Here’s our menu for the week. Below, you’ll find my sorry little confession about Funky Fresh Kitchen Challenge #4. :(
Sunday, September 23
Oatmeal, fruit
Cheesy beef and rice, green beans, tossed salad
Huddle at our friends house
Monday, September 24
Whole wheat pancakes, blueberries
BLTs, sweet peppers, apples
Alfredo sauce with pasta, steamed broccoli and carrots
Tuesday, September 25
Easy homemade granola, dried fruit
Homemade pizza pockets, peache
Chicken noodle soup, carrots
Wednesday, September 26
Pancake sausage muffins, applesauce
Tuna salad, fresh tomatoes, sweet peppers, crispy cheese crackers
Roast, carrots, potatoes, gravy, green beans
Thursday, September 27
Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, apples
Sloppy cornbread muffins, peas
One dish meat and potato casserole, salad
Friday, September 28
Cinnamon apple toast, milk
Creamy mac and cheese, peas
Rice and veggie stir fry with chicken
Saturday, September 29
Scrambled eggs, toast, creamy orange coolers
Leftovers
Calzones, fruit
Well, if you recall, last week our Funky Fresh Kitchen Challenge was to eat more fruits and veggies. So, how did you do?! Did you load up on plenty of servings of broccoli and carrots? Did you try a new variety of fruit? Did you take advantage of all the fresh produce that typically is available this time of year? Did you offer your family a nice variety of fruits and veggies for snacks and meals? Did you make big salads for lunch?
Did you notice that I’m trying to avoid telling you how I did with this challenge? ;)
Um…well. Of all weeks for me to throw out a “eat lots of fruits and vegetables challenge”.
Not only was it a very busy week full of soccer games that had us on the run each evening, but on Monday I had an appointment with a Natural Doctor, and then began a cleanse of sorts. I’m not sure if you’ve ever done any kind of “de-tox” on your system, but wow, great as it was, this one about knocked me flat. I was pretty much worthless from Monday afternoon until Friday night (at which point I suddenly felt so incredibly good that I made and canned 26 quarts of applesauce – and then, still full of energy, got out a toothbrush to scrub my wooden floors – all while singing folk tunes loudly at a high octave).
Just kidding about the folk tunes. And the tooth brush. Although I really did make 26 quarts of applesauce. (While jamming with the Newsboys.) Seriously though – that cleanse did what it was supposed to do because I feel so very good now!
Well, look at me – still trying to avoid telling you about how I did with the fruit and veggie challenge.
Since I wasn’t feeling the best all week, I had to just slip into “survival mode”. I did bare minimum around the house. I pared down my participation in the boys’ school lessons so that I could put them to work independently – popping my head off the couch occasionally to read History and Bible, and to toss out spelling words. All major projects that might have required me to come up with rubber cement, poster board, or basic brain function were put on hold.
We made great use of the food I had prepped ahead of time and put into the freezer, and I believe we did eat a fruit or a vegetable several times each day.
But was I intentional about making sure we ate a nice variety of beautifully colored fresh produce? Nope. I actually almost forgot about the challenge in the first place. All I was intentional about this week was drinking plenty of water to keep my body doing what it was supposed to be doing.
And it worked!! Did I mention that once the cleanse had run its course, I felt so good that I ran eight miles, did 30 push-ups, and sorted all of our winter clothing – all while singing folk tunes loudly at a high octave?
Not really.
But I seriously do feel good. And I plan to play a “re-do” card this week with the fruits and veggies challenge. Feel free to do the same if your week was anything like mine. :)
So, how did you do with the Eat More Fruits and Veggies Challenge? Leave a comment on this post, sharing how the challenge went for you. All comments will be entered in our giveway for two $25 and one $50 gift certificates to the Heavenly Homemakers Shop.
Ate the rainbow here!
Glad you are feeling better! I broke out and used some spinach this week in quiche and I used up quite a few green peppers from our garden in soup and pizza :) it’s a start!
I would like to know more about your cleanse and the “Natural Dr.”. I would really like to do a cleanse and find a new Dr. but i don’t know where to start.
Thanks!
I kind of forgot about it. Opps.
did great! This is just how we normally eat now. =0)In all honesty, it took a long time to overhaul how we eat, but slow and steady!
