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Food for Thought

Meal Planning with CSAs

It’s spring and I’m anxious about next week. It’s because The Produce Box starts deliveries for this season and we signed up for the Carolina Grown deliveries starting next week as well.

Why am I scrutinizing the menus? It’s because I’m hoping to have a couple weeks of practice before doing a food challenge in May. Our plan is to have the local food deliveries cover 80% of our meals and to keep our food expenses $350 or under (including eating out) for the entire month.

Eating More Vegetarian Meals

Right off the bat, my plan is to cook more vegetarian meals during the week. (My husband is in charge of cooking on weekends.) Besides saving money, this will also allow us to expand our cooking skills. We’ll have to find ways to main the flavor of some of our favorite dishes without relying on meat.

I’ll be pulling out a couple of my cookbooks and trying out a few things. Right now I’m looking at relying on: local produce market

  • How to Cook Everything – Mark Bittman
  • Jamie’s Food Revolution- Jamie Oliver
Both are focus on healthy meals that happen to having many vegetarian dishes. Along with using the CSA deliveries, I’ll fill in any gaps with purposeful grocery trips that allow us to stay on target for our budget.
April will be a test run to see how we can do and in May we’ll fine tune it and have a month long challenge with it. Please submit your ideas and recipes; I’d love to try them out either this month or next. Who know, maybe we learn to cook some of our favorite dishes that we usually go out for and instead stay at home. Let’s hope!

Thoughts on Meal Planning

How do you meal plan for your family? What has worked best for you and your family’s wallet and health?

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