Meal Plan Monday

Head on over to Organizing Junkie for more MPM links. And, for those of you who have rhubarb, she has three recipes for you to check out too.

We are fasting from all things processed this week, which is mostly anything with sugar, white flour or white rice. This is not a huge change for us as this is pretty much the way we live, with a few exceptions. But sometimes we have several special events in a row and make alot of exceptions. Then we need to buckle down and purposefully fast to get all of the junk out of our systems. Darn! I really wanted to make a rhubarb treat but will have to wait until next week.

Next week I will be trying out several rhubarb recipes including sugarless rhubarb muffins and pork chops with rhubarb. Do you have any sugarless rhubarb recipes? Or any other rhubarb recipes that do not use sugar or are not dessert recipes?

It just so happens that I have a ton of salad greens left over from my son's graduation party. So we will be eating lots of salads. My kind of week! Watch your salad dressings if you are cutting out sugar. Most of them have quite a bit of sugar in them. If you pay attention to the ingredients, you can usually find options with sugar as the 6th ingredient or less. Making your own dressing is easy and yummy too. Or buy dried dressing mix and prepare it with yogurt.

Monday: Spa Cobb Salad Wraps with Nectarines. I have some peaches, already peeled and cubed, leftover from a salad at my son's BBQ that I am going to use up in place of nectarines. I will be preparing the chicken for all of our chicken salads today and freezing them as necessary.

Tuesday: Today is our 20th Anniversary (don't forget I got married when I was , um...let's see... I am 29 now...so I was 9) so I will be out to dinner with my hubby and the kids will be eating Chicken Taco Salad (Follow last Monday's Taco Salad recipe but substitute chopped chicken for the ground beef) I am making this for tonight mostly because the leftovers will be great for me to take on a picnic tomorrow when we go on a moms and kids activity with our church.

Wednesday: Cashew Avocado Chicken Salad served over lettuce and greens instead of on buns. More leftovers... I have cashews and grated swiss cheese to use up:) And will still have plenty to freeze.

Thursday: Fab Summer Blackened Chicken Salad

Friday: (supposed to be in the 90's today!) Ultimate Sub Sandwich Bar: easy to take on a picnic too, if we decide to go to the water.

Saturday: Grilled Sausages, grilled asparagus, mushrooms and onions. Broccoli too if we get some in our produce bag. Soaked in olive oil and soy sauce for several hours, then seasoned with lots of fresh garlic, sea salt and sprinkled with sesame seeds after removing from the grill.

Sunday: Sunday Summer BBQ starts at church ! Yippeee!!!! Every week we have our choice of a hamburger, chicken burger, Garden Burger or hot dog, with chips, drink and snowcone for only 2 bucks each. A wonderful opportunity to hang out and get to know more people:) And affordable , even for a family of our size.

When I posted last week, I planned to come back and fill in some blanks after I picked up our produce from the farm. I knew the weather had not been cooperating, but I figured the cold weather crops would be the bulk in our bags. However, this cool weather has caused most everything to be 2 weeks to a month late. So we got rhubarb, butter lettuce, a few fava beans and some strawberries. We also got a calendula plant. I am really excited about this as we had lots of these at our house for several years and they eventually disappeared. They were probably eaten by animal escapees. Or were dehydrated into fine powder due to lack of watering, then stepped upon by animal escapees. Hopefully this plant will reseed itself and we will again have the beautiful orange blooms scattered here and there.

I made a promise to myself that we will use everything in our bags, even if it there are things we don't normally eat. I am curious as to what we will get this week!