I will be restarting my posts to my blog as I really find it fun to share with my family our happy times! And it is fun for me to look back and see our special moments together. Today's post is about Meal Menus! I have done meal menus for years, but they have all been weekly. Since I buy bulk more now and usually only shop once every two weeks if possible, I needed to change his many times I make a menu. Also, every week I make lesson plans for school and trying to make a menu makes so much more work on my free day! So I tried making an entire month. The first attempt, it took me half the day to make sure I didn't put too many like-dishes back to back. I then started to think about themed days. Mexican night, American fare, pasta, Asian stir-fry, etc. Now I cook according to my theme day. I print out the menu and post for all to see. I also add the desserts and really try to make them as it encourages the children to eat their meals!
I'd love it if you would share some of your recipes! I'm interested in what you do with polenta - we love polenta at our house.
ReplyDeleteHi Ann! Thanks for stopping by! I would love to share recipes! Polenta is a great meal for breakfast if one can prepare it the night before. I cook 4 C of water per 1 C of grain for 45 minutes. Then I pour it into a bread pan and refrigerate over night. The next morning, I slice the polenta in the bread pan and gently take out with a flat spatula. I place some homemade "butter" or earth balance in the pan and then gently fry the slices - and I usually do two pans at the same time. I've also grilled them on my pancake griddle. After, we place a few tablespoons of applesauce on the slices and a drizzle of maple syrup! Delicious!
ReplyDeleteWe like sliced polenta topped with a chunky veggie tomato sauce. I never thought of serving it for breakfast. My daughter will LOVE this variation!
DeleteI like your menu format. I think I will give that a try. I always handwrite my menus in a long list. Yours is so nice and clean. Thanks for sharing. And thanks for the ideas for polenta we are polenta fans too.
ReplyDeleteI used to do that when my daughter was in school. What I ended up doing was writing a whole week's menus .... leaving one day for leftovers, one day soup/sandwich.
ReplyDeleteThen I'd write the 7 days meals on the front of an index card, putting all the groceries necessary on the back of the index card. Once I'd built up quite a few index cards, we'd just pull out 4 cards for the month. It was easy making my grocery list, just putting together the ingredients from the 4 cards.
I wrote the meals on a wipe-off board, in case something came up and we had to switch them around a bit. Other than milk, bread, eggs, we only got groceries once a month. It was a chore and it takes a lot of storage space (which is lacking at my house), but definitely worth the effort.