Our Food Rhythm, 6 weeks in
Post written by Laura Sampson on 24 May 201111 Comments
Six weeks ago I set out to make a meal rhythm for our family. I was looking to make a little headway against “ick I don’t like that” which had recently made it’s way into our house. I sat down and looked at the kinds of meals we eat regularly, this is easy for me, I’m a food blogger. I looked at what kind of meals I feel best about serving my family. And which ones made my family happiest. I fiddled with the list for a few days and before finalizing ran it by the family one night during our evening meal.
I expected a fuss – what I got was excitement. Everyone was intrigued with the idea of a set weekly food rhythm. There was a bit of concern we might be stuck eating the same thing week after week, I quickly quelled that fear when I explained our ‘rhythm’ to them.
Our Food Rhythm
Monday-Rice, we can have anything with rice in it from soup to stir-fry
Tuesday-Pasta, lasagna to pasta primavera
Wednesday-Beans or Lentils
Thursday-Soup and Bread
Friday-Cheese, pizza to quiche
Saturday-Leftovers or Crock Pot
Sunday-Roast Day with all the fixings, a large family dinner usually meat-centric
I went on to tell the family that just because we have rice night doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t have tomato rice soup on Thursday or Rice and Beans on Wednesday. It does mean we will all have something we like as a main dish for everyday of the week. And it’s true, the “ick I don’t like that” has gone away, they see the daily ‘food’ as a touch point for liking more and more foods. I think because they know what everyday holds, just not what flavor it’s coming in. “Yes rice is great, and here it is in a burrito with prickly pear cactus and salsa…hmmm do I like this? Maybe, I’ll try it anyway.”
The side benefits of the food rhythm have been amazing for me, as head chef, head shopper, head “gee I hope they like this” I now know what everyday holds. I can prepare an entire week of menus in less than five minutes. It used to be a long and painful process but now I know what each day has to have and I can plan accordingly. It has planted a bit of peace in our lives that I wasn’t expecting but am perfectly willing to accept.
thanks for this… i like how your choices for the days leave so much room still to be creative… thank you… food planning is my nemesis… can’t seem to stay on track. good thing my husband cooks too.
So funny! I just did this myself. Here is our week:
Monday – Pasta
Tuesday – Beans / Lentils
Wednesday – Something with leftover beans (big salad, burritos, etc.)
Thursday – Roast / Big Stew / Curry
Friday – Pizza
Saturday – Soup
Sunday – Breakfast for Dinner
Sunday: Bean and Leek Cassoulet
Monday: Vegan Chef Salad
Tuesday: Seitan, Broccoli, Sweet Potatoes, Rice
Wednesday: Quesadillas
Thursday: Pasta with Vegan Meatballs
Friday: Eat out
Saturday: Breakfast for Dinner
We’ve saved a ton of money this way and shopping is a snap. We also expected to hear complaints but the kids actually are comforted by the predictability and use it to figure out what’s going on that day.
I am totally doing this today! Such a good idea.
Love it. Now, if I could just get your menus, I’d be set!!
Thanks for the idea, we will be implementing it.
love this! would you be up for sharing your template hanging there on the clipboard? is it available on your foodie blog? thanks!
Thanks everyone for the great feedback-I love to hear what others think and how they plan their weeks. The photo is not mine, it was added by Simplicity Parenting so I don’t have particulars on it. If you are interested in what my recipes look like or anything else my blog address is http://heywhatsfordinnermom.blogspot.com/ feel free to drop me an email if you need any particular recipes or ideas. Or leave a comment here.
Love it. There are so many different types of lentils and beans, that with us, we rotate from black lentils to green, yellow, and then the grand finale: chick peas whipped into hummous. It is a fav of our family, and the baby gobbles it up.
We have altered this from time to time. I learned about this in lifeways training and have been working to making the perfect meal plan we need not alter. I guess with time everything changes a little. I also plan breakfast and lunches so I can follow the rhythm and not duplicate breakfast that will be the same as K school snack.
Sunday: anchor meal: flank steak, broccoli and rice (kids love it and eat so much with the added bonus of leftover “meat snacks” for lunches
Monday: Rice
Taco Tuesday: meat, beans, rice, tomato, cheese, taco shells or tortillas
Wednesday: soup and bread
Thursday: crock pot
Friday: Chicken
Saturday roast or dinner out
Oh this is fabulous! Three weeks ago I presented my hubby with cookbooks and asked him to choose 5 recipes. What a tremendous help. We have our main meal at lunch, and I am always stressing about what healthy meals to cook. This has made my life so much simpler!! Shopping is a breeze, we save money and I have a list of menu’s and can cook what I feel like on any given day without worrying if I have the right ingredients in the house! Breakfasts include granola, scrambled tofu, omelettes, barley cereal, oatmeal, pancakes all served with fruit, “tofu yoghurt” and homemade wholewheat bread and various nut spreads. Dinners are fairly simple: soup and bread or fruit smoothie and bread. Thank you all for the additional ideas!
My meal plans used to be waaay more complicated before I started following Kim’s suggestion of having a ‘rhythm’. Thinking of five or six interesting meals, finding all those different recipes, and doing all the SHOPPING for those millions of ingredients was way too time-consuming and ended up costing us way too much money (as in when you buy a $7 jar of something although you only need a teaspoon of it for one of your recipes). After a few weeks of meal planning, I would get frustrated and snap and not plan at all, and then we’d rotate through the same four dishes over and over, until we’d snap again and go back to meal planning.
The food rhythm thing changed everything. We now have way more variety in our meals than we do when we just wing it, but without all the stress of elaborate planning. The whole thing feels very manageable and stress-free and… soothing, somehow. I love that meal planning now takes less than 5 minutes. It’s so much easier to think “what soup should I cook?” rather than “WHAT should I cook?” It’s also cheaper, sicne you can always whip up a dish on pasta night that uses up a few left-over ingredients if you haven’t actually planned for a particular pasta dish, same with soup etc, so you don’t relay on proper recipes nearly as much. When we first started it, I did it without announcing it to anyone. It took ages before my family even noticed that we always had soup on Mondays etc, my husband being the last to catch on. But everyone in my family completely loves it – we all love the reliability of meal time, we NEVER have complaints (especially since soup night evolved into soup & dessert night), and we only rely on recipes when we want to. It’s fun again goign to the farmer’s market and coming home with whatever was fresh and turning that into the night’s pasta or soup or whatever it is supposed to be that night.
Here’s our plan:
Sunday: Sunday dinner with the works (the only meal that centres around meat)
Monday: soup and salad (and dessert)
Tuesday: fish or eggs (quiche, omelets)
Wednesday: grains & beans (stir fries, usually)
Thursday: pasta
Friday: pizza
Saturday: dinner with friends, or fun kid food and adults eat later (take out?? date??)
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