But winter lingering chills the lap of May.

Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

April was a good month to us. We traveled to the largest city in Vermont for a weekend and made our first batches of maple syrup. 

While we give a two thumbs up to April, May is going to be a clean up month...everything from our house to the branches to the newly sprouting green grass. Our meals will need to be easy to throw together. 

Week 1
Breakfast
Oat Apple Blender Pancakes
Cereal

Lunch
Chickpea Minestrone

Dinner
Grilled BLTs w/ salad and cooked veggie
Veggie Bean Soup with Noodles
Tortilla Chicken with Salsa Verde and rice

Week 2
Breakfast
Breakfast Quesadillas
Smoothies

Lunch
Mexican Potato Chowder

Dinner
Veggie Fried Rice with Temphe 
Kale & Quinoa Minestrone
Spaghetti and Meatballs

Week 3 (We have guests this week!)
Breakfast
Cranberry Oatmeal
Pancakes
Eggs & bacon 

Lunch
???

Dinner
Beef Tacos with Spanish rice & grilled veggies
Corn Fettuccine with salad
Lentil Sloppy Joes with hash browns

Vegetable Pot Pie

Week 4
Breakfast
Granola

Lunch 
???

Dinner
Coconut Vegetable Curry with rice

Quinoa & Black Bean Casserole

Chicken Fingers with Pasta

April's Meal Plan

April...there is still snow out there, but we are tapping our maple trees so we can cash in on that sweet sap! Today was a nice sunny day over 32 degrees and the sap started to flow. It tastes like sugar water without the guilt. We will take advantage of this bounty by boiling some hot dogs in the sap...and we shall call them maple dogs. It's a once a year kinda treat, ya know. We will also make some maple beans, a tradition this time of year. Wish us luck!

Week 1

Breakfast

• No bake breakfast bars
• Cereal and almond milk

Lunch

• Peanut Sesame Noodles with Sweet 'n' Spicy Meatballs
• Salad with homemade dressing

Dinner

• Maple dogs, maple baked beans, and the best baked broccoli ever
• Pineapple Mesquite Chicken Wraps and homemade gluten free wraps
• Vegetarian Kung Pao over rice (with veggies and temphe)

Week 2

Breakfast

• Mini Egg Pizzas
• Yogurt with frozen berries

Lunch

• Easy Burrito Bowls

Dinner

• Lentil Sloppy Joes with carrot fries
• Spaghetti, homemade tomato sauce, chicken fingers, and veggies 
• Layered Vegetable Enchiladas

Week 3

Breakfast

• Scrambled eggs
• Cereal 

Lunch

• Sweet and Savory Pasta Salad

Dinner

• Family nacho night with taco meat, salsa, guac
• Split Pea Soup
• Chole Saag with rice

Week 4
Breakfast

• homemade granola with yogurt

Lunch

• Creole Sausage

Dinner

• Homemade Mac & Cheese 
• Southwestern Bean Soup with gluten free cornbread
• Creamy Spinach Lentils with rice

March Meal Plan

Another month, another grocery list. This plan works well for us...shop once a month, double every recipe to make 2 meals, cooks once a week. BUT, I need to pay attention to flavors so we aren't have Mexican dishes or tomato sauce all week long. While I don't mind, the kids are slightly more picky and need variety.

Without further ado...our March Meal Plan...which is gluten-free and heavy on the veggies.

Week 1
Breakfast: eggs, cereal, veggie sticks

Lunch:

• Quinoa Enchilada Casserole with a side salad

Dinners:

• Tortilla Soup
• Sausage Etouffee with broccoli, cauliflower, and sausage in place of the crawfish
•  Pasta Alla Vodka with a side salad (we might change this slightly...I'm not sure I want to cook with Vodka--it's too expensive to not drink!)

Week 2
Breakfast: Raspberry Breakfast Bowls
Lunch: Creole rice with sausage  
Dinner:

• Veggie-Lentil Sloppy Joes with gluten free bread and sweet potato fries
• Taco Salad...this recipe is the mother of all taco salad recipes!
•  10-Spice Vegetable Soup

Week 3
Breakfast: Soft & Chewy Sugar Free Granola Bars
Lunch: TBD
Dinner:

• Southwestern Bean Soup
• Homemade Spinach & Artichoke Mac & Cheese with gluten free noodles
• Cheesy Avocado and Beef Quesadillas with a side of grilled peppers

 Week 4
Breakfast: cereal, eggs, veggie sticks
Lunch: TBD
Dinner:

• Rice and Lentil Curry Bowls with Cilantro Cashew Sauce
• Moroccan Spiced Chickpea and Tomato Stew
• Loaded Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes

In the Kitchen this Month: February

Our gluten free meal plan for February. We will do one large grocery trip this month and do our cooking on Sunday for the week ahead. We also double everything so we can eat it for two meals. I enjoy it...the kids do not. Otherwise, this process is working well for us and I like looking forward to the meals ahead!

