Overall thoughts....
It was certainly a really good menu for families on a budget. Some portabilty options for lunch during the work week would be quite helpful. Especially if these families are one parent or two working parent families with kids.
The recipes were really tasty most of the time and if not what we were used to, (wife's family is from Louisiana) then a shake or two of spice made it work. The meals did take time, but were not too difficult, especially for someone who doesn't cook that often. O.k. almost never. So, if I can do it, anyone could.
The kids really enjoyed the experience and had a great time telling their teachers what they were doing and anyone else who would listen.
If you are used to serving your family cheap fast food, frozen nuggets, and one dollar frozen pizza's this is a big jump up. But it's not that hard and it was worth it knowing what we were all eating this week. I mean we held each ingredient in our hand at nearly every meal.
Thanks Chef Justin. I hope our comments were helpful and that we were able to show that it can be done. I look forward to new additions to the menu over time.
Lunch Day 6 redo
Not worried about tomorrow's lunch at all. I've had peanut butter and honey sandwiches before and loved them. They will travel well to work and I'm sure the kids will love them too.
Dinner Day 7
Dinner was good. I had been looking forward to the fish. Again, a tad bland, but I added some Tony Chacheres' Creole seasoning to my fish and it was great! We weren't sure the vegetables were going to be enough so we supplemented with some frozen broccoli we had left. Also, due to the vegetable loss issue we used canned diced tomatoes in the veges instead of fresh.
Lunch Day 7
Lentils soup and salad. As we got back from Church and tried to get Mahlon ready for a birthday party, and keep the laundry moving... Cragin and I made lunch. She handled the soup, I made the salad. The soup was a little bland, we kicked it up with some Everglades Heat seasoning. The salad was good again, but we had to adlib due to some vegetable loss (rotting) since last Sunday. So we only had half a tomato and added in sliced white grapes and a little more celery than it called for.
Breakfast Day 7
Huevos Rancheros - Awesomely good. Didn't seem that hard and a wonderful variation on our usual weekend breakfast meals. Even though we were scrambling to get ready for church and start the weekend laundry and the time change threw us all off, it was great to stop and eat something so good. We did add sliced bananas in a bowl of a third a cup of vanilla yogurt for everyone. And yeah, coffee.
Dinner Day 6
Cragin was back at the helm and I only mildly assisted here. The Cheesy Chicken Pasta Bake was good. The girls LOVED the cole slaw and Cragin spoke of how easy it was to make. Not sure about Cragin's edit to the recipe, she added a can of cream of mushroom soup. I don't know if it was the soup or not, but it was kind of bland and I ended up Everglades Heat seasoning to it to kick up the flavor a bit. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's breakfast and dinner.
Lunch Day 6
Uh... sorry. We'll have to let you know about lunch for day 6 on day 8. We ate the equivalent of "fair food" at Red Hills. Chef Justin, sorry, but we'll make it up on Monday.
Breakfast Day 6
O.K. Cragin was up to her eyeballs trying to get her morning work done and get the kids ready to go, (we were going to Redhills Horse Trials today) so I took over making Breakfast today. It was the peanut encrusted French toast with jam infused yogurt and fruit salad. The girls didn't seem to like the French toast but we loved it. The yogurt was a hit with all of us but Mahlon. The fruit salad was great. The only down side was that some the produce purchased last Sunday was not top notch. We've lost a few apples, oranges, tomatoes and one potato. The late Sunday trip to Wal-Mart to purchase what was obviously picked over produce was not perhaps wise.
Dinner Day 5 Fajitas
Tonight was the Daddy Daughter Dance at the girls school and since I am a better cook than hair stylist I let Cragin do their hair while I made dinner. O.K. for the record, I'm no butcher. And I struggle at cooking, but tonight's meal was pretty easy. Outside of spending a lot of time slicing the meat down to size, everything else just sort of flowed. Raines and the girls ate it up, I really enjoyed it too, even though we were rushed to get out the door to the soirée. They actually squealed when a Justin Beiber song came on.
Also, Harris was confused and thought we'd purchased Peach Tea instead of peach drink. So tonight we brewed two quarts of tea and instead of using any sweeteners we just added the peach drink mix. It tasted a little sweet, but good.
Lunch Day 5
Lunch was good. I was working out of the house so I was able to reheat the potatoes Cragin cooked this morning and I supplemented my lunch with some vanilla yogurt with sliced strawberries and OJ to drink.
Breakfast Day 5
Dude! Pancakes on a weekday morning, who can complain about that. The whole wheat pancakes were better than I expected. Cragin and I compared the nutritional values between it and another box we had in the pantry of regular pancake mix and it didn't seem better. But admittedly, I may be missing something in the mix. I'm looking forward to lunch, dinner and my double date at tonight's Father Daughter Dance.
