My Nourishing Meal Rotation as a Family of Four

How I simplify nourishment for my family of four.

(Don’t worry that there are only 3 meals present— my son’s was placed straight on his highchair tray 😅😉)

Since becoming a mom of two, I have had to add a bit more strategy into my life. One area in particular is my family’s meal planning.

I found myself really overwhelmed with a ton of different recipes, ingredients, and what felt like never-ending grocery trips. And that led to a lot more eating out because sometimes it was just easier than trying a new recipe I had on the agenda. And that led to more food waste because I wasn’t following the plan I had originally set.

What I realized was that I was really overcomplicating the whole thing. I could feed my family a nourishing, varied diet without cooking a new recipe every night of the month. I sat down, got out my notebook, and immediately started listing our favorites.

Our Nourishing Meal Rotation

Since implementing this method, my family eats ~95% of the same things week after week..after week.. after week. And no, we don’t get bored! (I’ll share how here shortly).

I found that there are so many beneficial downstream effects of this! Here are a few:

• We have nearly no food waste. I buy ingredients that I know we will use, that I know we will eat. Nothing is forgotten about in the back of the fridge. No leftovers that nobody wants to eat.

• Grocery shopping is a breeze! I order the same pickup grocery list about once a week. And then once a month I will go to costco and stock up on some other food and home staples. I have found that having these structured lists saves us so much money because I am not wandering around trying new things as much.

• No food battles with my kids. When I picked what meals we would consistently be eating, I definitely took into consideration making sure they were family-friendly and things we all loved. Since they could eat solids, our kids have always eaten the same food we are having and it just makes it simpler all around.

• Less decision fatigue. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by a choice you have to make? So much so that you just avoid it altogether? Having a set meal rotation takes out so much of the planning and decision-making at the beginning of the week. You know that on Mondays, you have X. On Tuesdays, you have Y. Done and done.

How We Don’t Get Bored

You will see that we have a lot of meal repetition. But i will also try to show how we have variation within each meal!

We also vary up our produce seasonally. This is done kind of without much effort because we will just try and purchase the things that are in season. Eating seasonally ensures that your produce is being consumed at peak freshness— and when the nutrients are most bioavailable.

Our Meals:

Breakfast-

Monday through Friday, my husband wakes up before I do to work out. He cooks up a whole bunch of scrambled eggs for the whole family. Then when I am awake with the kids, I’ll reheat them along with some sourdough toast and cottage cheese. (Although recently we have been mostly grain-free as part of our eczema journey, so I have been cooking potatoes for our carb). We have the same things every single day and love that it is protein-rich and gives us the energy we need.

To add variety, sometimes I’ll pair it with some cottage cheese instead of sausage. Sometimes Ill have toast or a sourdough tortilla instead of potatoes.. But it’s always based around some whole scrambled eggs.

Lunch:

Leftovers. I always cook more than we will eat for dinner so that we can reheat it for lunch the next day. If we don’t have leftovers (which is really rare), we have a tuna salad wrap with fresh fruit, or chicken salad wrap with fruit, or salmon salad wrap with fruit— you get the idea 😉

I’ll stock up on Safe Catch canned tuna and salmon, Primal Kitchen Mayo, Yellow bird sriracha, mustard.. and with those along, you can have so many different varieties of wraps, sandwiches, or salads.

Dinners:

• Sunday: Roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots. Last month we got back into our small group with church that meets on Sunday evening. I also help with the children’s Sunday school twice a month, so Sundays are a little bit busy. I love that I can cook a whole chicken by just throwing a bunch of things in a pot for a couple of hours.

  Then, I take all the meat off the bones and throw the carcass back in the pot to make bone broth for the week.

• Monday: Ancestral Shepherds pie— I use Force of Nature ancestral blend to get some organ meats into our diet, corn, celery, onion, peas, and potatoes. Then I’ll top it off with some seasonings and raw cheddar.

• Tuesday: Good o'l’ taco Tuesday. We usually make them with ground beef, but will sometimes use chicken if I have some leftover from Sunday.

• Wednesday: Banh Mi Rice Bowls— usually we make this with local ground pork, bone broth cooked rice, fresh ginger, coconut aminos, green onion, cucumbers, carrots, and sriracha mayo sauce on top. Sometimes i’ll add in some frozen stir fry veggies, or mushrooms, or random things from our garden.

  You can follow this recipe as a general framework, but I personally don’t add the sugar.

• Thursday : Stuffed sweet potato with shredded chicken. This has been my absolute favorite lately! I roast sweet potatoes and cook up some chicken breast. Usually, I’ll just throw some chicken into the crock pot and let it cook for a few hours and then shred it.

  Then ill top it off with either Primal kitchen BBQ sauce or their buffalo sauce. Sometimes i’ll even add some coleslaw on top— seriously I have been obsessed with this for weeks now.

  Here is a recipe for you to follow!

• Friday : Fridays are usually the day my husband cooks, so it’s good ol steaks! Usually we will roast up whatever veggies we have leftover from the week and mix up a salad.

• Saturday : homemade gluten free pizza and either a salad or some kind of vegetable. We like having something quick and easy for dinner on Saturdays because we are usually out doing stuff during the day. This is also the day of the week we are most likely to eat out, if we do.

  Pizza can usually be a fairly carb-heavy meal without much protein so we usually make a BBQ chicken pizza and really load it up with chicken, and then use a Primal Kitchen sauce!

So what happens when we want to change it up?

Easy. We change it up! None of this is set in stone. We use this rotation until we are sick of a meal, and then we replace it. For instance, as we get into the cooler fall and winter months, I will replace one of the meals with white chicken chili. If I start getting really sick of something, then I will rotate in one of our other meal favorites.

I also set aside about 1-2 days per month when we will veer off from the meal rotation to try a new recipe or go out to eat. These are also the days that I will make some meals that are a little more intensive— For instance, we loooove Farmhouse on Boone’s Chicken pot pie with sourdough biscuits recipe but it’s a bit more involved of a recipe. So I make it only once a month or so, and will intentionally schedule it on a day when my work load is lighter.

What are some of your go to recipes for your family? I’d love to hear from you.

Kaelyn

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