There's been a lot of buzz about the 100 mile diet lately and our family has decided to do our own version of it wherever possible. With that in mind, we've developped a 3 week rotating meal plan for supper based on the local produce that's available this time of year. We will be changing our meal plan in spring and summer based on what's available then. We also hope to sign up for CSA starting in April and working around our weekly food boxes. For now, here's the bare bones of our plan. I will be elaborating with recipes and adding basic pricing as I can.
A basic element of our meal plan involves making most meals to last two nights. This is financially a lot cheaper than creating 7 unique meals. More importantly, I can make a more elaborate meal with a view that I won't have to cook the next night. Our meal plan is 3 weeks instead of 4 because we liked the idea of more rotation so that the first Monday of every month or whatnot isn't always the same thing.
Week 1
Monday & Tuesday: Stir fry (1lb pork or beef stir fry pieces, veggies in season, rice, soya sauce)
Wednesday & Thursday: Butternut Squash Soup
Friday & Saturday: Pizza (homemade pizza dough, hot house tomatoes, veggies in season, bacon and/or sausage)
Sunday: Bacon & eggs with toast (made out of Homemade Molasses Brown Bread)
Week 2
Monday & Tuesday: Beef Stew
Wednesday: French Toast (eggs, milk, sugar and Homemade Molasses Brown Bread)
Thursday & Friday: Shepherd's Pie(1lb-2lbs ground beef, pork or lamb, veggies in season, mashed potatoes on top, and gravy make from homemade beef broth)
Saturday & Sunday: Crockpot Leek and Potato Soup
Week 3
Monday: Pancakes (flour, eggs, milk, oil, sugar)
Tuesday & Wednesday: Sausage Meatballs (8 uncased sausages with seasonal veggies and potatoes)
Thursday: Muffin Pan leftovers (pizza dough pressed into 12 cup muffin pan with leftover meatballs spooned in, covered with sauces and topped with cheese and baked for 15-20 minutes at 400F)
Friday & Saturday: Mixed Veggie Egg Drop Soup
Sunday: Dijon Spice Pork Tenderloin with seasonal veggies and potatoes
That's the plan for now!
This needs an update ;) This sounds like a good plan, and delicious! Did you end up tweaking it?
ReplyDeleteWe did this for a solid few months, then my husband, who is a type 1 diabetic, had some severe gastro-intestinal complications from the diabetes so we had to ditch a lot of the solid meat (bye bye delicious dijon spiced tenderloin) and hard to digest foods. We've ended up eating a lot more home-made tomato sauce with pasta, simple soups, and things like that. In the most basic way we still rock out this meal plan, but it's much more simple. Financially it was totally worth it, health wise I know I for one felt MUCH better, and the kids actually liked most of the, especially the baby.
DeleteFor tweaking, I'd leave room to have that one big fancy meal (aka the pork) be based on what we could find affordably. We get all our meat from Getaway Meat Mongers now, so they don't have sales per se. I could just as easily buy three small steaks for the same price though and give the kids small strips of that. :)
I did notice buying less pre-packing elements made our money go a lot further, but it was also a lot of work making everything from scratch. I'm definitely trying to carve out time every day or even every week to get all that baking and stuff done all at once. :)