We usually eat lots of fruits and veggies so this was an easy one for us. Right now I’m putting up applesauce, smells yummy!Eating a few apple chunks along the way…well maybe more then a few :)Have a great week!
Yeah, the eat your fruits and veggies didnt happen for me this past week. However, if we can start this week on Thursday I can start that challenge then. So you are not alone, just different reasons for missing that one.
We have bought a lot more fruit lately! Yay for new stuff being in season. :-)
I think we actually ate LESS fruits/veggies this week than normal. Our grocery budget was extra tight, we ate a lot of beans and rice from our pantry in addition to chicken and homemade broth (that was made with lots of veggies! Does that count?).
Glad to hear you’re feeling better after the cleanse! I did make an effort to at least eat fruit with breakfast instead of just a bowl of cereal and milk. I slacked on the veggie part, mainly because I can’t find anything in my freezer. My goal is to organize some of that once I get off of here (note to self – don’t get sidetracked). Hopefully this week will go better for both of us on this challenge!
We are still enjoying God’s blessing of the veggies from our garden (tom.s with almost every meal) and the apples we gleaned from an orchard. I canned 12 quarts of applesauce, one healthy fruit crisp (your recipe) and one apple pie (over cooked :( and smoke pouring out of the oven!!) there are still enough apples for one more pie, but I have to clean the oven first.
We tried Starfruit for the second time; a produce store nearby had amazing prices on peppers, so we’ve been eating raw orange, yellow and red ones. Still have a couple of green ones to eat from our garden.
Does frozen raw fruit count? I thawed some blackberries we’d picked from our bushes, had they on pancakes, not too good… My lovely mother-in-law gave us some blueberries and strawberries that she bought.
Sooooo I guess quite a good raw week for us.
Not looking forward to store bought veggies… frost got to the rest of our veggies.
my kids have been loving colorful baby bell peppers along with grapes & strawberries :)
Well, on vacation at the beach last week, we did purpose to eat more food “in” than “out,” so a fair amount of fruits & veggies were eaten! But it sure was great to restock the fridge with loads of color today! I’ll take a redo too! (:
didn’t get much more veggies in but i have a fresh cauliflower & apples in the fridge for hopefully a better week this time.
Vacation (and the pre-vacation, clean out the fridge week) are making this challenge, welll challenging. Always on my mind however :)
I’m excited, we actually made the largest part of our meals vegetables with some fruits thrown in this past week. I feel better too. And my family is loving it. Well, all but our youngest son, and but he’ll come around ;)
Well, I think I need a re-do :( My mother unexpectedly made the 10 hr drive from her home to visit our newest baby boy (3 weeks old) so all my meal plans, as well as all other plan sort of went out the window :) One of my biggest challenges with eating fresh fruits and veggies is that I didn’t grow up with a lot of them (read that as my mother doesn’t like a lot of them) so I tried to accomadate her tastes while visiting but also wanted to encourage her palate. Needless to say, the large pot of split-pea soup I made for last night’s dinner will be delicious reheated tomorrow (mom went home today) She heard what I was making and quickly offered to buy everyone pizza for dinner :)
Failed here! It was just one of those weeks.
This month we have been using the fresh produce that was avaible to us. I love garden fresh veggies. An added note, I love your Alfredo sauce recipe. I have been using it for a while now. Last week my husband and I actually got to go out for a lunch date (with only 2 of our kids, but hey that still counts for us) to Olive Garden and I had their “Alfredo” pasta and I didn’t even like it at all. Your recipe is better hands down. After church for lunch today I made homemade pizza with Alfredo sauce and it was yummy.
we have so many peppers from our garden (even after freezing A BUNCH)I am trying to find new ways to use them. We typically eat veggies every meal
More fruits & veggies challenge . . . well, um . . . ok, I’ll be honest, we didn’t do it! But I sure would like to know more about that cleanse because I sure need it and would love to feel better!
Love the re-do option.
We didn’t do too bad (except for that trip to the Creation Museum where we ate pizza and at a restaurant…which we never do). I did get applesauce canned too so eating apples while canning totally counts as a few days of fruit I think! :)
We are moving in a week and so didn’t do so hot. Pretty crazy around here too. But at least I’m managing to avoid “fast food.”!
