Sunday, March 29, 2009

Meal Plans & Goals Progress

I'm going to try doing double-duty with meals this week. Not only am I still continuing to focus on using up some things from the pantry and freezer, but we're also going to try going gluten-free. I don't think it'll be that difficult, honestly, but we'll see. I took a trip to Horrock's on my lunch hour on Friday to pick up some produce so I'll need to use it up this week before it goes bad. I bought lots of lettuce, so we'll be taking salads for a couple of our lunches and having some salads with our dinners again. I bought some fresh fruit - strawberries (surprisingly they are super sweet right now!), cantaloupe, grapes, lemons and limes (for me to squeeze into water), and bananas (which are a regular thing since Carson eats one a day and Kevin and I eat them every other day probably). I dehydrated some strawberries and most of the grapes this weekend. The strawberries will be good to throw into oatmeal or yogurt and the homemade raisins will be for snacking this week. I also picked up lots of veggies, which you'll see featured in our meals this week.

As far as extras go this week, I'll be making some homemade chicken stock on Saturday then canning it on Sunday. And depending on how the blueberry crisp turns out today, I might make another one next Saturday to take to my family party next Sunday.

Sunday ~ baked pork chops (to use some frozen pork), roasted asparagus and brussels sprouts (to use some fresh produce), blueberry crisp (to use some frozen blueberries)
Meatless Monday ~ crockpot black bean soup with sour cream and avocado toppings, salad
Tuesday ~ meatless again quinoa pasta with pesto for me and with tomato sauce for Kevin (to use some more frozen pesto and home-canned sauce), salad
Wednesday ~ chilupe (to use a frozen pork roast, some dried pinto beans and avocado)
Thursday ~ leftovers
Friday ~ crockpot rotisserie chicken (to use up last whole chicken from freezer), savory roasted root veggies
Saturday ~ tilapia with roasted corn (to use up some frozen tilapia fillets and frozen corn)

As far as my goals this week, I'm planning to do at least two cardio videos and one pilates video. And of course, my daily walks at work will continue. I'm also really really really going to try to drop my morning pop this week. I'm hoping the sliced lemons and limes will help with that if I put them in my water bottle. For creativity this week, we'll be making our Mother's Day gifts for my mom and Kevin's mom - we'll do that next Saturday when we're all home. I'm so excited for what we're going to do - I'll post pictures of them after Mother's Day so you all can see how it turns out. I'm still working on the spring cleaning this week again. Our master bedroom is almost done - just need to clear out what has become the junk corner and then dust all the baseboards and clean the windows and I should be done. I'll finish that up this week. I'd also like to start cleaning out some cupboards in the kitchen, but I think that will have to wait for another week.

4 comments:

The Voogts said...

Sounds like a yummy menu this week. I'll have to look back at your weekly menus when I try gluten free ;) Good luck with the water/pop, the exercise and the cleaning. I'm anxious to see what you have planned for Mother's Day! I haven't even thought about it yet. Better come up with something good now :p

Sara said...

I've posted a bunch of gluten-free blogs that I've found down in my Foodie Blogs. You should check them out sometime. I've found some tasty recipes on several of them so far. Plus, A Year of Crockpotting is all gluten-free, so that is a great resource!

Mary Voogt said...

Yeah, I knew that about the crockpotting blog. And I have already tagged some gf sites. I think for our trial I'm not going to buy a ton of specialty stuff...just focus on stuff that we normally use that is naturally gf, like skip pasta, focus on rice, potatoes,etc. for starch. I did buy brown rice flour last week. I would like to find gf oats too. Can't give those up. I need my granola! :) Made my last batch w/o wheat germ...one step closer.

Sara said...

That's pretty much what I'm doing, too. I had picked up the quinoa pasta a couple of months ago just to try for a new pasta - same with some brown rice pasta I picked up awhile back, too (after seeing Stephanie mention it so much on the crockpotting blog - just wanted to see what it tastes like). I did pick up a small bag of GF baking mix last week at the City Market, but that's it. I'm going to wait to buy any specialty flours (sorghum, xanthum, etc.) that are used in baking till I know if we're seeing any improvements or not. I checked out some books from the library on going GF and they all say that oats are naturally GF, although they can be somewhat controversial b/c of cross-contamination issues.