Weekly Meal Ideas

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Every two weeks, I sit down and come up with a meal plan. I do major grocery shopping every two weeks (when we get paid), so I like to have my meal plan done so I know what I need to buy. There are several things I take into consideration when choosing what my family will eat during the coming weeks:

What does everyone prefer? There are certain things that Bekah or Ben won't eat, so those things almost never make it onto meal plans, even if I really like them.

Do we have any especially busy evenings? I will do soups or something that can be left on the stove, put in a crockpot, or can be made quickly on these days (Mondays are usually busy).

Have we eaten it a lot lately? Foods that we've had many times recently may not make it on the next meal plan.

What fits best with our allergies/current dietary needs? We're trying some special diets and we also have several allergies to work around at this point. In general, this has required us to use a lot more meat and fresh produce in our meals.

Keeping all this in mind, I sit down and start planning it out, day by day. I fill in days as I come up with ideas. I put two meals for Saturdays and Sundays, since we'll all be here for lunch and dinner (breakfast is whatever you can grab at this point). I also plan for weekly breakfasts and lunches for all of us, as well as snacks, if I can think of any (with no gluten, casein, or packaged foods, snacks are not easy to come by).

The next two weeks, we're working on a special detox-diet, so there will be a lot of soups. You can read more about how broth is great for healing on any of the blogs I follow, or GAPS Guide, or GAPS Diet. In a more normal two-week period, we'd have 2 or 3 soups. But, here is an example of our meal plan:

Friday (grocery shopping day) -- Tacos or enchiladas
Saturday -- Chicken vegetable soup, fried chicken and fries
Sunday -- Enchiladas, marinated chicken and onion rings
Monday -- Spicy chicken soup
Tuesday -- Burgers and fries (grass fed, baked homemade fries)
Wednesday -- Chicken rice soup
Thursday -- Stuffed peppers
Friday -- Italian ground beef soup
Saturday -- Chicken and rice, pizza (some without cheese)
Sunday -- Tacos or enchiladas, Italian wedding soup
Monday -- Leftovers
Tuesday -- Chili soup
Wednesday -- Burgers and fries
Thursday -- Taco soup

These are our dinners for the next two weeks. Additionally, Ben will have Mexican Chicken Soup for lunch everyday (he loves it; he's had it everyday for about three years!). I will have a fresh salad and taco soup the first week, and salad and enchiladas the second week. We'll be using our grassfed beef for a lot of this (we're buying a large amount of organic beef from a local farmer this weekend).

For breakfast, Ben will have organic bacon, potatoes fried in coconut oil, and ground beef mixed with pastured eggs. Bekah and I will have whatever's around...every time I make something for us, I never eat it! She'll have eggs with beef and coconut flour pancakes a lot. She is also drinking a bit of juice mixed with fresh broth right now, for detox (we are trying to heal her gut to get rid of allergies and fix her deficiencies, as detailed in last Sunday's post).

I'm in a "Mexican" mood lately, so I may get some corn chips and salsa for a snack. Ben likes fresh fruit for snacks, especially watermelon. Exactly what we buy, I'll detail in my next post on grocery shopping and budgeting for healthy food!

What do you eat? Are you happy with your diet? Do you have any fun soup ideas?