Fast Food, not FAT Food: It's Menu Plan Monday!

Good Monday!

For the next few weeks, I will be posting our dinner plans for fast, healthy meals. We are in the throes of ball season so I am focusing on foods I can fix fast or slow-cook so that we can do less eating out.  It is possible to provide a healthy, wholesome meal for your family in a short time frame.  

All meals this week will be accompanied by our lovely fresh vegetables from our CSA box. This week we got lots of greens, beets and parsnips, a rare treat in central Texas.

Dinners:

Lighter Baked Ziti (recipe here), Green salad, dressing. Prep the ziti the night before so you only have the baking to do. I use whole-wheat penne instead of ziti, I like the smaller pasta.

Meatball SubsI am using my Lean Meat Mix combined with my Meatball/Meatloaf add-ins to make a mighty batch of meatballs, meatloaf and salisbury steak. For meatball sandwiches: Heat meatballs in a small amount of marinara sauce (about 2 cups). Meanwhile, split hoagie rolls lengthwise.  Split an ounces of mozzarella cheese on each side of bread. Top with 5 meatballs, Close and wrap in foil. Place wrapped sandwiches on cookie sheet and heat at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. 

Sesame Ginger Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry

I will serve this simple stir fry with edamame and Better-for-You-Deviled-Eggs. I will also make seasoned spinach to go along. My kids love this recipe.  [Stir-fry: 370 kc, 7 g fat, 33 g protein, 42 g carbohydrate, 5 g fiber, 1003 mg sodium] [ Deviled Eggs for 2 halves: 124 kc, 9g fat, 9 g protein, 1 gram carbs, 0 g fiber, 260 mg sodium]

Shrimp Souffle

This is a recipe from Family Circle back from 2003. I will be serving it with salad (with fresh dill) and fruit. [360 kc, 25 g fat, 22 g protein, 11 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber. 697 mg sodium]

Shepherd's Pie, aka Hamburger Pie

This is a family favorite. I use my lean meat mix and add extra green beans to boast the nutrient quotient.  It can also be made ahead and refrigerated until ready to bake; used instant or ready-made mashed potatoes to speed it up even more.  Since this is an all-inclusive recipe, my only side will be fresh fruit and possibly a salad.

As usual, I am linking up with OrgJunkie.org for her Menu Plan Monday. Have a wonderful week!

Saving Dinner (and Myself)

At first glance, this is not going to look like a weight loss blog! And I suppose, on the face of it, it's not. It is about meeting two main objectives in my journey: 1) Giving my kids a good start in nutritional health (aka helping them avoid the addictions and dangers of highly processed foods). Instead of corn syrup, fillers and preservatives, they are getting intact foods like fruits, vegetables, brown rice, oats and whole-wheat flour.

(2)I am moving my own needs up the priority list so I'm not so distracted by feeding my large family that I just shove whatever I can find in my own pie-hole! A side benefit is that I'm not heating up my kitchen as much every day since the initial stage of cooking has been done already on all these foods!

Hence, I decided it was time to put some yummy home-made meals in the freezer. I took about a week to complete it all, but I did the bulk of the shopping and cooking in one 24 hour period with a lot of help from Chanelle (Allison was out of town at the time).

To put the sheer volume in proper perspective, Chanelle and I bought the majority of the ingredients at a warehouse club and it filled TWO carts and rang up a $550 bill! One of the carts was so heavy, it was exercise to push it! I estimate that by buying most of the ingredients in bulk, I saved 30% to 50% of the cost of producing each of these dishes individually.

Here are the results:

3 Meals of Shepherd's Pie
3 meals of Parsley Parmesan Chicken
24 cups of Spaghetti Sauce (about 6 meal's worth)






4 meals of Cheesy Taco Rice
3 batches of No-Bake Cookies
7 batches of Oatmeal Cookies
24 cups of Granola








6 meals of Mac and Cheese (bye, bye blue box)
12 cups of White Sauce (to go into the mac)
4 meals of Freezer Slaw



12 Breakfast Sandwiches (quickie breakfast for the girls for school)










4 meals of Pulled Pork
2 quarts of Barbeque Sauce
3 meals of Baked Ziti (not actually baked yet!)