Challenge Week: Day 2

Today's meals (except breakfast and lunch, which I wrote about yesterday): 

• My midmorning snack: apple (that was going to be part of my lunch) with peanut butter. 
• Afternoon snack for kids and me: a couple of leftover pancakes. 
• Dinner: Pasta with tomato sauce, tuna, chickpeas, and onion; broccoli; grapefruit.
• Snacks for Eric: raisins and walnuts this afternoon; salted chickpeas later tonight.

I soaked the chickpeas last night and cooked them in the slow cooker this morning. Without a slow cooker, this would not be possible for someone who is away at work all day. I could have soaked them yesterday and cooked them on the stove yesterday evening, but I was tired of cooking by then! 

Lunches prepared for tomorrow: 

• Kids: Leftover pasta, apple slices, and yogurt (or half a leftover pancake for the one who doesn't like yogurt). 
• Eric: Leftover pasta, raisins and walnuts, apple. 
• Me: Leftover beans, rice, peas, and corn, like yesterday. 

As I write this, a chicken is roasting in the oven. When it's done, I'll remove the meat from the bones for later meals and put the carcass into the slow cooker to make broth overnight. (Again, this could be cooked on the stove if one has a large pot, but having a slow cooker gives me more flexibility that not everyone has.) 

I will also bake banana bread tonight to take to the meeting I mentioned in my meal planning post. However, I forgot to buy baking soda, so I'll have to substitute baking powder and hope the result is edible.

So far, we're finding that we have plenty of food, but to make this work, I'm having to do a lot of extra cooking. It would be very hard for me to keep this up every week.