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I'm sorry I missed last week. I am selling my house and last week was over-the-top stressful. I think we mostly ate cheese quesadillas standing at the kitchen counter. Some weeks are like that. But the thing about healthy eating is that we can always try tomorrow, because we have to eat every day. I resolve to do a better job feeding my family this week and that starts with planning a menu. Here's my meal plan:


Monday: cabbage and ramen salad with pan fried tofu (just cook it until it's brown) and watermelon (using homegrown cabbage shown below)



Tuesday: meat tacos with lettuce, bell peppers and mangos



Wednesday: whole wheat noodles topped with peanut sauce, garden peas and chunks of broccoli and cauliflower (from my garden!), apples





Thursday: noodles topped with pesto sauce and chopped greens from the garden, grapes

(click link for a video and photos!)


Friday: pizza party with a friend!


Saturday: Pizza at another friends party!

I love cooking in the winter: it's warm, it's cozy, it gives me something to do when I'm trapped inside, hiding from the wind and snow. Summer is another story.


Cooking in the summer feels so inconvenient. My AC doesn't work well, my house is hot, and I want to be out playing, not inside melting by the oven or stove. The kids are home and need to be fed 4 times a day. It can feel burdensome.


To save myself from serving little Cesar's pizza every night, I batch cook in the summer. I double and triple recipes so we eat at least 3 times from the one meal I cook. I also make food that requires little actual cooking: like salads, pastas and dips. Here's an example of that below!


Monday: Hummus and tzatziki with store bought naan bread, frozen mangoes and salad greens




Tuesday: tortellini salad (cook tortellini noodles and put on top of salad greens with dressing, cheese, canned kidney beans and chopped apples - it's like the photo below, but instead of croutons I use cheese tortellini noodles)


Wednesday: Cold peanut sauce noodles with frozen broccoli, cabbage ramen salad, cut apples


image from Real Mom Nutrition


Thursday: Kid's last day: little cesars pizza + green salad (I have a lot of salad in the garden right now)

Photo is of the lettuce in my garden!


Friday: left over hummus and tzatziki inside tortillas with salad greens


Saturday: tortellini salad leftovers


Sunday: Peanut noodles leftovers, make a second batch of cabbage ramen salad


Happy cooking (or minimal cooking anyway)!



Iron deficiency is one of the most common nutrition deficiencies in young children. Before birth, infants take iron from their mother and store it in their bodies. After birth, they only get a little bit of iron from breastmilk. By 6 months, those stores of iron run low, and infants need more iron from their diet. Enter in solid foods! Six months is the perfect time to start infants on solids so they can 1) learn how to feed themselves (yay!!) and 2) get some iron.


Pureed red meat is the best source of iron. The second-best source is iron-fortified infant cereal (like baby rice or baby oatmeal). If your baby is vegetarian, pureed beans and lentils are also a good source of iron.


Iron is also important for women who are having their periods. Iron deficiency is common in women. I used to think that red meat was bad and avoided it all costs. I thought I was getting enough iron from beans. When I developed iron deficiency, I changed my mind!


The problem with red meat is that it is high in bad fats, called saturated fats. However, foods like cheese and butter are also high in this type of fat. So, I cut back on the amount of cheese I eat and have red meat instead. It is more nutritious than cheese and I'm not eating any more bad fat than I was before.


Red meat is expensive! Serving size to the rescue: a 6-month-old infant only needs about 1 Tablespoon per meal! If you made a pound of ground beef and pureed it for your infant, that meat would last several weeks. Serving size for an adult is the size of 1 deck of cards - also less than most of us want to eat. Eating smaller serving sizes cuts down costs! Mixing beans with your meat also helps it to last longer.


That being said, my menu this week includes a lot of red meat. My husband is a hunter, so we have a freezer full of elk meat, which is similar to beef. He made a large roast yesterday. We had small servings yesterday and will eat the rest this week in other things.


And with that long primer, here is my IRON RICH menu:


Monday: enchiladas w/beans and leftover roast (I'll use meat and beans) + chopped bell peppers + corn + mangoes


image from foodhero.org


Tuesday: barbecue beef sandwiches (no recipe: I'll just heat the meat in store bought barbeque sauce with some lentils I already have cooked) + bean salad + watermelon


image from foodhero.org


Wednesday: beef & bean stew (no recipe: I'll just put meat, onions, carrots and lentils in a crock pot with broth and let cook all day) + cornbread + watermelon


Thursday: cheese tortellini salad (no recipe: I'll cook tortellini and put it on top of green salad with pecans and store-bought dressing) + apples


Friday: hummus + tzatziki + tabouleh + pita bread


image from ddinutrition.com


Saturday: leftovers!






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