The one thing in my world I do a fairly good job of organizing is our dinner meal plan for the week. I usually plan a week at a time, & make our shopping list, based partially on what's on sale. This blog will be where I will post our weekly meal plan, recipes & a shopping list that includes the prices I paid for each item.
Reasons you may or may not be interested: we try, but don't always succeed at keeping our weekly grocery shopping bill around $60; we're currently dairy/wheat/soy/egg free (although recipes might have optional cheese or whatever); we try to eat relatively healthy, minimally processed foods. *While we do avoid soy protein, we do eat foods with soybean oil and soy lecithin.*
I am a mom, with a needy baby, a spirited toddler, a hungry (and helpful) husband and a part-time job. It's important to me that we eat moderately healthy, at least, and that I can get most of a meal together in the space of an episode of Dora when Tony (my husband) isn't working. I'm also ridiculously cheap, so the less we spend on food (or anything), the better.
I am on the aforementioned restricted diet because I suspect our breast-fed baby (Teagun) may have food intolerances, as his sister (Kismet) did. With her, we were never able to pin down which foods exactly were her issues before she grew out of it. We spent most of her first year avoiding dairy, wheat, soy, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish, seafood and tomatoes (and a few difficult weeks corn free). I restricted so many foods at that time because, by the time we realized her problem was related to my diet (diagnosed by an awesome pediatric gastroenterologist), when she was 4 months old, she was technically malnourished (10 lbs. 3 oz.), and had been having blood in her stool for many weeks. It was important to get her gaining weight and healing her gut as soon as possible, so I started with a big cut, and slowly started trialing foods after she started healing and growing. If I recall correctly, we had all foods back around her first birthday. She's now 2, 30 pounds, and eats whatever she feels like (she's a toddler, so that changes by the minute).
This time around, we're getting started a little earlier. I started the restricted eating when Teagun was 7 weeks old, and around 8 lb. 5 oz., 3-5% for his age (he was 7 lb. 2 oz. at birth). He also spits up frequently, and in large amounts most days, and is starting to get the green, slightly mucousy poops that had preceded the blood with Kismet. So I decided we'd cut out the most likely culprits and go from there.
I am not a dietitian or nutritionist or anything of the sort, and I cannot guarantee that every recipe I post will be completely free of dairy/wheat/soy/egg or any other allergen. We aren't dealing with anaphalaxis-level allergies, so I just do the best I can. I believe labels, and don't worry if something may share equipment with one of our no-no foods. Please proceed with caution if need be.
