I spend the weekends on the computer and with my head in cookbooks trying to find foods that will fit our gluten and corn free, vegan diet AND that my family will like. It is no easy task each week. Because I know a number of you doing the same thing, I’d love to have a place for us to share. Many hands make light the work.
Please post your menu in the comments section. I will still be doing this with Nutritious Eats . Because I am a big fan. If I have people liking this and it proving to be helpful, I will keep it up. Otherwise, I will just keep doing it on Nutritious Eat’s FB page.
1) Be honest. You may have weeks where you say you have no clue
2) Don’t try to impress
3) Share recipes, if you have a link to them
4) Enjoy healthy eating!
Here is our menu for the week:
Sunday: Veggie soup (my mom went to a farmer’s market and brought home turnips, collards, carrots, and fennel….it screamed soup to me so I am just gonna whip something up tomorrow)
Monday: Gretchen is making pad Thai (we cook for each other every other week…it rocks)
Tuesday: Valentine’s Dinner! Asparagus leek risotto (http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2009/04/spring-risotto-with-asparagus-and-leek.html), a pear and walnut salad, and black bean brownies made with gf oat flour (http://www.nomeatathlete.com/black-bean-brownies/)
Wednesday: Potato leek soup with kale chips and cheese for fam to top soup (http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2009/03/vegan-potato-leek-soup.html)
Thursday: Summer rolls (http://pinterest.com/pin/71635450292705117/ and this recipe mixed https://brittluck.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/spring-rolls/)
Friday: Homemade pizza night. Cheese for the fam, veggies for me.
Pressing on... 
Here are our plans. I am excited to join you in meal planning. I love nutritious eats so I will still share with them. My plans are a bit different because of family in town. I feel no guilt making my family eat vegan but fell a bit guilty feeding my parents this way. It is also a good way to use up some meat.
Sunday–leftovers or breakfast for dinner
Monday–veggie pad Thai and fruit
Tuesday–baked potatoes or maybe take out for the lovebirds:)
Wednesday–chicken tetrazzini and green beans
Thursday–leftovers
Friday–homemade pizza night
Saturday–homemade crockpot gf and vegan minestrone
Well, this is a chemo week for Miss Bug. So, our menu will be very unimpressive. I also don’t have planned out what night we will eat everything because I never know how exhausted I’ll be at the end of a treatment day. So, here are the meals I have for the week.
*Black Bean and Quinoa Tacos (Britt’s recipe)- I have some leftover tomatillo salsa that I made, and it’s perfect in the taco mix. Served with cheese, avocado and romaine.
*Taco salad made with the same mix
*Chicken Teriyaki (done in the crockpot) served over quinoa and sauteed collards. (Sauteed collard: done with tsp of olive oil, dash of veggie stock and fresh garlic. Sautee until slightly limp. Dash of tamari and apple cider vinegar. Perfect recipe and my kids like it, too.)
*Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (made the soup on Friday) I won’t have the grilled cheese, but I have have about 3 bowls of soup 🙂 It’s so good.
*Bowl Night (my favorite)-Any combo of the following-Quinoa, beans, leftover chicken, marinated kale salad, cucumbers, feta, sauerkraut, avocado and/or vinaigrette. I put it all out, and we create our own bowl. Basically, the kids are required to choose at least one veg and everything else is up for grabs. Everyone is happy.
*Homemade pizza. Simple. Pre-made crusts for the this week. I always keep pizza sauce and mozz cheese in the freezer. The kids prefer this pizza to delivery anyway. I’ll load mine with as many veggies as I can fit, sprinkle a little non-dairy cheese and I’m happy, too.
Jennifer I love the bowl night idea! I will be stealing that one.
Ok. here it is nothing fancy. Because I work nights at the beginning of the week my husband has to be on his own. He usually tells me what he wants to make or I am really organized and throw something in the crock pot for him. My weeks go Saturday to Saturday since we grocery shop on Friday’s.
Saturday – Pei Wei since I work and we had a free meal coupon
Sunday – Crock Pot Tortilla soup with blue corn chips and avocado.
Monday – Homemade Pizza
Tuesday – I am putting a pork roast in the crock for Andrew, I work that night. Corn and salad
Wednesday – Quinoa stuffed peppers
Thursday – Leftovers
Friday – we go out usually.