We did eat more fruit not so much in the vegetable department. We’ll take a redo as well.
We are doing great. Thanks to yours and a lot of Carrie Vitt’s recipes (you have her cookbook), I ate a lot of meals that were only vegetables or had at least 1 fruit and 1 vegetable in them. Zucchini “noodles” have transformed our dishes and spaghetti squash is so versatile. If only I could finish the shelf paper in the cabinets, my kitchen would be fresh”er.”
Last week I did okay, but this weekend was rough b/c we were on a getaway so too much eating out. And even with making as-good-of-choices as I could have eating out… I feel real yuck :(
Tomorrow I’ll be starting off better!
If you haven’t been eating fruits and vegetables in my house this week, it’s because you’ve been hiding. We’ve got garden/orchard produce coming out our ears!
We actually did really good. Hubby was gone and he is the only picky one, so we loaded up on all sorts of fresh produce!
We did much better this week, especially with snacks. Now to keep it up…
We have been traveling this week, so we didn’t do so well either. I am going to try again after we get back home!
We did much better than usual here. From our garden we had beefsteak and grape tomatoes, green, red and yellow peppers, cucumbers, yellow squash with onions,purple eggplant,basil, cilantro,and sage. Our fruits were apples, oranges, kiwis, red and green pears, pineapple and bananas (none of the fruit came from the garden).I am really interested in the cleanse, is it something you buy or something you can make at home?
Honestly, I didn’t participate, simply because I don’t see how we can really eat more vegetables than we already do, without going full veggie. I tend to live according to the South Beach Diet precepts about veggies .. 1/2 cup in the morning, 2 cups for lunch, 2 cups for dinner. we usually start off the morning with a spinach omelette, or a spinach smoothie (the smoothie being much higher in spinach content, though the omelette has so much that it tends to fall apart lol) and I always use fresh spinach because I hate the taste of frozen. For lunch I sneak spinach in PBH wraps .. a tortilla with peanut butter, honey, cinnamon, and finely shredded fresh spinach. Then baby carrots and cucumbers polish off my daughter’s lunch because they’re the only veggies she eats reliably, and my husband gets the same, or bell peppers, kohl rabi, tomato, or salad. He gets a piece of fresh fruit (apple/pear, things that pack well), she typically gets a bowl of applesauce and a small bottle of fruit juice. After school snack is usually a piece of fruit, though not always. For dinner we eat, depending on the meal, zucchini, summer squash, red/yellow/green bell peppers, onions (almost every meal lol, as well as lots of garlic), mushrooms, broccoli, occassionally cauliflower, or green beans. The “old stand-by” of corn and peas typically only get used for pot pies or soups, and soups are a dump-all lol. Occassionally I get in the mood for celery, and we’ll eat that a lot, but other times I can’t stand it. When I do eat it, I clean it all up, and then dice the greens and bitter shoots up for soup.
Hopefully this gave someone some ideas of ways to use other veggies! :D Good luck with your reboot of the challenge!
Thanks for all your work!
Gotta admit – didn’t even try…….but I can honestly say that all of the oranges and apples I bought have disappeared!
We went back to fall foods this week and that allowed me to get in at least one vegetable with every dinner this week. YUM!
I did a little better–I tend to leave the fresh fruits for my family to pack in their lunches but this week I made sure I ate some too.
Canned and ate lots!!! if tomatoes from the garden. We had our first frost last night so the garden days are about over.
I kinda forgot about the challenge but did do better with getting more fresh fruit in my kiddos lunches. If I’m organized and have it in the fridge then we eat it up no problem!
Would love to hear more about this cleanse. Have been learning more about the concept and thinking about doing one myself.
My son and I usually do well on eating fruits and veggies every day. Fresh broccoli and/or carrots for lunch with an apple for snack…salads…plenty of apples in the fridge…picked up a bushel of rome apples to make applesauce over the weekend…and made a raspberry, blackberry, and blue berry cobbler for dessert. I also made an apple cranberry bread to go with learning our alphabet with your curriculum to give to our neighbor, Andy.
