4 weeks of Homemade Meals- Recap

We met our challenge of 4 weeks of homemade meals and surpassed it by one day!! We ate at home 26 of the 29 days. The nights we ate out were two dinner invitations to our neighbors and a neighborhood Halloween party where we had homemade chili. The little princess was allowed to eat a cafeteria lunch once a week as she usually does. And the hubby ate out for lunch only once--with his boss for a business lunch. It was definitely one of the better ideas I've had for a while. Eating at home made sense not only because we ended up eating healthier meals, but it also saved us a few bucks. This included eliminating our trips to fast food places like Chic-Fil-A; Starbucks pit stops; and lunches out for Joe. We are also used to ordering Pizza or going out for Chinese/Thai food on Fridays. I compared our grocery bill from September and October and, by eliminating our usual dine-outs we were able to save $105 this month. Sure, our grocery bill in October was higher than Septembers but only by $53. Although the first couple of weeks were hard, especially when I was tempted to go through the drive-thru as a way to reward the kids and myself. Instead I baked banana bread, brownies and other goodies to stave off the sweet tooth. I also realized that our family eats way too much sugar--so we're working on eliminating some of the desserts we typically have after dinner and substituting some of those with fruit or yogurt.

A few tips or advice for those of you who are interested in taking on a similar challenge. Plan, plan, plan. I usually sit down the week ahead and write down the menu for the week on an index card. On the back of my index card I write down my grocery list. Once I'm done grocery shopping, I stick the index card on the refrigerator door so that the family can see what's going to be for dinner. This is helpful in two ways: It helps the family (in my case, my husband) know what's for dinner and also holds me accountable to fix the meals I planned on fixing. There's always enough flexibility where you can switch Tuesday and Wednesday meals for whatever reason. But it also helped to prevent me from being tempted to make some other meal. Leave that meal you recently saw on Pinterest for the next week. Speaking of Pinterest, there's a ton of great recipes there and this is how I've found some of the best food blogs that I now follow. When you're reading recipes, make sure you read the entire recipe and allot for the time it may take you to prep and cook the meal. Another thing that helped tremendously is prepping the meals. Chopping, peeling and dicing things ahead of time saves so much time, especially when you have a toddler grabbing your leg while you're trying to cook! So a lot of my time saving was done by chopping and prepping the meal the day before or in the morning before making the meal in the afternoon. If you're really organized and have time, you can even chop vegetables after grocery shopping--that's if you're really organized though. It also helps to cook 2-3 meals at a time. You can do this on the weekend or any time you feel you have a bigger chunk of time in your schedule. I decided to cook 3 meals on Sunday--one for that night's dinner and the other two for Monday and Tuesday. If you fix a casserole or soup as one of your meals, you can even freeze it and have it handy for an emergency night when you're in a bind and can't get to cooking dinner. Now, I was only able to do this on 2 Sundays because life, as we all know, gets hectic. So another tip--don't beat yourself up if you're not able to do things exactly as you planned. Try to still stick with the main objective--eating homemade meals. It also helps to keep things simple. Go with recipes that you've fixed in the past and have been easy to fix and popular with your family. This is not the time to introduce crazy ingredients, unless your family is the adventurous eater type. I will post the 4-week challenge menu at the bottom of this post, along with some of my favorite food blogs/websites. 

I encourage everyone to try this, it's definitely eye opening and a great way to encourage the whole family towards eating more whole foods.

4-week challenge menu:

Week 1
Roasted Chicken and Tortellini Salad
Cauliflower Pizzas (1 mushroom; 1 pepperoni)
Fish tacos with grilled peppers and whole grain cilantro lime rice
Invite to friends house- had pork chops with Spaetzle (German noodles)
Crock Pot Chicken Curry with Rice and Peas
Shrimp with Acorn Squash and Ceasar Salad
Chicken Noodle Soup

Week 2
Spinach Rollups and Salad
Crock Pot Chicken Tacos
Butternut Squash Pasta with goat cheese, topped with parmessan and pecans
Beef Fajitas with Corn Salsa
Thanksgiving Dinner invite at neighbors- Smoked turkey, dressing and all the fixings!
Crock Pot Pork with Rice and Ceasar Salad
leftovers

Week 3
Turkey Picadillo with black beans and fried plantains
Chicken Enchiladas, Cheesey Rice and Salad
Butternut Squash Soup with Tortellini and Peas
Greek Chicken Kabobs and quinoa with sun dried tomatoes and pinenuts
Sausage, kale and potato soup served with French bread
Spring Rolls -- veggie and chicken
leftovers- spring rolls and butternut squash soup

Week 4
Roasted chicken with lentils and spinach
Chicken pot pies and salad
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with Tomato Soup
Chicken with Lemon Caper Sauce and Mashed Potatoes
Turkey Chili
Neighborhood Halloween Party- Sampled different homemade chilis
Leftovers

Desserts
Banana Bread
Mexican Brownies
Pumpkin Ice Cream
Caramel Apples for Halloween

Favorite Food Blogs-
The Iron You
What's Gaby Cooking
Eat Good For Life
The Weekly Bite (easy recipes and a lot of kid snack ideas)
Skinny Kitchen (some of the kids favorite recipes are from here; a lot of good crock pot recipes)
Sprouted Kitchen (more of an aspirational food
blog, if I could be any food blogger, I would love to be her)
Food Network (anything by Ina Garten is great, I also make Tyler Florence's Chicken Noodle Soup)

Some of the highlights: