The Plan:
Day 1: Broccoli cheddar soup, Crusty bread
Day 2: Braised red cabbage with bacon and apples, Corn muffins
Day 3: Homemade pizza
Day 4: Taco chili
Day 5: Penne pasta with homemade pesto and red peppers, Frozen fruit smoothie with super greens powder
Day 6: Eggplant parmesan (from freezer supply)
Day 7: Mushroom and wild rice soup with potatoes
This meal plan was curated using local foods that are in season now or preserved during the peak growing season in the U.S. Midwest. The plan is an exact replica of what our family is eating this week unless we are out of town. Meal plans are developed using whole foods and my meal planning system (click here!) and are meant to be healthy and easy to prepare. Most recipes will take no more than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Occasionally meals may require all day slow cooking, advanced prep, or some oven time. Recipes are provided when available. I sincerely hope this will help with your own meal planning!
Pantry Shuffle:
Out of Storage: (preserved when in season and coming out of my root cellar, freezer, canned, or dehydrated stash)
- Broccoli florets, sweet corn, pesto, diced red peppers, eggplant parmesan, vegetable broth (freezer)
- Red cabbage, apples (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Onion, garlic, potatoes (root cellar)
- Bacon (freezer from Mastodon Valley Farm Meat share)
- Super greens powder (dehydrated)
Into Storage: nothing this week
Notes: Whole Foods Diet
Do you count calories, carbs, or grams of protein and fat? I’ve tried counting everything under the sun in pursuit of the perfect diet that would make me look and feel good. It was difficult, time consuming, and a bit obsessive, if I’m being honest. In my opinion, not a great way to live.
As my life became more complicated with kids, I found I just didn’t have the time or energy to focus on counting anything and I fell back into the pattern of eating out and buying processed food at the store. I felt awful and I put on weight.
That all changed when I did just one thing… starting reading labels and eliminated anything that wasn’t made from whole foods. Just by cutting out the processed junk, my health changed dramatically. Better sleep, regular bowels, less brain fog, and yes, I did shed a few pounds. This set off my interest in nutrition and healthy eating and there has been no looking back!
Over the next few weeks I’m sharing my 5 main dietary principles that make up what I think constitutes a healthy diet. This is how I cook and plan my meals and you will see it in my recipes and the way I stock my pantry. Although I do think these principles can be good for everyone, this is just my opinion after trial and error along with a LOT of dietary research. Please don’t take it as gospel and make sure you do what is best for your body. That may mean you need to consult with your own doctor or nutritionist before making any drastic changes.
The first dietary principle that I follow is to eat a Whole Foods Diet. No, this does not mean that I only shop at Whole Foods! A Whole Foods diet means that you eat a clean diet with REAL food. Sounds easy right? Not these days. The bulk of grocery store foods are processed and ultra-processed. Companies are sneaking in more sugar, salt, and MSG to temp your taste buds and keep you coming back for more. The processed foods have been grown with chemicals, chemically processed, developed in a lab, artificially flavored and sweetened, and loaded with preservatives.
Contrast that with a Whole Foods Diet. By using basic ingredients like plain meat, fruits, vegetables, spices, eggs, flour, beans, nuts, and plain dairy you can make almost anything and immediately eliminate the artificial ingredients made in a science lab. This is what people mean when they say shop the edges or outside of the grocery store which is where the produce, dairy, and meat sections are, while the middle of the store contains all the processed foods.
However, I know that home cooking isn’t realistic for everyone. So if you are still reliant on frozen dinners, pre-cooked meals, meals from a box, snacks in a wrapper, or eating out, it is so important to read labels and ask questions. When I buy processed foods, I aim for items that have 5 ingredients or less and all the ingredients are things that I can pronounce and understand what they are.
For example, right now I am looking at a box of Potter’s Crackers that I bought for my kids and the ingredients are wheat flour, water, butter, honey, salt, yeast, and spices. All whole foods.
Here are the ingredients of Ritz crackers: ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR*, CANOLA OIL, PALM OIL, SUGAR, SALT, LEAVENING (CALCIUM PHOSPHATE AND/OR BAKING SODA), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SOY LECITHIN, NATURAL FLAVOR.*FLOUR ENRICHED WITH: NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID.
Ingredients that I particularly avoid:
- Natural flavors: seems harmless, but these mixtures can contain more than 100 chemicals, including solvents, emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, and preservatives. Natural flavors does not mean organic.
- Artificial dyes: Yellow #5/6, Red #40, Blue #1. These can cause hypersensitivity, hyperactivity, inflammation, and more. Basically anything on the label that has a number I avoid.
- Artificial sweeteners and other sugar substitutes: these can be hard to spot, but they have chemical names like sucralose (Splenda), aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet), saccharin (Sweet’N Low), high fructose corn syrup, and many, many more. I stick with cane sugar, honey, maple syrup, and Stevia for my sweeteners.
- Preservatives: BHA, BHT, TBHQ, sulfites, nitrites, nitrates. Again, there are more than I can list here. The only one that I sometimes eat is ascorbic or citric acid (vitamin C).
- Dough conditioners: Azodicarbonamide, potassium bromate, and potassium iodate
If you want to take this a step further, buy organic or foods that are certified non-GMO. This can help you make sure that you don’t start with ingredients that have been sprayed with chemicals (particularly glyphosate) during the growing process. The chemicals on the food can mess with your gut health and put you at risk for cancer. Certified organic foods will immediately eliminate any of the yucky ingredients I mentioned above.
So to summarize, my very first dietary principle, and the one that changed my health the most is to eat a Whole Foods Diet made from real, clean foods. Focusing on this alone will have an immediate impact, rather than confusing yourself with which specific macronutrients you eat (carbs, protein, fat) or other type of diet (meat vs. vegetarian vs. vegan vs. pescatarian etc).
Join me next week when we talk about vegetable and seed oils. This one is a hot topic!
