Food and the acquiring and making and eating of it are important things for every person to think about. When you are doing acquiring, making and eating for eight people, it weighs even more heavily.
I have done the meal planning, menu making thingy. I have asked friends for advice and opinions on what works for them, what doesn’t and even number crunched with a few of you.
Why?
Because food is a part of life- a fun part and an expensive part and, well for a stay at home mom it is often a major way you contribute to your family’s quality of life.
I am often torn about all of the food hulabaloo because I want to balance good tasting food with healthy food with responsible food with economical food.
Hmm. That is a lot to put into account.
Remember when I did beans for a month last December? Yeah, I made beans and rice every day for dinner leading up till Christmas.
Christmas dinner and my famous (according to me) butterscotch pie never tasted so good.
The reason I was all about the beans was two-fold. 1) My family was becoming a bit to greedy with meals. Like the salad was only good if it had blue cheese in it and bananas were lame compared to delicious cantaloupe and milk in the morning wasn’t as good as vanilla steamers made on moms espresso machine topped with whipped cream. And 2) Our grocery budget was insane. Like insane people.
I know when you read a million blogs like I do you read about crazy obscure families with 48 people in them eating for 210$ a month. I know THAT is unrealistic, but I’m telling you Costco was eating me alive.
Anyways- what do beans have to do with me now?
Nothing really.
So why am I talking about it?
Well I wanted to share with you a little bit about some ch-ch-changes we have been going through since February.
See, my husband turned 35 and decided to become a healthier version of himself. He did this through Jillian Michael’s 30 day shred and eliminating lots of extras (bread, sweets) and it paid off. Like 30lbs paid off. Well, that was Phase 1. Phase 2 included reading a lot and a lot resonating with him regarding a vegan lifestyle.
Whoa.
If you know Jerbear then you know the first meal I learned to make as a 19 year old newly wed was meatloaf.
Meatloaf people. With gravy.
The gravy was probably from a packet.
But if you know Jerbear, then you also know he is an all-in kinda person too. Like when he goes for something, he goes, well, all in. Anyways, I was like, babe, if you want to go vegan- we can all go vegan. It would be silly to make separate meals for you and we shouldn’t care that much about what we are eating anyway.
So in February I bought some almond milk and cleared out the fridge and bought a bunch of Swiss Chard.
For a solid three months I was super good about it. Like, so good we went to Great Wolf Lodge indoor water park and ate nachos – WITH NO CHEESE.
But then I started to slide. Well, I decided I didn’t want to be the crazy lady (no offense) who wouldn’t let their kids eat string cheese at a birthday party. So we (actually, I did with myself, my husband doesn’t care where I fall regarding this) negotiated. I decided we can all eat ( for the most part) what we want when we aren’t at home, but at home we will stay on a vegan diet.
It has been super successful. Except for when the Pioneer Woman posted a recipe for a tuna melt and I was obsessed with making it and went out and bought ingredients (even mayo!!) and ate about 14 of them.
I am human.
Apparently a tuna melt loving human.
So, we have been learning loads about non dairy and non meat meals and have (over all) been pretty happy.
But that is just Part 1.
Part 2 is for another day.
That is exactly how we do it. I don’t force veganism on the kids when they have choices.
That didn’t make a ton of sense. Sorry. I mean, when we are out, they can choose whatever they want from the menu/buffet/whatever. At home, I keep it almost exclusively vegan.
I like Part 1!