Mostly Plant-Based Menu Plan and Grocery List 6/11/2015-6/17/2015

Around here, I try to keep the food really simple.  My husband and I have been entirely plant-based for a year and a half.  In restaurants I refer to myself as vegan, but I do eat honey.  I just use the term while I'm out because it makes it really clear to other people which foods I definitely don't do.  The kids are almost entirely vegetarian.  I have one boy who will jump at the chance to eat ham at family parties and such, but the other two usually decline.  When my husband and I changed our diet we made a conscious decision not to "outlaw" any foods for the kids.  I explained the change to them in child-friendly terms and we stopped serving meat in the house.  They still typically have two servings a week each of eggs, yogurt, and cheese.

Breakfast is pretty boring.  Usually some combination of fruit, cereal, toast, oatmeal or yogurt for the kids and a green smoothie or oatmeal for me and my husband.  Lunch is usually a fruit and a veggie for the kids with a pb&j, eggs, grilled cheese, a bagel or yogurt.  I tend to eat leftovers.

Dinners get a little tricky.  We do them as a family, but I don't think there is a single meal that I serve where every family member eats every part of the meal.  For example, my husband and I eat cornmeal pancakes with our chili, but the kids skip the chili.  Two of the three kids and the grownups eat lentil loaf and my other son doubles up on his veggies and calls it a meal.  I think each child has one kind of bean that they'll eat on purpose.  We bake all of our own bread, so I blend cooked beans and raw nuts and seeds with the liquids before I mix the dough and that way I know they are getting a variety of nutrients and a little boost of protein with every slice.  On a normal day the kids each eat three different vegetables and four fruits, but often their serving sizes are bigger than the standard.  We're all about progress, not perfection.

Our grocery budget is $200 a week for a family of 5, but that doesn't account for a couple of dry goods items I get on subscription from Amazon.com.  I know that amount might make some people faint, but up until I read the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey at the beginning of the year, I didn't even have a grocery budget and we were spending an outrageous amount.  Another opportunity for progress.


Dinners
Salad and Chick'n Strips
Chili and Cornmeal Pancakes
Split Pea Soup and Grilled Cheese
Lentil Loaf
Lemon Soup and Scrambled Eggs
Black Bean Fajitas
Leftovers or Homemade Pizza

I had a lot of the dry goods on hand already at the beginning of this meal plan, so the grocery list was manageable.  We are also due to get our first farm share on Tuesday, so that's kind of a veggie wildcard!

Mozzarella Cheese                                                  Spinach x 2 10oz
Almond Milk x 3                                                     Red Peppers x 3
Yogurt                                                                     Lemons x 2
                                                                                Garlic x 2 bulbs
Canned Tomatoes x 2                                             Carrots x 3lbs
Split Green Peas                                                      Celery
Tea                                                                          Broccoli x 4 heads
Coffee                                                                     Red Peppers x 3
Whole Wheat Flour                                                Vidalia Onions x 2
Cinnamon                                                               Romaine Hearts
Thyme                                                                     Cucumber x 2
                                                                                Whole Watermelon
Crackers                                                                  Apples x 3lbs
Bagels                                                                     Bananas x 2 bunches (12?)
                                                                                Nectarines x 4lbs
Cereal x 3                                                               Avocado x 2
Frozen Pineapple and Blueberries                         Parsley
                                                                                Sweet Potatoes x 2
Maple Syrup                                                           Small Red Cabbage
Chick'n Strips                                                         Red Onion
                                                                               Beets x 3
Popsicles - kids                                                      String Beans x 1.5lbs
Chocolate Cat Cookies - kids

 Tonight's vegan chili with quinoa and sweet potato made in our InstantPot.

The little girly enjoying her pancakes and string beans.  The nectarines were gobbled up too fast to get a picture of them.

Library Haul 6/8/2015

Yesterday afternoon I brought one young man with me to the library.  The other two opted to stay home with my husband.

We had loved a book nearly to death and needed to drop off a replacement copy to the library.  It's a little embarrassing when you are a librarian yourself, but I guess I'm just proof that it happens to everyone.  We had no agenda as far as new books went, so my buddy just grabbed a couple of things that appealed to him from various display shelves.  He ended up with two "nature study", one "math" and one fun fantasy picture book.

We are still working on two of the Egyptian books from last week, but we picked up a few more "history" books, too.

I love that my kids don't show any real preference for fiction or nonfiction.  They are nearly always willing to snuggle up and listen to anything I'm reading aloud.  Since I only have one confident reader so far, we do all of these "school" books as family read alouds.

