Category: Meal Plan

Hi everyone! So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted! Life has been crazy! My sweet little man is crawling & walking on furniture so I feel like I never sit down! I’ve also been participating in a bible study called “Unglued” which is amazing but has taken up a bunch of my free time.

So the March Meal Plan…I went back and forth about whether or not to post one and I ultimately decided against it…here is why. Recently I’ve watched a few documentaries about food (Forks Over Knives, Vegucated, & Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead)…and they are really challenging me. Normally I make a lot of casseroles, and soups that start with cream of whatever or other canned items. The more I learned, the more I’m realizing I need to change the way I cook for our family. My plan is to eat “cleaner”. If you don’t know what that means clean eating is basically whole gains, organic meats, no processed foods, no refined sugars and lots of organic plant-based foods (fruits, veggies, beans, & nuts). The blog, “100 Days of Real Food” has been an amazing source as I navigate what this means for our family. Check it out here if you want more info (and recipes!!).

This may sound extreme but the more I learn the more I feel like it’s a good thing to do for my family. What I want to say is – I’m going to try to do better, not be perfect! As a whole I’m trying to cut out most canned and boxed foods but I will likely still buy some from time to time (I totally bought a pizza at Costco yesterday – I’m not perfect people!!).

My daughter loves mac & cheese and I have not be able to find a homemade version she likes so we will probably just cut back on how much of it we eat. It will be more of a treat instead of a staple in our lunches.

Yesterday I stocked up on fruits and veggies a Costco. I’ve started educating myself on the “Dirty Dozen” and “Clean 15” lists and shopped accordingly. When I got home I immediately cleaned the strawberries and prepackaged them for easy snacks for my daughter. I also filled my Little Green Pouches with applesauce – again for easy snacks.

I wanted to set some goals for myself:

• Cut out as most processed foods
• Add more fruits & veggies to our diet
• Eat more organic foods (the Dirty Dozen, Milk, & Eggs)
• Tweak my current recipes to fit these guidelines
• Teach my kids to like healthy foods – this may sound hard but really it’s about learning to cook yummy, healthy foods. My daughter LOVES green beans, & broccoli when cooked the right way.
• Cook healthy food that is just as yummy as the other food I used to cook! I’ve had a lot of gross healthy food. It doesn’t have to be that way and I’m determined to figure out how to make it yummy!
• Encourage a healthy lifestyle in our family!

This isn’t going to be easy but lucky for me I have a couple of other friends that are on this same journey!! Hopefully we can support each other and share recipes! I’d encourage you to think about what you are feeding your family and start reading labels. If you have some healthy recipes you would like to share I would LOVE to have them!

While I’m navigating what this means for my family I will not be posting meal plans. At this point I don’t even know what to cook for dinner tonight let alone what to cook for a whole month! As I try new recipes or tweak old ones I’ll try to post those. Tomorrow I’ll be posting a really easy recipe for banana pancakes!

Here I am, month two and I’m already behind! Sickness hit our house all in the midst of my husband working 19 days straight (with long hours).  Basically I was playing mom & nurse and trying not to lose my mind! So the blogging/meal planning had to be put on the back burner. We are almost better but my son has a cough that won’t seem to go away! Prayers are appreciated!

Here is the Link to the Google Doc that has the meal plans.

As a reminder a couple of tips for printing:

• Check the box that says “no grid lines”
• Layout – select “fit to width” and “landscape”

I’ve already heard from a couple of people that they tried some of the recipes and loved them – which is great!! I hope this can be helpful for people! To be honest I probably only made about half of the recipes I planned. But it was still really nice to have the ingredients in the house and not have to put too much thought into the question “what are we having for dinner tonight?”.

Is there a certain recipe you and your family love? I’d love to know about it! I always love trying new recipes and would love to put it into our rotation in the next couple of months!