Monday, December 8, 2008

menu Monday 3

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I decided I would officially do Menu Monday. I want to do some meal shifting and more crock pot meals come 2009, and I thought this might help motivate my changes.

Here are our meals for this next week and breakfast described in more detail.

M. BBQ beans and meat (baked beans, spices, leftover meat, served on rice)
T. chili burgers
W. split pea soup
R. spaghetti (GF noodles)
F. red lentil soup (vegetarian)
S. peking pork chops (crock pot)
S. BBQ ribs (crock pot)

But Sunday is Miss Sarah's birthday, so we'll have her favorite, sloppy joes. Lucky for me, that is next Monday's meal, so I'll just flip Sunday and Monday.

To see previous menus, go here and here. In case you did not notice, the week has a rhythm. Monday is someones favorite. It is also SUPER easy to pack for lunch on Tuesday. Co-op day is Tuesday, so I need an easy lunch to bring. Tuesday is something with hamburgers (or an easy cabbage dish next week.) Since I have yoga on Tuesday nights, these meals are simple for Jesse to prepare. Wednesday is a soup. Thursday is something with noodles. Friday is vegetarian. We usually have a pork chop dish on Saturday. Come Sunday, I pull out the crock pot.

Adding more to my breakfast description:
Monday's muffins are vegan, gluten free, and always banana. Jesse makes these. =)
The kids have wheat bread on Tuesday. I have Energy's rice bread. We all use an organic fruit spread. I hope to be making my own bread in 2009, but for now it is from Trader Joe's.
The kiddos' waffles are from Trader Joe's too, ones with gluten and ones without. Due to the potato starch and flour in the GF ones, I eat leftover pancakes or make a bowl of Cream of Rice.
Thursday is fairly straightforward, except we are originally from the North. We could not imagine our grits without a dollop of organic butter or Earth Balance along with demerara (minimally processed) sugar or pure maple syrup.
Friday's ice cream is soy. Fruit is fruit. =) I do not eat the oatmeal. It gives me a headache.
Pancakes on Saturday are again vegan, gluten free and banana.
Our cereal is either puffed rice or Rice Chex (now GF, yeah!) with soy or rice milk.

There it is!

2 comments:

Laura said...

Welcome to MPM!! My son is gluten, dairy, egg, soy and nut free so I can totally relate!

Maya / מיה said...

Trisha, I might participate in your KwH challenge too! We're trying to cut back on expenses too... I might need help from you in figuring out how to write a functional budget! We're not living beyond our means, but I feel we could do better if we actually control our spending. I also want to spend less on groceries... any tips? I think I need to start planning a menu. I'm impressed that you cook every night! Do you usually have leftovers?

Ok, so our electric bill is really confusing and odd. It doesn't go by month. But between August 7 and October 15, we used 682 KwH (or should I say, קוט"ש). Not bad, I guess! We have our lights mostly off during the day, we use laptops instead of desktops (less power), and we barely turned on our air conditioning despite Israeli heat! Our electricity use spiked when we had guests over the summer, and it will probably go up again now that we need to use electricity to heat our water at times-- during the summer we use entirely solar heat (VERY common for water heaters in Israel). Let me check what it is now...

Ok, 224142.7 at 3 PM on Wednesday, December 10

I'll track it for you, Sarah!

And that means that since October 15, we've used... hmm... 512 KwH. Also not bad! That's the difference between SOME AC and no AC. According to Boaz, that's the difference between me being gone in the evening for rehearsals and me being home. :) Now just wait until we need to use heat... :)

Btw a suggestion for Sarah: I've heard that simply having appliances (like laptops or TVs) plugged in when you aren't using them-- EVEN when they're off-- uses some power. She might want to start unplugging!

Good luck with that baby growing in your nipples. :)

Your SIL,

Maya