, steamed veggies.

Sunday - Leftovers

Find more great menu plans at I'm an Organizing Junkie.

Menu Plan August 16

Last week we had a menu plan, but did not keep to it very well.  Between dh injuring his back and me being bowled over by the exhaustion that the third trimester suddenly brought back to the fore, I was not prepared for all the changes in our schedule last week.  This week I am a little more focused, because weeks where we do not keep to the plan really remind me how much planning helps!  I have a plan in place for meal prep, and that is going to make things much easier.

No crazy events this week, it is pretty typical.  I have a friend coming over Monday to help me start getting the baby room organized.  With 9 1/2 weeks to go I definitely need to get that together ASAP, so I am very grateful for her help.  Other than our weekly Bible study on Wednesday, it should be a fairly low key week!

Monday - Barley Burgers, steamed veggies

Tuesday - Roast Chicken (a la Jeff)

Wednesday - California Salad (with Chicken left over from the roast)

Thursday - Spaghetti & Steamed Veggies

Friday - Pizza (with homemade whole wheat crust!)

Saturday - Pork Tenderloin (a la Jeff, again)

Sunday - Breakfast for Dinner


This post is part of Menu Plan Monday!  See Org Junkie for more great menus :)

Menu Plan August 2 - High on the Hog

The menu for this week is a bit pork-heavy, because the pigs my brother has been raising (We split one with another family, and his family split one with another family) have just come back from the butcher.  I am a little sad because I was hoping to get some lard out of the deal, but no such luck.  They had to butcher the pigs early because a neighbor informed the Marshall that *someone* was keeping pigs closer to their house than 900 feet (a county ordinance my brother was unaware of).  They gave us 30 days before mandating the execution, but still there was really only enough lard to make the sausage.  Bummer.

Anyway, we have some other interesting happenings this week; namely the fact that tonight is our family birthday celebration for July (yours truly, on the 20th) and August, as well as a welcome home party for my brother in law who just returned from Iraq.  The birthday person's family does the cooking...and since dh baketh not, and little unborn Joshua cannot do much in the kitchen yet, it meant I threw together a lasagna (yesterday, to bake today) and an ahhhhhmazing chocolate cake.  This is seriously an incredible whole wheat cake recipe.  I think the secret lies in using melted bakers' chocolate instead of cocoa, as well as almost all of the leavening ingredients being liquid.  You get a cake that is moist and delicious!  I doubled the recipe and made layers, and since dh is not as chocolate obsessed as I, I'm throwing a white chocolate ganache between the layers instead of the dark chocolate ganache I'll be using to top it.  Just wanted to throw in a little variation to make him happy since the other cake will be an ice cream cake and dh cannot have too much pasteurized dairy without getting sick.  We will have 2 Italian lasagnas and one Brazilian Lasagna (courtesy of my sis), so I'm pretty sure my lunches at work this week will consist of leftovers of our own lasagna.

OK, so that is the info on the week; without further ado, our menu plan:

Monday:  Lasagna (Other family members are making the freshly milled whole wheat bread, and the salad).  Decadent Chocolate Cake. 

Tuesday: Quinoa Risotto (using leftovers from the freezer because it is my late night at work) and sauteed squash.

Wednesday:  Salad with grilled chicken

Thursday:  Pork steak (this is actually from the freezer...needed to use it up before we get to our new pork reserves) w/mashed sweet potatoes and steamed veggies.

Friday:  Leftovers (another late night)

Saturday:  Pork Roast w/ Potatoes (from our garden!!) & Carrots (organic from the store...ours do not seem to be ready yet)

Sunday:  Leftovers (there is always more than enough roast)

This post is part of Menu Plan Monday @ Org Junkie!  Visit for more great menus.

Menu Plan Monday - Writing it down

So, I have been regularly menu planning for the last several weeks, but finding the time to blog about it has been harder than I thought.  My time has instead been focused on reclaiming my house from the few months of pregnancy exhaustion.  I am not feeling too badly about neglecting the blogging world, though, because I feel like I finally got a great system in place. 

