Making a Menu Board

Making a Menu Board (and all the recipe cards) has been a life-changer in planning and implementing our meals for the week. I found some great ideas on-line and meshed my favorites together to come up with mine.

I have a different box for each day of the week. I typed up all of our favorite recipes onto little cards. The front has the name of the recipe and the back has the full recipe, serving size, and the source. I then sorted them into 7 categories so each day of the week has a different category assigned to it. For now, this is the best way to menu-plan for our family. I was getting overwhelmed with going through tons of recipes to pick out my meals for the week and now I can just sit down for a few minutes on Sunday evening and go through a themed box for each night. I pick out my meals and then flip the cards over to write my grocery list. I'm sure these categories will change as our tastes change, but for now we have 
- Mondays: Mexican 
- Tuesdays: T-Rex (our meat dish of the week)
- Wednesdays: Veggie or Pumpkin or Quinoa Burgers and/or Soup
- Thursdays: Asian, noodles
- Fridays: Homemade Pizza Night
- Saturdays: Date Night
- Sundays: Breakfast for Dinner


These were the steps I took to make the actual board:

First, cut out your board from a sturdy box. Pick out your fabric. I chose one fabric to cover my board and a different fabric for my daily boxes. Choose the boxes that you'll use for your days. I used old conversation hearts' boxes from Valentine's Day (the one that come 12 to a pack so they're smaller than the standard version). For my mother-in-law, we found similar ones at Easter time that had chewy eggs inside them. Then you'll just need a hot glue gun, scissors, mini clothespins and labels (I printed mine on a label maker, but handwritten would work just great too). 

Glue the fabric tightly to the board

Arrange your boxes in the order that you'd like

Wrap the boxes in fabric and glue it down

Once all your boxes are wrapped, (make sure to leave the opening of the box unwrapped so that they can hold the recipe cards) arrange them on the board and then glue them down. Personalize the board in any other ways to make it work best for you. I labeled the clothespins with the days of the week, put our family name on the top, and attached a bow to hang it to my pantry door and added a sharpie and dry-erase maker. 

Low-Fat Turkey Meatloaf (with lots of veggies)

Meatloaf is one of those delicious, comfort-foods that I just can't give up. I was so excited when I stumbled upon Cook Yourself Thin's healthier spin-off. The following is a slight variation of her original recipe.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 C dried cranberries (and/or frozen)
• 4 T mustard
• 1/3 C milk (we use non-dairy)
• 1 slice of dry, wheat bread
• 1 small onion
• 3/4 C parsley
• 2 carrots (+ lots more for surrounding it)
• 1/2 t salt, 1/2 t pepper
• 2 T oil
• 1 lb extra-lean ground turkey
• 1 egg white
• 1 lb parsnips and lots of carrots

Soak the dried bread in the milk. Blend 1/2 C cranberries and the 4 T mustard. In a separate, large bowl, mix the remaining 1/4 C berries, chopped onion, chopped parsley, salt and pepper, 2 carrots, egg white, 1 T oil, and ground turkey. Mold and place in a casserole dish. Spread blended berry-mustard mixture on tip. Surround the loaf with additional carrots and parsnips. Lightly drizzle with 1 T oil and salt and pepper. Bake at 400* for 1 hour. (It makes about 4 servings.)

Tropical Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
1.5 C filtered water or coconut water
.5 C juice (Naked Mighty Mango or orange juice are our faves)
4+ C spinach
1 ripe banana
1 C pineapple
1 C frozen berries (mixed or blueberries are our faves)
1 T honey
1 tray of ice
= about 3 Servings

Pour the liquids into a high-speed blender. Then add about 4 C of spinach or until it reaches the top of the blender. Blend until it is a smooth, green liquid. Add the remaining ingredients (ice on top!) and blend again until smooth! (As with all green smoothie recipes, the ingredients can always be tweaked to best suit your mood or your fridge :-)

Homemade Raviolis

It's always nice to have a few quick, go-to meals on hand. These raviolis have become an easy meal for us because we can throw in any on-hand ingredients. The ingredients are wrapped in these great, all-natural, super low-cal, low-fat wraps (ten wraps only have a total of 160 calories and 1/2 gram of fat). The shelf life is a few weeks so we make sure to always have a pack in our fridge.

We've found these at Winco and Fred Meyer's

Ingredients:

Mini wraps
Steamed spinach

Coconut Oil to brush on the tops before baking them

Spaghetti Sauce

Meat Idea: chicken (diced, seasoned, cooked), cheese (diced), basil (shredded)
Veggie Idea: sweet potatoes (cooked and cubed OR mashed), basil (shredded) 

Directions:

Prep the ingredients.

Then place a small spoonful of the ingredients in the center of each wrap. Wet the edges with water before folding it in half so that they will stick together better. Crimp the edges with a fork or use a press to form the raviolis quicker. Lay the raviolis on a baking sheet coated lightly with oil. 

Lightly brush the raviolis with coconut oil.  Bake at 350* for about 10-15 minutes until slightly browned.

Serve with sauce.

Enjoy! 

As you can see, it's a simple recipe that can easily be adjusted with whatever ingredients you're craving!
It's also a great option for those times when you just need to make dinner for one or two.