Meatless Monday, Sunday, Wednesday, Friday...

So this is week one of our families eco challenge. Last week I took a quick trip to the farmer's market and picked up a few things for us to do this weeks meal planning on. We spent a great deal of time working our menu around eating even less meat and fewer processed foods (which consumes fewer resources), and eating only meat from or locally raised hog purchase (the little that is left over). So this week of the challenge we have done local pork chops and homemade ground pork pot stickers, and spaghetti carbonera (from the bacon ends) . But for meatless we had/have a few things planned this week.

Everything in the fridge soup:

On Sat I busted out the crock pot and put every left over veggie we had in the fridge that was in danger of going bad into the pot with 2 local sweet potatoes from the market (so think, regular potatoes, celery, onion, carrots, some left over cooked butternut squash, garlic etc.) threw in veggie broth and cooked. Once everything was completely cooked I added a little salt, pepper, milk pureed the whole thing. To really make my daughter love it I added just a very few star shaped pastas.

In the morning my older daughter helped me make bread (artisan bread in 5 mins a day half wheat dough) and that night we made bread sticks to eat with the soup. Take a look - we all ate it right up and there are plenty of leftovers for another night. 

 

(These pictures aren't pretty - but I'm NOT a great cook so don't laugh)

Garden burgers from a bin:
I don't have a picture but last week we also tried out the veggie burger mix (Nature's Burgers) from the Winco food bins. A friend on facebook had mentioned the mix to me and I though there was no way this would be worth trying. Guess what, I was wrong. I bought just 1.5 cups of the mix, added 1.5 cups of water and waited 10 mins. Formed into patties and cooked it up. On a bun with cheese, etc... along side some homemade macaroni and cheese - we all thought these were so delicious we will certainly be eating them again. I was mentioning to a friend that they would easily pass for fax chicken nuggets or even crab cakes if you formed them small enough and added dipping sauce. For the $$$ and ease of cooking on a week night - this will be added to our rotation for sure (I just wish I didn't have to go all the way to Winco to get it).

And for the rest of the week I'm I'm going back to tried and true:
Our usual tofu and veggie stir-fry I'm sure will be in the mix with the last of our carrots from our own garden and taking a page from the success my mom had with a meatless meal we have a meatless sausage spaghetti on the list with some wonderful looking local tomatoes and artichokes I got from the market (my daughter loves artichokes - go figure. I will probably try to hit the farmer's market again Wed to see what else I can score for later in the week.