I started with the kitchen, and just committed to learning to clean as I go from here on out (I have always been the "dive in and clean up afterward" type).  All this time I thought taking the time to clean while I was doing things would take longer, and it turns out that I actually get more done in a shorter amount of time.  How taking the time to do an extra step gives me more time, I will never be able to figure out, but I am certainly glad it does.  So the idea was to just commit to maintaining the kitchen, and then the next weekend tackle a different room.  So during the week I am only really worrying about the rooms I have already overhauled, and then on the weekends I add a new area to the list.  I am only a few weeks in, but so far it seems to be working really well, and I have still had the time to relax and enjoy a bit of the evening with dh most days.

That said, I have decided it was time to get back on the menu planning wagon.

Monday - Tonight we had breakfast for dinner.  Yummy french toast (made with pastured eggs and raw milk, of course) and venison sausage, with some fresh mango on the side.  The syrup was a simple syrup I made w/sucanat (2 c. sucanat to 1 c. water), mixed with some leftover freshly mashed berries from my freezer jam experiment.  Very easy fruity syrup.

Tuesday -  Fried Chicken (dredged in pastured eggs and freshly milled whole wheat flour), garden-fresh corn on the cob, rice

Wednesday - Black beans & rice w/Chicken (in a homemade enchilada sauce)

Thursday - Beef & Barley Burgers

Friday - Leftovers

Saturday - Chicken marinated in olive oil, garlic, and fresh herbs, pasta alfredo (homemade spinach tomato alfredo sauce), steamed garden fresh green beans

Sunday - Leftovers


This post is part of Menu Plan Monday at Org Junkie.  Stop by for more great menus :)

Menu Plan Monday June 21

I was pleasantly surprised, this week, to find out that my mother and my sister will be coming to town this next weekend. As a result, we are only planning for half a week, this week. They will be in town late Thursday night, so we are planning Monday through Thursday. I have two other siblings who live in town, and between the three of us we will certainly each have a hand in providing meals between Friday night and Sunday night, but none of us have really planned all too much what this weekend will look like yet. We will probably end up doing something kind of potluck-ish.

The pork chops on previous menu plans keep getting pushed off and out of the way for other things. Not that we dislike them, but things keep coming up. Today, for example, is Father's Day, and my dear husband (who is already such an incredible father and our little Joshua is still 4 months away from joining the party) really wanted to roast one of our chickens today. He worked very hard this week at getting our meat birds out of the coop and into the freezer, so instead of pork chops we're having a delicious roast chicken, stuffed with a mix of apples, oranges, celery, garlic, honey, and a little white wine. So the pork chops are kicking off this next week, instead.

Monday - Pork Chops, Summer Squash Sautee, Multigrain Rolls

Tuesday - Breakfast for Dinner (whole wheat pancakes, eggs, bacon)

Wednesday - Chicken & Biscuits (with homemade whole wheat biscuits & leftover chicken from Sunday)

Thursday - Hot Dogs (Nitrate & MSG Free) w/whole wheat buns, steamed veggies

And that is our (short) week!

More Iron-Rich Menu Planning

So last week dh had the dreaded summer sinus bug that has been going around in our community, and he had no clue what he wanted to eat. Add to that the fact that during this pregnancy I have almost never known what I want to eat ahead of time; and you get a complete lack of a menu plan last week. Ah, well. At least I got started the week before, after far too long of an absence.

This week, though, I have some things I need to try. My ever wonderful and completely amazing managed to score some grass-finished liver from our local dairy guy...woohoo! I know that I need to try to get more iron in my diet; and I know that traditional foods like organ meats are ridiculously good for you, now I just needed to find a recipe I thought I might like. At some point I would love to try Kelly the Kitchen Kop's recipe as an appetizer for an event or something; however since my goal is loading up on iron and there is so much cheese in her recipe (read about why you should not combine dairy and iron rich foods during pregnancy), I figured it would be better to leave off on that for now. It looks delicious, though, and I can't wait to try it out sometime!

So, without further ado, this week's menu plan. I am pretty excited about it.

Monday - Calves Liver with Sherry (We're actually using just normal beef liver from grass-finished cattle)

Tuesday - Pecan Breaded Chicken Breast (This is not an iron rich recipe, this is a calcium rich recipe, but my growing baby needs that, too!) NOTE: We are not using the butter/veggie oil combo recommended here, we are using all butter instead.

