Well hellooooo friends. Somehow Halloween is done and dusted, the stores are full of Christmas decorations and I’m personally not quite ready for the holiday season! Let me have my cold, rainy November days for a few weeks first, please. I kind of love the bare-treed, gloomy-skied, icy aesthetic of this month. It creates a hyggeligt feeling inside 🙂
Anyways, I’m late, but I’m bringing you that autumn (now just November) meal plan I promised back in September. I had the hardest time deciding which recent eats to share in the meal plan, so there are lots more favorite recipes linked down below, too. As always, this is a realistic look at what we eat so not every meal is even from a recipe. But hopefully you can find some new favorites here!
November Meal Plan (Gluten-Free & Kid-Friendly)
- Monday: Leftover beef sweet potato chili (made on Saturday)
- Tuesday: Leftover salmon, roasted potatoes and steamed broccoli (made on Sunday)
- Wednesday: Grilled cheese and boxed tomato soup–the kids have swim lessons on Wednesdays so at the moment, Pizza Fridays are out and Easy Wednesdays are in!
- Thursday: Tuna patties, rice and peas
- Friday: Leftover tuna patties, rice and peas
- Saturday: Vegetable soup with chopped rotisserie chicken (to top)
- Sunday: Pumpkin ricotta sausage bake*
*I am not trusting of no-boil pasta recipes with GF pasta, so I boiled my pasta first and cut the broth, save a couple splashes to add moisture. I also cut down on the cook time–I think it took about 25 minutes to heat through and melt the cheese.
Lots of Other Favorite Fall Recipes
Link dump incoming… there is just SO much goodness out there on the Internet when it comes to cozy fall dishes. Here is just a small selection of the ones we have tried and loved recently!
For breakfast, this pumpkin pie overnight oats is a perennial favorite, as is Cookie+Kate’s frittata using green onions, bell pepper and chopped bacon for the veggies (bacon is a vegetable… right?) and goat cheese.
For snacks, Kristy’s buckwheat banana muffin recipe has been a hit for playdates–boy, can first graders polish off a batch of muffins quickly, especially when I add chocolate chips! Oh She Glows’ jumbo chocolate chunk cookies are a hit with everyone, minus Eric the chocolate-hater. And I’m also loving berry smoothies to get my greens in. Because let’s face it, produce in Minnesota this time of year leaves a lot to be desired.
Soups! We are doing soup-er Saturdays lately (yes, we’re kind of cringe-y) and in addition to the chili and vegetable soup recipes in the meal plan, I love this vegetarian chili recipe and this roasted butternut squash soup recipe. Oh, and you can’t go wrong with Kristy’s chicken and rice soup either.
Meatballs are a kid favorite and I think my favorite is a tie between these Swedish meatballs (great over potatoes) and these turkey ricotta meatballs (great over pasta). Certified gluten-free quick oats are a great substitute for panko.
In terms of new grocery store finds lately, we’ve started buying Force of Nature ground beef to get our organ meats in. I will never be a liver pate girl but I swear you can’t taste it in this beef. Pinky swear! I’m also somewhat addicted to Purely Elizabeth oatmeal raisin cookie granola at the moment. Occasionally they sell big bags of it at Costco and I do a little happy dance when I find them.
Ok… now it’s time to stop talking about food and get back to real life work. What fall (or spring, depending on your hemisphere) foods or recipes are you loving lately? Please share!
xx Claire