Veggies and fruits are always a staple here so it’s unusual to have little or none served. It is especially easy when you are gardening and there is easily picked produce to put into whatever is being made. I’m sad to see our garden coming to an end. :(
All that being said, I’m 7 months pregnant and the baby felt that I’ve been cheating it on carbs, so pasta and bread was a frequent recurring theme this week! So yummy!! I always serve with a great salad full of variety and homemade dressings so I won’t feel too bad about that! Enjoy your posts and this challenge to energize our efforts for the fall. Blessings to you!
I think I would like a redo for the fruits and veggies also! I completely forgot that was the challenge and we didn’t try anything new!
I started out with such wonderful intentions…pears, oranges, bananas, avocado, okra, green beans apples and peaches just waiting for my family to devour them…but it’s not always that easy. All parents know that at least some of a huge bowl of beautiful fruits and veggies will most definitely go to waste if they’re not plunked down purposefully in front of a hungry family at which point they smile, devour, ask for more gushing all the while about how delicious it is…..so we’ve all had a cold this week and I haven’t done my job of plunking as well as I could have. We’ve eaten some fruits and veggies definitely, but once again…not enough to complete a challenge!
I did a little better…I think!
I can’t say that we ate more veggies, but we did our usual weekly stock-up. I went to the farmer’s market with my girls and got zucchini, carrots, squash, tomatoes, onions, green beans, green peppers, raspberries and red potatoes (though we don’t count potatoes as a veggie :). Later, I went to the grocery store for cucumbers, romaine, avocado, lemon, bananas, mushrooms, strawberries, blackberries and broccoli. On Saturday we took the girls apple picking.
The YUMMY way I ate more fruit this weekend, is through our dessert of the week. My older girls (3&5) and I made a French yogurt cake and served it with a dollop of whipped cream on top and raspberries on the side. The cake was AMAZING and super easy! It had the moist consistency of a pound cake, but instead of 1 1/2 cups of butter, it had 1 1/2 cups of yogurt. Also, I substituted virgin coconut oil for the olive oil so it had a wonderful hint of coconut. The sugar content was relatively low (I used organic), but I did substitute 1/3 white whole wheat flour for the AP flour. Note: the cake is supposed to be served with creme fraiche (I already had w. creme in the house). Also, 2 cups of frozen berries can be added to the batter if desired.
http://www.thekitchn.com/quick-and-easy-recipe-yogurt-c-118366
LAURA I highly recommend you or your CAKE BOYS give French yogurt cake a try!
Yup me too!! Forgot all about it since we were visiting family and having a birthday party! Have to try again!
We are all about the veggies this time of year. I went nuts at the farmer’s market and we’ve been having them like crazy all week long! Love this time of year!
I am always inspired by your menu plans!
Budget was very tight, actually we ate less than usual. However, we eat a lot anyway, so i think we are still ok. We did also try a couple of new recipes with veggies the kids don’t usually like.
I was out of the state. I’ll try this week.
Well, the bag of oranges I was looking forward to enjoying didn’t not taste good at all! I did add fresh spinach to eggs were had for breakfast. Raspberries were included in lunch today.
Well, overall, I think we did ok. We even served fresh sweet corn, carrots, grapes, apples, etc at a birthday party tomorrow (not the norm for us) so overall, we’re heading in the right direction… :o)
Seeing as I recently learned I was allergic to a lot of the veggies I normally eat, I’ll probably be looking at a lot of other stuff in the near future. This past week for me was survival on homemade broth with grated zucchini and dal, salt only, as garlic is my biggest culprit.
Overall we did well. Not a fabulous rainbow of produce, but more than normal. :)
E did great with the fruit! Fail on the veggies… But my hubby and I have been snacking on grapes, apples and bananas like nobody’s business!
I’d love to hear about your cleanse! Hope to do better this week on the fruits and veggies!
We did eat more fruits and veggies – it was so fun!
Well our increase in veggies didn’t play out so well either. Hubby decided he wanted to have all dinners be homemade fast food copy cats. I just couldn’t figure out how to pair fresh veggies with fast food, even if I was making it myself.
Well Im with you on this one. I actually was on vacation and ate less fruits and vegetables than I normally do.
I found it difficult to keep to this challenge without a strong effort. But, I did enjoy quite a few meals that were heavily loaded with fresh foods. My favorite was a wonderful salad at a local restaurant when my in-laws were visiting us over the weekend. Everyone else enjoyed the Mexican fare, but that salad was amazing! Makes me want another one now.