Wednesday - Serbian Ground Beef Veggie & Potato Bake (I think we're going to be subbing in Sweet Potatoes instead. They are iron-rich, much tastier, and much healthier than plain ol' potatoes)

Thursday - Smoked Sausage Fritatta (We are subbing in some venison sausage in its place. It doesn't get any more "free range & grass finished" than that, right?)

Friday - French Bread Pizzas (my late night at work, so it is a low key dinner. We are going to use homemade, fresh mozzarella from real milk that I'll make on Wednesday.)

Saturday - Huo Guo (This is Chinese for hot-pot. I know it is not really soup season anymore, but I've been learning a bit about Asian cooking because I have learned that I really miss Chinese food, and the only way to really get it MSG free is to make it at home with Tamari instead of regular soy sauce. I'll be using my homemade chicken stock as the soup base.) The recipe for this can vary from time to time, but this time we will be using thinly sliced beef, perhaps some chicken (also thinly sliced so it cooks well in the broth), Chinese broccoli (aka kailaan), carrots, taro, green onions, and whatever other veggies we can think of at the time, as well as rice noodles, and dried shiitake mushrooms.

Sunday - Pork Chops, Mashed Potatoes, and Steamed Vegetables (This is a carryover from the other week, dh got sick and wanted soup, so we ditched the pork chops)

And that is that! This post is a part of Menu Plan Monday at Org Junkie. Visit her for more great menus!

Menu Plan Monday May 31

Well, pregnancy exhaustion and food aversions have kept me from menu planning for most of my pregnancy to date, but I am finally back at it. Why? Well my midwife took one look at me the other day and said, "You look really pale. Are you getting enough iron?" A quick peek behind my lower eyelids confirmed her suspicion. "You need more iron."

It is not so hard to get more iron, is it? Well, I learned from my midwife that calcium binds with iron and pulls it out of your body, so that iron-fortified Ovaltine I've been chugging is absolutely useless. Putting calcium-fortified cheese on my burger, again, useless. So realizing that I need to plan more which foods go with which, I decided it was time to put an end to this pregnancy-induced laziness and get back on the meal planning track. Without further ado...

Except for today, I'll include Breakfast & Lunch, I have yogurts and such as snacks throughout the day as well; since I'm needing to keep calories up as well as needing a calcium boost.

Monday - Beef & Barley Burgers

Tuesday -
Breakfast: Soaked Oatmeal w/Bananas and Honey
Lunch: Ravioli
Dinner: "Ken's Scallops" & Non-Dairy Quinoa Risotto (The recipe is actually "Vegan," but we're using chicken stock instead of vegetable broth. My interest was not in something meat-free so much as in having iron-rich quinoa with no dairy to steal the iron)

Wednesday -
Breakfast: Soaked Oatmeal w/banana and honey
Lunch: Dinner Leftovers
Dinner: Tacos w/grass finished beef, homemade guacamole

Thursday -
Breakfast: Creamy Quinoa Porridge with Raisins and Honey
Lunch: Egg Salad Sandwich on homemade Whole Wheat Bread
Dinner: Out with friends

Friday -
Breakfast: Creamy Quinoa Porridge with Bananas & Honey
Lunch: Egg Salad Sandwich on homemade Whole Wheat Bread
Dinner: (My Late Night @ Work) Nitrate-free and MSG-Free hot dogs, Baked Sweet Potatoes

Saturday -
Breakfast: Pancakes, eggs, bacon
Lunch: Tuna Salad Sandwich on homemade Whole Wheat Bread
Dinner: Homemade Chinese Dumplings (fried in Lard) We are using a fermented soy sauce called Tamari that is MSG Free.

Sunday -
Breakfast: Banana Muffins
Lunch: Leftovers from Dinner
Dinner: Pork chops, Mashed Potatoes, and Vegetables.

This is part of Menu Plan Monday. Find more great menus at Org Junkie.

Edit (Tues Evening): Because the scallops and the risotto are brand new recipes for me, I wanted to let you all know how incredible it turned out to be. So filling, so delicious; I highly recommend making either or both recipes. The only "problem" is that the risotto recipe has a much higher yield than I realized. We're freezing some, and we still have copious leftovers. If you have a big family, this is a great dish!