So upon moving into a new apartment with a huge, fully functional kitchen, I simply had to make use of it and expand my repertoire. These two motivations are what birthed my most recent project--The Recipe Card File. I know, it's so old school, but I love it! My mother hates to cook, and I never knew my Sicilian grandmother to cook either (sadly! oh the recipes that must've gotten lost in that gap!) so I never inherited a recipe card file. Not that my veggie-lovin' self would probably find use for half the recipes that could be provided by the women in my family, but I adore the idea of a family recipe file, being handed down to my kids and their kids, etc. "Spelt Pancakes, just like Grandma Candace used to make," that's what I'm talking about!
So the way I've been using my recipe cards is like so--when it gets to be the time of week to go shopping again, I thumb through my files (I recently had to expand a second box after adding over 100 new recipes!) and pick out the following items:
-4 or 5 entrees, depending on what is left in the fridge at this point
-a salad dressing
-usually a soup and a cold salad, which may be used as a side dish or for lunch
-a loaf of bread (I usually have to double the recipe to make it last all week)
-something for breakfast; muffins, scones, coffee cake, granola bars, etc.
-any ingredients that have a recipe of their own, that are specified in another recipe, such as a spice blend, marinade, or dip
After I choose my recipes, I can quickly check each card and write down the missing ingredients onto a shopping list. Many times, I find I can already produce several of the week's recipes from stuff I already keep in stock.
Just simply sitting down and doing this for myself once a week has been really great for both of us--Jon gets to eat new things other than black bean tacos (which, by the way, were some dang good tacos!), and I get to expand my horizons and make full use of my awesome kitchen without having to rifle through the cupboards every night to figure out what's for dinner. So I figured if making these meal plans has so simplified my own life, then perhaps my readers could also benefit from having a meal plan to look at. So I'm going to start posting my meal plans up here approximately once a week, whenever my kitchen empties out enough for me to make another one. Hopefully you'll be able to draw inspiration from it for your own meal planning, and feel free to ask questions when I'm slow on posting recipes for something that sounds good.
So without further ado, here's my meal plan for the week:
Dinners-
-Crispy garlic tofu bites, with sesame snap peas on the side
-Cheese & vegetable enchiladas with mole sauce, borracho beans on the side
-Spring vegetable soup, with bread and salad on the side
-Leftover veggie burgers (I have mushroom burgers & beet burgers in the freezer)
Salads-
-Chickpea & tomato salad, served on a green salad with smoked tofu (as an entree)
-Maple walnuts
-Mustard & basil vinaigrette
Bread-
-Greek "Daktyla" bread, a wheat & cornmeal bread topped with sesame seeds and made to look like a loaf of thick fingers so it's easy to pull apart
Lunches-
-Golden Potato-Eggplant Salna (Jon *hates* eggplant, so this is a personal lunch to use up an extra one leftover from last week)
-Garam Masala, for the salna
-Leftovers, salads, and meals made from odds, ends, & extras
Breakfast-
-Breakfast bars, made with oats, spelt flour, and lots of nuts and dried fruits
-Fruit salad
-Cold cereal, or oatmeal
The best thing about making recipe cards for meal plans, is that I get to try out new things every week! Check in later for some of these recipes, or poke me with an e-mail if you get impatient. You know I'm still eating delicious stuff, even if I neglect to tell y'all about it!
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