I just finished watching Food, Inc.  Great Movie! The take home message is to buy local, and in season food! If you haven’t seen the movie yet, did you know you can download and “rent” the movie to watch from Amazon for $2.99!  I just realized this!  Right under “Buy”, you click WATCH IT NOW, $2.99 to rent.  

Although I’ve mentioned them before, after watching the movie, I was so glad we buy our meat local (beef and pork at least).  If you live in Utah and are looking for a local meat supplier, you must check out The Christiansens farm for well fed, well treated, organic, and super awesome meat!  Hollie Christiansen is my neighbors- sister.. which is how I found out about their farm. 

Last night, I pulled out our bag of frozen Edamame to snack on while I prepared dinner.  The kids devoured it! I forgot how much they liked this great snack the first time I bought it.  It’s definitely coming out more often this week.

As always, head over to the side bar, or Menu Archives to print the menu!

Don’t forget…. Monday is the last day to enter for Crest Pro-Health supplies,

and FRIDAY is the last day for the V8-V Fusion Visa $100 Gift card!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween. I, for one, am not sad to see Halloween over.  Its one event where my kids are just completely exhausted, irritable, and ready for a good detox!  Hopefully this week we can get some good solid whole foods and move on with eating better. 

The funniest  story I remember about Halloween (funny to me) was many many years ago, I was watching Regis and Kelly.  Well, Kelly Rippa talked about how she spent days, or maybe weeks preparing little treat bags with ribbons on them for the trick or treaters. She was ready with her whole bowl of treat bags and got NO trick or treaters!  It’s like planning a party and no one shows up!  I laugh about that story every year for some reason.

My simple menu planning (of eating the same 30 meals each month) needed a little shaking up.   Today I chose 2 cookbooks (I used a Vegetarian Crockpot cookbook I borrowed from a friend, and a cookbook my mom picked up, written by Costco, from Costco).

I flipped through the cookbooks.  Using small post-it notes, I tagged the pages of things I want to make this week. Not only dinner, but salads, breakfasts, and snacks too.  For the dinners, I added the day of the week on the post it note so I have a menu for the week.  The whole process only took a few minutes.

Here are some things that we are trying this week.

Dinner

• Slow cooker spanish beans and rice
• Citrus Walnut Pasta salad
• Chicken and avocado skewers
• Burritos
• Sloppy Lentils

Lunches

• Berry Spinach Salad
• Avocado sprout sandwiches
• Fruit kabobs with cinnamon cream
• Apple salsa
• Harvest spring cranberry walnut salad

Breakfasts

• Smoothies
• Sweet bread
• muffins
• energy bars

Pictures and recipes will follow this week. Also, look for an AWESOME GIVEAWAY (maybe Tuesday)

Don’t miss a thing! I posted twice today, so check out Eating out made healthy if you missed it.

 These are the meals I have planned for the week. I’ll update them with recipes as we eat them.  I generally go through cookbooks to plan these meals, but them modify them to make them healthier as I make them, which is why I delay posting the recipe.  Wait till you see my cookbook binder I’m working on! I”m super excited about it.

Monday; Chicken Pillows with Pea Salad

Tuesday; Black bean cornmeal pie

Wednesday: Alphabet soup with lot’s of veggies

Thursday; Sweet and Sour chicken

Friday: Spinach Lasagna (for the kids.. Husband and I are celebrating our anniversary…12 years!)

I really feel like life has been more simple since I started meal planning. Truly it has only taken me a few minutes each week.  I encourage all of you to start meal planning today!

Top three reasons we plan a menu:

• Save money
• A planned dinner is generally healthier than one not planned
• Kids who sit down with their family for one meal a day or better adjusted socially and mentally.

MENU PLANNING MADE EASY:  I have sat down with the help of the children and wrote a list of meals we typically eat on a regular basis.  Once we have a list, menu planning is easy.  I can just sort them onto a calendar.  The hard part is getting a list together.  This is ours. It’s not complete yet, but we will keep adding to it.  I like to keep one open day a week to try new recipes that we may add to our master list.

At this point, you can use cool software like my sister created.  This software allows you to drag and drop each meal onto your calendar. If you’ve put recipes behind the meals, it will also create a shopping list for you. This is the fastest and easiest menu planning I have ever seen!! My sister is absolutely brilliant.

Another option I am trying is to write recipe cards with each meal assigned a card.  A picture too is helpful for the children who can’t read yet.  With each recipe card layed out on the floor, each child chooses which meals you will prepare this week. If they are older, a child picks a recipe card and they are responsible for preparing that meal.  Simple!  Click here for some blank recipe cards.

Challenge:  Sit down today with the children and write a list of their favorite meals.  Keep this list with you to plan one week or a month if you have enough.