Menu Plan Monday–Culinary Freedom

Happy 4th!  I’m having a lazy morning so far and I hope many of you are, too.  Friday was the kick off of our July Self Care Retreat, which I’m hosting with Valerie of City Life Eats and features our guest hosts, Shirley of Gluten-Free Easily, Wendy of Celiacs in the House and Iris of Daily Dietribe.  Valerie has kicked off with our first theme, Self Care through Movement, so go on and check out her reflections.

I’m very excited about it–sometimes I actively practice self care, sometimes I actively practice lip service to it!  It’s constantly a dance for me between taking care of myself and juggling my work and home responsibilities, and it’s my intention to deepen and expand my ways of taking care of myself through this month.  I hope you join us, too!

The theme for this week’s menu plan is culinary freedom.  Sometimes that means I’m resigning responsibility for the week’s food.  Sometimes that means I’m liberating myself from my oven!  Other times it means giving myself permission to experiment with dishes that may or may not turn out well.  So hopefully you can find a way it applies to you, too.

I’ve been cooking and baking very little because I’ve been overwhelmed with all the boxes and the extra demands.  And I have an exciting week planned!  I’ll be speaking on a gluten-free diet for Institute of Integrative Nutrition, which should be fun, and I’m really looking forward to it!

So I will endeavor to cook just 2 meals and drift more towards salads this week. We’ll see how that goes.

Monday:
Quinoa with garlic and Kalamata olives

Tues:
Chicken and broccoli w/a “teriyaki” sauce (actually garlic, ginger, broth and komobu boiled for a long time–I will try to quantify and make it into a recipe next time)

Weds:
Baby greens and hummus

Thurs:
Grilled salmon w/grilled veggies

Friday:
Leftovers

Calling all hosts/hostesses! Yes you! Drop me a line.

Renee from Beyond Rice and Tofu joins us with a yummy lineup.  She’s recycling some of last week’s meals (I understand completely!) and she has kale producing well!  I’m very jealous.  Her red lentils and kale sounds fantastic.