Chore Chart

Nothing compares to the feeling of sharing a passion with your children.  The joy of pounding bread dough out on the table, or helping their little hands grip a paint brush sears itself onto your heart and leaves you altered.  But, here's the truth.  One of the greatest lessons we can teach our children is to work hard on the things that don't come easily.  When my kids look back on their childhoods with me I don't want them to remember the things I did effortlessly.  I want them to think of all the times I found something difficult and kept at it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Now, I know that this seems like a dramatic introduction to a post about a chore chart, but it's really all of the tiny tasks and choices in a day that make up a life.  I want my children to grow into adults who eat well, exercise, make wise financial decisions and live in homes that are sanctuaries.  Leading by example in these areas can't happen with short bursts of enthusiasm followed by long bouts of lethargy, and to be honest that is how I've always approached housekeeping.

There were no chores in my house growing up.  My mother was able to stay home during our elementary years and she cleaned the house during the day while we were in school.  Obviously, homeschooling makes that impossible, but I think I would want my children to pitch in around the house regardless of education choices.  When I struck out as a young adult and tried to make a home for myself and my husband I struggled.  For the first several years I was an adequate housekeeper and a lousy cook, then the twins came along and the equation switched.  My focus was on feeding my children well and the housework became overwhelming.  Since my daughter turned three things have evened out.  Everyone gets full nights of good sleep, we have a consistent daily routine and all the children are old enough to reason with and physically capable of being truly helpful.

Maybe two years ago, the boys received a Melissa and Doug brand magnetic chore chart as a gift.  They enjoyed making lists with it, but there wasn't a good way to set up jobs for them to do individually.  And because housework gives me very little joy, I failed to use it regularly.  Instead I would pull it out as a tool on days when the house had passed the point of no return and I was having a meltdown.  All in all, not a method I recommend.

After a couple of difficult days trying to get the kids to pitch in and help out around the house I started revising the way I approach the chores.  I spent a little time (like maybe a thousand hours) watching videos and reading blog posts online about chore systems and decided to make a concerted effort to raise the expectations for the children (and myself).

Technically we homeschool all year, but during the summer the kids don't have any scheduled classes or sports events, so I reasoned that starting a chore system now would give us plenty of time to make it a habit before the fall comes around and our calendar fills up.

First I created a list of simple jobs and corresponding clip art in a word document.  I tried to limit each task to two minutes, doing things like "10 Toys" instead of "Pick up Playroom".  It doesn't get the playroom entirely clean, but it saves me from bending over thirty times a day and keeps the children from getting overwhelmed and quitting.  I also started with a small number of tasks, figuring that I could do the chores alongside them until they were mastered and add more variety as weeks go by.

Once the chores were chosen I printed them, cut them out and pasted them onto small squares of scrapbooking paper.  I then wrapped a piece of packing tape around each square to make them more durable and glued a small magnet to the back of each one.  Using washi tape I created a grid on the front of our fridge and made columns for the kids' initials, morning chores, afternoon chores and completed chores.  It's attractive enough, they enjoy moving the magnets between the columns and since we used materials we had on hand I believe the total cost was around two dollars.

One of the boys, my rule guy, has taken to it with almost no effort.  My other son has been looking for more of a structure and plan to our days and so he's doing well, but needs a little more prodding.  My daughter is happy to do anything where she has my undivided attention, so working alongside her makes it easy to get her cooperation.  I want to mention that the children don't get any compensation for their chores.  At some point I will offer them jobs on commission so that they can earn pocket money, but these chores are expected because we are trying to promote a base level of service to themselves and the family.  

Library Haul 6/1/2015

These titles go along with our reading of the first volume of the Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer and The Usborne Book of World History.  This upcoming school year the boys are in first grade, so we are beginning at the beginning.  We're aiming for the standard four year rotating approach to history.

The board books above were chosen by my daughter.  Avatar, Atomic Ace and Pirates were the boys' fun picks.  I chose Seed Soil Sun as a whole family science read aloud because it coordinated so well with our summertime yard and garden projects.  Poppy and Ereth is the boys' current read aloud. While we usually try to have a family-wide read aloud, the language and themes in these are too much for my three year old daughter, so my husband has been reading her bedtime stories while the boys and I work through these.  Poppy and Ereth is the last in the series, but I'm consoling myself with the idea that she'll want to listen to them in a couple of years and we can start again.