Giving Up Gluten: Meal Plan for the Long Weekend at the Cottage

I am at the cottage, so please forgive me for this casual post, but you see, I’m in casual mode, where I intend to stay for the foreseeable. We’ve been here for two weeks, with another one to go. And then I’m off to my mother’s in the country for another two weeks of fresh air, fresh blueberries and exhausted children (note the subtle differnece between exhausted children and exhausting children).

This is unusual for me… for us. Our previous summer holidays with children have always been shorter and someone else has done the cooking, which of course I highly recommend. This year, however, we’ve been afforded the luxury of time and decided to rent a place on a lake with lots of room. By the end of our three week stay we’ll have had 23 visitors. This has meant a lot of cooking, and a lot of leftovers. Which leads me to today’s post.

I had one of those a-ha moments in the kitchen during this holiday. For some of you, this will seem rather mundane, but for me, it was a real revelation. I’ve never really considered leftovers as important, truth be told. Mostly I dutifully package whatever’s left and put it in the fridge, only to lift the lids weeks later and plop the contents into the bin. Nor have I ever worked from a meal plan. But at the cottage, not only am I planning the meals, I’m planning the leftovers. This means two things: 1) less is going into the bin, and 2) I’m spending less time scrabbling together the elements of a meal, because I’m already working with prepped ingredients, leaving far more time for moments like these (see photo above).

Here’s how it looks:

Dinner:  BBQ pork, grilled peppers and onions, coleslaw, corn on the cob

Lunch: Sliced cold pork, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes

Dinner: Fish tacos with black bean and corn salsa, guacamole (using left over corn from previous dinner)

Breakfast: Huevos rancheros (scrambled eggs, guacamole, and black bean and corn salsa)

Dinner: BBQ steak, boiled potatoes and grilled asparagus and greens (boil lots of extra potatoes, grill extra asparagus wash and bag extra lettuce)

Lunch: Salad nicoise with grilled asparagus, boiled potatoes (boil double the eggs required)

Dinner: Grilled salmon, fried potatoes, steamed broccoli (fry up boiled potatoes from previous evening meal)

Lunch: egg salad or steak sandwiches for those who can eat wheat, and for those who can not –steak salad or hard boiled eggs and cut up veggies

I would love to hear what your favourite cottage meal is and if it does double duty the next day. I need an idea for dinner tonight!