Menu Plan Monday - Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables for April

Before I asked the children for their suggestions for this week’s meal plan, I actually took them through the below list of fruit and vegetables in season.

The following fruits and vegetables are at their best and cheapest this month:

Fruits:
Apple, Banana, Grapes, Watermelon, Figs, Nashi, Quince

Vegetables:
Asparagus, Beans, Beanshoots, Beetroot, Broccoli, Carrot, Cauliflower, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Potato, Pumpkin, Snow peas, Spring onion, Sweetcorn, Turnip, Zucchini

These lists are for Australia, but if you live in the UK you can see what’s in season at Eat the Seasons UK and for North America Eat the Seasons.

We then had a discussion around why it is better to use in season fruit and veg (cost and freshness) and then I had to answer a miriad of questions around why we could still get all this other food if they were not in season. Two core answers: the wonders of technology (eg. cold storage) and importing fruit and veg from other countries.

With all this information we were set to gather the families input and came up with this:

Monday: Pasta with Chicken and Spinach
Baking: Chocolate Chip Cookies (Recipe Attached)

Tuesday: Chicken and Seasonal Veg Stir Fry (Recipe Attached)

Wednesday: Pumpkin Soup

Thursday: Baked Penne

Friday: Roast Chicken and Vegetables
Inspired by the recipe on From Mummy’s Kitchen.

Saturday: Tacos

Sunday: Picklebums Easy Beef and Vegie Triangles
Kate has come up with a great way to use left over meat veg and turn it into a tasty meal.

As per the last few weeks, I have included the shopping list for this week’s menu plan as an excel file. The below paragraphs explain what is in the attached excel file below.

Menu Plan Shopping List 080407

It contains three separate spreadsheets. The first is named “Complete Grocery’ and it lists by supermarket aisle all the ingredients that are needed to cook the family meals for this week.

The second spreadsheet is named “Ingredient By Meal’ and it lists the ingredients that are required for the family by each individual meal this week. I have also left on the aisle and aisle subsection in this spreadsheet for reference, but if you want to print that out you will need to alter the print area.

The third spreadsheet is named “Menu Plan” and is a modified version of the menu plan that I print and place on the fridge. I have a notes section, that I like to populate with any activities that are likely to impact the evening meal routine.

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For more menu planning ideas head on over to Laura’s place at “I’m an Organizing Junkie“.

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