Eating the week

So for those of you unfamiliar with my current meal planning strategy it is as follows:

Monday is fish night. Fish is our favorite as it is so healthy and delicious. We usually pick out a cut of salmon on sale at Kroger. For the last couple of weeks wild caught salmon has been $2.99-3.99/lb! That's just ridiculously awesome. I love S&P salmon, but I've also got to experiment sometimes. I like rosemary and cilantro (separately) as seasonings for the fish.

Tuesday and Thursday are salad nights. I love salads. I like to keep a lot of salad toppings on hand so my fridge and pantry sometimes looks like a little Sweet Tomatoes. My salads usually consist of a bed of lettuce (romaine, iceburg, leaf, cabbages, and/or spinich), a meat protien (chicken or fish), a nut, "finishers" (rasins, crispy noodles, croutons, fresh fruit, and/or cheese), and a dressing. Like I said in my first post I usually make my own dressings, but we also like a lot of the dressings made by Ken's Steak House. The lite caesar is really great. I tend to get pretty creative with my salads and have a few secret salads that I wouldn't feel comfortable posting without a patent. lol. Tonight we had iceburg garden salads with my homemade ginger dressing.

Ginger Dressing
Process

1 lb carrots

1/2 c rice vinegar

1/2 c water

1/4 c fresh ginger root

2 T garlic

1/4 c onion

1/4 c lemon juice

1/4 c soy sauce

2 T sesame oil

1/2 c salad oil

in a blender or food processor to a desired consistency.
(You can also add 1/4-1/2 cup of mayo if you like, but we hate the stuff.)

Wednesday is bean night. My husband is half latino and loves the flavors of latino food. When we were first together we were even more frugal than now (imagine that!) and decided we'd eat some form of beans and rice every night. Then we forgot a pot on the stove during a workout and smoked up the house and the price of beans soared at the same time so we started to modify the weekly meal plan. I can hardly look at a bean after 6+ months of that plan, but my husband still loves the taste and swears by the health benefits of the bean. I used to sit by a huge pot of dry beans and wait for them to cook on my days off from school, but thankfully, now I have a slowcooker. I'll try any kind of beans recipe, but black is my old standby. We've also subbed the rice with bulgar or some other ancient grain for the health benefits. I usually make mine a taco-less taco salad.

Friday is a-la-carte night. I'm not a huge fan of this as I'd like to have a huge meal every night, but my structure hating husband loves it. We just throw a couple of small plates together and snack all night.

The weekend is pretty open. We do Kroger shopping on Saturday. We pick up our weekly essentials, produce, and weekend treats there, then do Walmart shopping on Sunday mornings. We sometimes make special meals at home, like our once-a-month Thanksgiving dinner, or we eat a meal out, like subs, sushi, or Sweet Tomatoes (the s's).

We've been working this schedule since at least Spring and we've been pretty satisfied with it. We've lost our winter weight by having the structure based on healthy meals. The structure will likely change over time. I'm really looking forward to soup in the Fall, so one salad night will probably turn into a soup night. I guess we'll see...