I wanna try the quinoa and black bean tacos. 🙂
what’s crazy is how much my kids even like the black bean/quinoa mix. They usually are not too excited about bean based meals. I just made a double batch and froze half.
I forgot to add…my back up thursday meal are Baked Falafels. Never made them but was inspired when we were at Cool Cafe on Friday.
thanks so much,Brittany and ladies 🙂 I have never menu planned day to day… yep, believe it! I’ve just thought of meals/things for the week, go shopping and go from there! I’m 10 days in eating vegetarian/vegan and I’ve done more eating and “cooking” ever!! or so it seems :p as you’ve said Brittany, the best way for me to stay successful at this is to PLAN! so, I will be working on that this week. For right now: all I have “planned” in my head 😉
Sunday: Autumn gumbo; from starter soup(veggies:butternut squash, okra, peppers, veg stock)I made separate for me and added barley. Daniel has chicken added. it is yummy.
Monday: leftovers…made a lot and already told Daniel that’s what he’s eating. doesn’t like leftovers, but he liked this!
Tuesday: Brittany’s black bean quinoa tacos
Wednesday: spaghetti… I actually bought some quinoa spaghetti…am I in trouble? I always have a huge salad available with every meal… always have done this.
Thursday: maybe chicken and rice for the Boys… I may have the sprouted bean salad…
Friday: I’m really liking y’alls homemade pizza nights!!
thanks again everyone!!
oh, I forgot also, didn’t get a chance to make the black bean burgers so perhaps this on Thursday…
Luck likes them so much, he wants them weekly!
I plan about 3 vegan meals a week for my family – they eat meat or fish the other nights and I make my own separate vegan meals on those nights. I could post my menu for the week, if you’d like, but what I really wanted to share was the program I use. It’s called “The Living Cookbook”. You purchase it on line. It does so many good things and is a HUGE time saver and organizer for me. It allows you to enter your own recipes – you can create different cookbooks with subfolders. I have one that is vegan, and one that is not; they each have folders with different course categories. Once your recipe is entered, it calculates the nutritional value. It did not recognize certain weird vegan ingredients, so I entered the value for things like nooch, and now it can calculate them. It has a monthly calendar that links to the recipe index. For example, I can open the calendar, click on Monday and pick the recipe I want for dinner. Then on Monday, I click on the recipe title in the calendar and the recipe pops up. The program also helps with shopping. I plan my meals in one week stretches. After my dinners are plugged into the calendar for the week, I look at the recipes and figure out which ingredients I don’t have. You can import all the ingredients from a whole recipe into a grocery list if you like, or I just type them in. The grocery list can categorize by different stores on the same list, and also by different aisles in each store, which is really convenient. The program was $30 when I bought it. Well worth the money in my opinion! It did take some time to set it up and enter some recipes initially. But now when I try a new recipe that we like, I put it in my favorites under “for cookbook”. Then, when I have some time I enter a recipe or 2. The program also has auto suggest, so it doesn’t take that long to enter things. Anyway, that was a long explanation, but it has been a big help to me and I thought I would pass it on.
What a great idea Brit! This is my best effort for a menu this week. We are still flying by the seat of our pants with this elimination diet.
Monday: Praise Jesus! We have leftovers from the weekend. GF Spaghetti with Turkey Bolognese sauce and Salad.
Tuesday: Jason cooks for Valentine’s Day.
Wednesday: Tortilla Soup filled with all sorts of sneaky veggies and avocado
Thursday: Leftover soup and salad (ball and vball practice night)
Friday: Grilled chicken, roasted veggies and salad
Britt, I already feel so free. Let’s see if this matches my food log next week.
Just put my plan for the next two weeks up on my blog with a link to my pinterest board where I’ve gathered all the recipes. http://hohimers.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/menu-plan-monday-6/
Thanks for doing this Brit – love new ideas and some of this sounds SUPER yummy.
Adrian’s discovered how to use the computer, so I’m just now seeing this…I need to go to HEB, but I have a couple things planned.
Saturday night/Sunday lunch Chicken tortilla soup
Monday/ Tuesday (since I Zumba Monday and C has BSF Tuesday) I don’t cook two meals, but one that will work towards the next day -stir fry and egg rolls
Wed/Thurs –sausage with peppers and onions and sweet potatoes.
Fri-???
I also need to try your bean burgers. My boys are all bean fans:)