Meal Plan #3

back to school, but still summer, and no one's brain works

I don’t know how your end of August self feels, but my brain is fried. Toasted. MIA.

I could give you a list of the silly mishaps or miscommunications from the week that prove this status, but my guess is that if you have school age children you know exactly what I'm talking about. So this week we are focusing on easy, seasonal (because despite what those back to school ads tell us it’s still summer) and tasty.

Let’s get to it! I’m providing ideas for a whole week’s worth of breakfasts and dinners. Lunch is just one of those less exciting meals, so while I’ll give you my list of snacks and lunches at the bottom, I doubt it’s earth-shattering.

I would guess that our family is not unique in rotating through the same set of 10-15 meals for each season, but I think this is a matter of efficiency and brain capacity more than anything else. Making new recipes, or adapting to new ways of eating is hard when people are hanging on your legs, or screaming, or asking you questions about grammar. While new ideas are great, and I’m always grateful when someone else does some thinking for me, I just need you to know that you’re not alone if you’re feeling bored by your dinner queue, or like surely everyone else eats more variety. I’m going to bet they don’t…

A few notes:

Unless the meal has a salad component (i.e. cabbage salad, or a veggie heavy soup or stir fry) I serve dinner with a simple green salad. It’s an easy way to make sure we’re all getting more vegetables in, and it fills people up. Nothing fancy — usually just lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, cabbage etc… or whatever else we’ve got on hand. I do think regular exposure to vegetables helps, even if you’re just picking out a few veggies the toddler can chew, and it means you can tell a kid to take an extra helping of salad before they have a second helping of dinner.

All these meals are easily adapted to be gluten and dairy free — the majority of our family eats this way — but I’ll also give you some notes as to how I manage with my own AIP-ish diet. My general philosophy is to try to have a main dish that everyone can eat, and then customize sides, or to have meals with components so that people can adjust according to individual preference.