The Plan:
Day 1: Carrot soup, Apple muffins
Day 2: Kielbasa and vegetable hash (I’m using frozen red peppers, sweet potatoes, red potatoes)
Day 3: Homemade pizza
Day 4: Pulled pork, Mash butternut squash, Homemade applesauce
Day 5: Spanakopita (from freezer supply), Orange and apple slices
Day 6: Tuscan kale and bean soup (from freezer supply)
Day 7: Mushroom and swiss Quiche, Frozen fruit smoothie
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)
- Carrots, apples (refrigerator “root cellar”)
- Onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash (root cellar)
- Vegetable broth, diced red bell peppers, strawberries, blueberries (freezer)
- Pork butt roast (Freezer – Mastodon Valley Farm meat share)
- Spanakopita (made last summer – freezer)
- Kale and bean soup (made last fall – freezer)
Into Storage:
- Chicken broth (using bones from chicken dish last week)
Notes: Basic Dietary Principles
I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately. Obviously, this isn’t anything new for me, but the topic of food and diets has been making an appearance in my thoughts a lot more than usual. This came about as I was contemplating one of the main reasons I started this blog – my dissatisfaction as a health care provider seeing the same thing over and over without any real change. Western healthcare focuses so much on pills and surgery and not enough on preventative care and healthy diets.
It is time for a pause and reflection. It’s hard to think about the future and what impacts your diet might have on your health years to decades down the road. But in this age where self care is on all of our minds, your diet should be high on the list of how you take care of yourself. Now is the time to shift to food as medicine. You will have many immediate benefits like better sleep, more energy, and improved mental acuity in addition to having a better quality of life as you age.
I do think most people truly want and try to eat healthy. The issue is that it is hard to know where to start. We have never been taught how to plan and cook meals, and unfortunately, some of the information we have been given may have been skewed by the food industry where the main goal above all else is profit. It is hard to figure out what to believe.
Take for instance hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils (trans fat). This lab created “food” never went through long term randomized clinical trials on humans or other animals before they were allowed to be sold in the grocery stores. How long were we told that these were better for us than real butter? The margarine tubs at the store were even stamped with a heart healthy food label! We now have very clear evidence that hydrogenated oils are a contributor to heart disease and they have finally been banned by the FDA (although you can still find them on the grocery store shelves, sadly).
There is also so much conflicting information about what diet we should be eating. Keto, low-carb, low-fat, Mediterranean, The Zone Diet, Paleo, The South Beach Diet. You win the game of life if you have it all figured out!
I certainly don’t claim that I know it all or have this whole diet thing figured out, but I have done a lot of research and I think there are some clear steps you can take to improve your health.
Here are the 5 basic dietary principles that I follow:
- Focus on whole foods
- Avoid vegetable and seed oils
- Lower your sugar intake
- Load up on vegetables and fruits
- Cook from scratch as much as possible
For the next 5 weeks, I’ll be writing about each of the 5 principles and how I apply them to my diet and meal planning. Grab a friend and follow along so you can discuss and debate!
