Meal Planning

I started actually meal planning and cooking a proper dinner most every day about two years ago.  It took a lot of getting used to.  I think it will be interesting for me to write down my weekly meal plan here and see how much of it I actually end up making.  Here is my meal plan for this week.

Tofu and Vegetable Stirfry with Brown Rice - I've made this almost every week since I got pregnant because I crave the vegetables so much, and it's an easy way to use up leftover fresh or frozen vegetables from other dinners.

Breaded Seitans Steaks with Butternut Barley Pilaf and TBD green vegetable - I have a small amount of leftover fresh butternut squash from Christmas dinner that I need to use, and I have all that barley from Amazon that I needed to make the vegetable barley soup, so I'm trying this new "butternut barley pilaf" recipe I found on EatingWell.com.  I try to make one new recipe per week.  The green vegetable yet to be determined will probably either be sautéed garlic spinach, if there is enough leftover spinach from other meals this week, a salad, or maybe something made out of frozen green beans, since I always keep those on hand.

Catalan Sautéed Polenta with Spinach and Butter Beans - I found this recipe on EatingWell.com when I was looking for more ways to include dark green leafy vegetables in meals, and it's a lot better than I ever imagined it would be.

Pita Pizzas - This is a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com.  It's the healthiest pizza recipe I know, and it's really good and really easy.  I generally plan for one pizza recipe per week, usually on Thursday.

Falafel - I decided to make falafel because the pita pizzas only use up about half a pack of pitas, leaving me with about four pitas to use up.  It's also a good weekend dinner because it's tasty.  Anytime I count on making something that is healthier than it is tasty for a weekend dinner, we tend to end up eating take-out or a frozen pizza.

Spaghetti with TBD green vegetable - Whole grain spaghetti with marinara and ground up seitans is one of Sameer's favorites, it's really quick and easy, and I always have the ingredients on hand.  I generally plan for one or two meals per week that don't involve buying fresh produce that could go bad, since we do tend to go out to eat, get take-out, or eat a frozen pizza at least once a week.

Polenta with Vegetarian Chili - My polenta recipe always yields twice as much polenta as I use in that Catalan Sautéed Polenta dish, so I'll use it up on this.  I have a couple small containers of leftover homemade chili in the freezer from a week or two ago, so I'll just cut up and broil the polenta and then serve the leftover chili over it.