This Week’s Gluten-Free Menu Plan with Free Printables

A lot of people are doing no-spend months during January, which looks fun! So I briefly thought about it, and decided that for us, right now, it’s not the best idea.

January is the coldest month of the year here in Texas, the one where we stay indoors more than not, and don’t see as much sunshine.

The one where everybody gets sick.

So for us, we’re going to be doubly sure to eat a lot of greens, and other vitamin-rich food to do our best to stay healthy. And when I say “we” I mean me. I’m going to eat a lot of greens, and cajole the kids to eat as many greens as I can.

If it were up to them, they’d eat mac ’n cheese and hot dogs every day.

With that said, we are going to be eating as much as possible from our pantry and freezer.

So here’s This week’s loot from Walmart and HEB:

(Not Pictured: a 9 oz bag of spinach, and 2 acorn squashes)

Grand total: $34.03

Normally, we don’t buy bread, but I’ve really been wanting to try this sprouted grain bread, and it was on sale. Yippee!

Here’s what you’ll need for next week!

Food prep for next week:

• Make a quart of yogurt (using the milk pictured)
• Make sauer kraut with one head of cabbage
• Freeze half of sausage and ground beef

Our meal plan for this week:

Breakfast

• Scrambled eggs with salsa
• Steel cut oatmeal
• grits
• eggs and toast
• sausage and eggs

I’m trying to wean the kids off of grain-based breakfasts, but it’s turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. Partly because Hadassah only ever wants grits for breakfast, but mostly because it’s so cold in the kitchen in the morning that it’s hard to motivate myself to stay in there long enough to cook something more wholesome!

Lunch

• Ham and bean soup with cornbread (leftover from church potluck), salad
• gluten-free Spaghetti with spinach meatballs and acorn squash
• Hamburger Hash (fried potatoes and hamburger) with steamed broccoli
• Peanut butter and honey sandwiches
• Bean and cheese quesadillas

I cooked waaaay too many beans for the church lunch this week, so I’ve been repurposing them into everything I can – White bean refried beans for quesadillas and burritos, and bean soup. The kids don’t seem to mind, and I think they taste pretty good as well!

Dinner

• Gluten-free Chicken nuggets, with roasted sweet potatoes and spinach salad
• Taco Salad
• Chicken-white bean Enchiladas with Mexican rice and acorn squash
• Hamburgers and sweet potato fries
• Cabbage and onion stir fry with rice and ground beef

Let’s be honest, I say “taco salad”, the kids immediately go to the pantry and pull out the tortillas. so “our” taco salad usually turns into my taco salad, and their burritos.

I bought some taquierra-style corn tortillas this week, hoping that the small size would help Hadassah be able to eat them with less breakage and frustration. She’s pretty tickled about it!

Snacks

• Healthy oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Cornbread
• Green smoothies

I don’t like cornbread, but I made a pan to go with the ham and beans for church Sunday, and, you guessed it, I had a bunch left over, so fortunately for me the kids like it pretty well, and will eat it for snacks between meals.

You can see from the menu that most of the ingredients had to come from things we already had in the pantry and freezer – and they did!

I only bought one bag of spinach this week, so we cooked with a lot of frozen spinach and kale – including the kale we used in our smoothies. I like keeping frozen and freeze-dried greens on hand, because it ensures that I never run out of greens.

Here in our tiny town, the one grocery store doesn’t carry any fresh greens other than basic lettuce, so when we run out, we’re out until our next trip to Stephenville. So stocking them in the freezer keeps us from making emergency trips (or withering away from going without ;))

Even though I bought a big roll of hamburger, you’ll notice that we have chicken on the menu twice. This is partly because I can’t get my head around “hamburger and white bean enchiladas” (so we’re doing chicken), and partly because the kids wanted chicken nuggets.

And that’s pretty much it!

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