Dinner Day 4
Awesome dinner. The steak was really good. We unfortunately purchased a thinner sliced version than we usually would have, so no chance of a soft pink middle. The flavor was good none the less and since it was thinner it cooked faster. The cabbage mix was really good as well.!! And even though we've been pushing the "Serves four" to a family of five we have not been wanting once this week.
Lunch Day 4
The pasta bake was great. Super simple and easy as you are just rolling in excess meat from the night before into cooked pasta. If I wasn't meeting Cragin in her office to eat, portability would have been an issue again. The salad was also quite good.
Breakfast Day 4
Again, a little hectic when trying to coral three kids and two dogs AND get ready yourself. Not hard, just not part of the routine. The cinnamon apple yogurt was great! The addition of banana slices to corn flakes kept from needing to add sweeteners. Having toast and jam really helped send everyone out well fed from breakfast. Oh, and yeah, the coffee was a must. Sitting down at two meals a day, as a family has been an additional blessing for sure. We've been adding more conversations with our kids for those few minutes about their expectations for their day and other things running in their heads. It's been great.
Dinner Day 3
Dinner was very good. The black beans and rice were quite tasty and the Tacos were great!! Not the biggest fan of the visual of the ground turkey, but it tasted great with vegetables mixed in. The yogurt was an odd suggestion, I thought, but the tartness of the plain yogurt really added a great flavor. The kids didn't skip a beat. They dove right in and asked for more. Another hit for sure.
Breakfast & Lunch Day 3
Breakfast was overall, ah... so, so. I liked the oatmeal, but I may have been to only one. The girls each took their mandatory couple of bites before they could stop eating it. Raines and Harris loved the cantaloupe. Raines loved it so much I had to pull the rind out of his mouth. Mahlon and Raines both enjoyed the cottage cheese. (Remember yesterday, Mahlon, she wouldn't even touch it with out being cajoled into it.) I like the melon as well.
Lunch is definitely portable today. Similar to what I had Monday. It'll be good and work based on the job. The kids were excited about their "regular lunch" today of PB&J with fruit. It'll be like a regular lunch for them. Looking forward to dinner.
Dinner Day 2
Whole Wheat spaghetti, salad and cheesy bread. Yum.
My first whole wheat pasta experience, a couple of years ago, was not good.
They've either come a long way on how to make it not taste like paste or my wife is just a great cook. The kids loved all of it.
Curious as to why it called for ground turkey instead of lean ground beef? Maybe because it was half the price per pound?
Lunch Day 2
O.K. Portability was an issue again. Fortunately, Cragin's office is downtown and has a full kitchen so we we're able to reheat the soup and eat together.
The potato soup was alright. It was a bit bland and may have been better if it was thicker. The salad was very good, great crunchy texture and quite flavorful. I took and apple and a banana for snacks today that fit well in my briefcase. Ate the banana around 11:00 after one of my early meetings.
I'm really curious to hear how our girls fared at lunch in Kindergarten and 2nd Grade with soup and salad.
Breakfast Day 2
Breakfast was good. It was exciting to see our 2 1/2 year old inhale the cottage cheese. Mahlon was very hesitant to try the cottage cheese but then seemed to like it when she finally tried it. The ceral, corn flakes, was a little bland, but they ate it without any real complaints. We have a family ceiling for the sugar content in cereals, this was way below that. I did add the coffee again as well.
Day 1 - Dinner
Raines and I arrived home to the wonderful smell of a home cooked meal being prepared. After scrubbing the dog's head I was drafted into gravy duty.
Everything looked delicious and once we sat down to eat, it tasted just as great! The tomatoes and beans were a really good combination, the mashed potatoes were perfect and it really was great tasting chicken. Being a vegetable eater since I was little, there were no veges left in the end. The kids seemed to really enjoy dinner, too!
Oh, and the dogs got the leftover gravy on their food.
I was, however, bummed to find out that after such a wonderful report there were no leftover Zucchini cakes from lunch to taste. But was promised we'd do them again soon.
Breakfast & Lunch
Breakfast tasted great! Prep order might have been a bit off based on length of time to cook potatoes. Added my coffee to breakfast (not on menu).Brought lunch to all day tobacco control meeting. Noone with ADD should have to sit in all day meeting. With that, I packed a few added snacks of strawberries, grapes, and a chewy granola bar.
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First Hiccup!
Not all the lunches are portable!
I've got an all day meeting tomorrow on Florida's Tobacco Prevention Program. Yes, all day meeting.
Cragin is staying home with girls who are off of school due to a teacher work day and the lunch is scheduled to be the Zucchini Cakes. Don't know how I'll take that to the all day meeting, so I'll be reaching ahead to the P,B&J and Honey sandwich and snacks for this all day meeting.
Looking forward to breakfast though!
