MENU MONDAY - 5/22/17

We had a produce switch with our burgers last week, ditching pea pods and grapes for a hodge-podge salad with tahini lemon dressing. I love that dressing!

Now that I've gotten back in the habit of delegating more cooking responsibilities, I'm going to get back in the habit of doing more advance cooking and prep. I used to be really good about it, but have slacked off. It's simple to do and worth the little bit of extra effort on the front end, so that's what I'm working on next.

NEW RECIPES FROM LAST WEEK
* lemon lentil soup - We now have five different soup recipes using red lentils, but they're each a little different than the others.

COOKING IN ADVANCE (These are often spontaneous projects, so they'll include things we did at the last minute the previous week and/or plan on doing in the upcoming one.)
* meatballs - We'll mix six pounds of ground venison with six of 93/7 ground beef to make a triple batch of meatballs for the freezer.
* pumpkin bread (double batch, freeze some)
* peanut butter
* seasoned mix of black & pinto beans (crockpot, freezer)

BREAKFAST
* smoothies / pumpkin bread  
* egg & veggie scramble
* doughnuts at church
* oatmeal with a rotation of the following toppings - brown sugar, cinnamon, milk, homemade peanut butter, maple almond butter, raisins, dried cranberries, fresh or frozen fruit, huh-koe-pee milk, and/or energy mix x4

DINNER
* leftovers (every Sunday so that we can have a day off from cooking)
* zesty chicken (crockpot) / brown rice / strawberry & pear green salad
* everyone out and about eating different things
* crockpot beans / rice / tomato slices
* grilled chicken caesar salad / focaccia
* Dutch babies / smoothie popsicles
* sweet & sour meatballs / brown rice / frozen corn

SNACKS & DESSERTS
* fruits and vegetables
* peanuts and dry roasted almonds
* popcorn with nutritional yeast, regular salt, or seasoned salt (kernels from the WinCo bulk department that get popped in my Lodge Dutch oven, but you can see my thoughts on both the wonderful Dutch oven and the fantastic West Bend Stir Crazy in this post.)
* pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Notes: Any chicken breasts, 93/7 ground beef, applewood smoked ham, or pork tenderloins in our menus are from Zaycon Fresh. We've been making bulk purchases from them for few years and have been pleased with their products.

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