Day 1: Lasagna, Apple beet slaw
Day 2: Butternut squash soup, Orange slices
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Tossed salad
Day 4: Unstuffed cabbage, Apple slices
Day 5: Baked salmon, Roasted sweet potato and kale salad with pomegranates
Day 6: Tuna salad, Kohlrabi and carrot sticks
Day 7: Potato leek soup, Corn muffins
Notes: While I am cooking on a weeknight or weekend, or if I have a spare moment during the day, I will prep foods to make future meals come together quickly on busy nights. This week that will include dicing and roasting sweet potatoes, chopping kale, cutting up kohlrabi and carrots into sticks, chopping cabbage, and finally peeling and cubing butternut squash. These are things that will keep in the fridge for several days. I plan to do the majority of my prep this week while the lasagna is cooking since I will be prepping other veggies anyways. This type of planning is soooo worth it in order to have a home cooked meal every night. With the chopping out of the way, most of these meals can be on the table within 30 minutes. I also keep a stash of frozen corn muffins in the freezer to pop in the microwave for a few seconds and serve with soups. This weekend I plan to make a big batch. I will be adding some of the corn that I froze this summer, fresh off the cob. Sometimes I grab a nice crusty loaf of bread instead. How often do you serve a home cooked meal on a busy night? How do you make meal prep easier? I am genuinely curious if people think I am crazy for cooking like this every day of the week.
For the potato soup this week, I will be using blue potatoes from my CSA share (the potatoes at the top of the picture above). These unique potatoes have a similar taste to regular potatoes but give an awesome purple/blue color to the soup that gets my kids excited for eating.
GLP Tip of the Week: Are you a soda or a pop person (or maybe soda-pop)?Well, it is almost halfway through the month, but I wanted to announce that it is No Soda November. This is an effort by the American Heart Association to inspire everyone to reduce or eliminate their soda consumption. My family has been on a no soda kick for a long time now and I’ll tell you why. It isn’t only the sugar, although that is a big part of it. Soda also has other unhealthy chemicals that are especially bad for children. And don’t use diet as an excuse; it is potentially worse than regular soda! Instead, reach for milk/nut milk, carbonated waters, plain water, coffee, and tea. Here is my list of reasons to avoid all soda:
- Sugar: A 12 ounce can of Coca-cola contains 10 teaspoons of sugar. Try measuring that out in a bowl for a good visual for your kids. Then double it since most soda bottles these days are 20-24 ounces. Some sodas have even more sugar than this. I think we all know the result of that much sugar – weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease to name a few.
- High fructose corn syrup: This is a manufactured (not artificial) sweetener that is more common than regular sugar in sweetened beverages in the United States. The extra fructose can overload your liver and lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
- Artificial sweeteners: sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin are a few of the synthetic sweeteners that are added to diet soda. Many think that this is a better alternative to sugar, but recent studies have found that these artificial sweeteners may actually lead to MORE weight gain and MORE diabetes than regular sugar.
- Phosphoric acid: this is perhaps the worst of the ingredients. Phosphoric acid erodes your teeth, especially in combination with sugar, and weakens bones, which is why children (and everyone else) should stay far away from it.
- Artificial dyes: yellow #5, red #40, caramel coloring. These artificial dyes have been linked to cancer, vascular disease, and hyperactivity in children
- Bisphenol A (BPA): soda cans are lined with this chemical that has been found to be an endocrine disrupter (see my weekly plan from 10/30/19 for more info) which could cause cancer and reproductive issues
- Brominated vegetable oil (BVO): this one may surprise you, but it is found in a lot of citrus sodas and in sports drinks, so avoid those too. BVO is a registered flame retardant, linked to birth defects, growth problems, hearing loss, major organ system damage, early onset puberty and schizophrenia