Week 1

Breakfast:

• Yogurt & granola
• Sausage & Veggie

Lunch:

• Mexican & Potato Chowder

Dinner:

• Beef tacos with corn tortillas, corn/peppers/tomato salsa, slaw
• Tempeh sandwiches in marinade, carrot fries, buttered peas
• Indian Butter Chicken with rice

Week 2

Breakfast:

• Cereal
• Eggs & Veggies

Lunch:

• BLT Salad
• Veggies with hummus

Dinner:

• Cheesy Mexican Lentil Mac
• Veggie Stew
• Veggie Fried Rice

Week 3

Breakfast:

• Pizza Muffins
• Sausage & Veggies

Lunch:

• Lasagna Soup

Dinner:

• Roasted Cauliflower & Chickpea Tacos w/ Corn, Tomato, Pepper Salsa
• “Irish Nachos” Sweet Potatoes with beef
• Chicken Fingers, homemade fries, steamed broccoli

Week 4

Breakfast:

• Cereal
• Tostadas

Lunch:

• Sausage Creole

Dinner:

• Chickpea Tomato Minestrone
• Quesadillas with beans, Spanish rice, & fajita veggies
• Bun-less burgers with twice baked confetti potatoes

In the Kitchen this Week, 9/1/14

We picked up corn, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots, and ground beef at the farmer's market this week. We built our menu around that and cooked all of our meals Saturday. Now we can come home and eat dinner without the stress of chopping, cooking, and cleaning. I love when I can just focus on digging in! (We double most of our recipes so we can have a meal twice during the week.)


These Chili Cheese Lentils by Red and Honey.

Grilled Corn + Cheddar Quinoa by How Sweet It Is.

Pizza...because it's delicious and I can! We had a frozen Against the Grain cheese pizza and added corn and broccoli to the top.

Gluten free pasta with a meat sauce and side of grilled carrots and broccoli. 

We also make blue berry muffins with King Aurthur's gluten free muffin mix. They are so delicious, but tend to liquify once they are a few days old. All the more reason to eat them quickly!

Chicken Mojo and Kid Friendly Veggies

Every week we meal plan. It's for our sanity. To make a family run smoothly, something has got to give---and we gave up spontaneity! But, our meals are delicious, so it's not much of a sacrifice. We cook everything on the weekends in double batches. Sure it takes time on Sunday, but we don't have to cook anything during the week.

This week, our highlights were...

Mojo Chicken Avocado Cups from Rachael Bryant from Meatified. Think mango, avocado, lime juice, cilantro, and chicken walking into a disco and doing the electric slide on your plate. Amazing. And the kids liked it enough. They like all of the ingredients on their own, but in this plate, they didn't love it as much as I expected. Maybe they were having an off day--they didn't even eat all of the mango! Perhaps it was all of the cilantro.

Mac and cheese with....wait for it...beef and veggies. There is no official recipe for this. We have made it so much, it just comes natural. Maybe we like macaroni and cheese too much! We start by browning some beef. I prefer beefalo; it has more flavor in my opinion.Then we grab some veggies from the fridge or freezer, cut, and cook. We pick kid friendly veggies like carrots, peas, tomatoes, cauliflower, and potatoes. In a large pot we cook a whole bag of gluten free noodles...it does have to make 2 meals for the week...if it makes it that far. When the noodles are done, I put them in the strainer in the sink (bonus points if you don't have to take dirty dishes out the sink to put the strainer in it). In the now empty pot, we make the cheese sauce with almond milk, gluten free flour of choice, cheese, salt, and some other spices depending on our mood. We add the beef, vegetables, and noodles with the sauce, stir, and consume.

Chicken: Humane Choices and Gluten Free

I was a vegetarian for a long time, like 15 years. It was a place I was very comfortable in. Ask me to whip up a vegetarian Thanksgiving, no problem. But ask me to pick up some chicken at the store and my palms get sweaty and my heart pounds nervously. There are so many questions that run through my head...Was the chicken happy? Did it get to go outside? Was it able to move? Will eating this chicken make me sick? Will it kill me? Was it fed hormones and antibiotics? 

But then I found this chart from Greener Choices and now I see the light. Chicken comes with a label on it. On that picture below, see that multicolored circle on the right? That says American Humane Association Certified. If I want to buy raw chicken, it's either this or conventionally raised. It sounds good, "humane," but upon closer inspection, it doesn't settle my chicken-loving heart. The farmers can feed the chickens animal byproducts, they do not need to have access to the outdoors, and there is no limit on slaughter line speed. 

Don't get me wrong, it is better than conventionally raised chicken. And food is food when you come right down to it. But if I'm going to eat meat, I need to know that they were treated like I would treat them. I try to buy whole chickens from farmers I know at the farmer's market and natural food store, but it expensive. As it should be. So, I will keep making the hard choices between humane and money...until we raise our own.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets eat! When you find the chicken you want to eat, here are some great recipes to try. They are all Paleo and/or AIP, but all delicious. Really, try them!

My fav is the Mojo Chicken and Paleo Nuggets. The picture at the top is our try at the chicken nuggets. There were oh so very good!


Paleo Chicken Nuggets 

 Paleo BBQ Chicken with Chipotle Slaw and Poblano Guac

AIP Coconut Lime Ginger Chicken

AIP Herb and Coconut Crusted Chicken Breasts

Mojo Chicken Avocado Cups

Grilled Whole Chicken

And when you buy that whole chicken, don't throw those bones away! Make some broth. It's easy, free, and good for you.

Chicken Bone Broth