Since I started on my SWAMI, I've made it a habit to serve meat for dinner. I get 5 servings of red meat, 2 of poultry, and 5  fish servings per week. So making meat for dinner 4-5 nights a week has been logical. But now DD1 has her own SWAMI, and she's only supposed to have red meat 3 times a week, poultry 3 times, and fish 4 times- plus she gets a lot more dairy than I do (for me it's a  condiment; she has it as a protein source a few times a week.) So I need to re-arrange my dinner menus, and fill in the gaps in my own SWAMI at lunchtime.

I always make a turkey breast for Friday night dinner, and usually have enough leftovers for turkey-stir fry another night. That's my two servings a week. If she takes turkey for lunch once a week, there's her 3rd weekly serving. I make pizza one night a week when I make something else for myself.

I don't have access to fresh fish within my  budget. Is there some way to make canned fish feel like "dinner food"? Usually I use canned fish to make  cold salads for lunch. But I don't see how DD1 will get enough fish servings (and few enough red meat servings) without fish for dinner once or twice a week.

Ideally, I'd love 2 weeks' worth of menus to rotate, but even one week's worth of menus would be workable. So far, I've got pizza on Wednsdays, turkey on Friday nights, and assorted salads (fish, egg, and lettuce) for Saturday lunch, with a hearty bean soup for Saturday nights (supplemented with lunch leftovers.) Turkey stir fry for one of those weekday nights, often either Sunday (before I've gone shopping for the week) or Thursday (when I realize I still haven't used the leftovers and I want them  gone  before I make a new  turkey the next day.)

I'm not worried about lunch foods on Sunday through Friday right now, since we don't eat those meals together. Help me  figure out meals for the rest of the week!

Lentil stew and rice.  Can DS have lentils?  If you and both DDs are O neg. you can all have lentils, right?  Oops, I'm thinking non-secretors.  That might not work.  

Rice noodle casserole with compliant cheese (quark?) with canned tuna or salmon.  Sorta like tuna noodle casserole.  I don't know if kids like that anymore.  DH and I love it.  You can add veggies, or have a salad on the side.

If I think of anything else, I will post.  

Salmon Cakes are easy and inexpensive to make.  Here is an example, http://southernfood.about.com/od/salmonrecipes/r/bln544.htm, you can substitute many of the ingredients if they are not compliant.

OK, a few more details:

As an O nonnie, I can have lentils. As an O "assumed secretor" Explorer, DD1 can have lentils. If DD2 is on the Explorer diet, she can have lentils. If I put her on her sister's SWAMI, she can have lentils. If I keep her on the "O, assume secretor" diet, she can't have lentils.  DS can't have lentils on the B "assume secretor" diet, but he could on the Nomad diet (which he's not on, because he's still growing and may end up an Explorer or Gatherer.)

There are NO cheeses all of us can have. Most of my neutral and bennie cheeses are black dots for DD1, and her neutrals are my avoids. We'll eat cheese for lunches, or serve it as an  optional topping with dinner. A casserole with cheese will simply not work. Also, with keeping kosher, we can serve dairy with fish, but not with red meat or poultry.

The only bean we can all have is great northern beans. I use those for after-school snacks, and plan to experiment with making hummus out of them soon, for lunches. I've tried making "white bean burgers" and they didn't come out so good. I've found we're better off saving beans for lunchtime, and having animal protein at dinner.

DS generally doesn't like his foods all mixed together, with a few VERY specific exceptions. Even if I could come up with a casserole that's compliant for all of us, chances are DS wouldn't eat it.

I don't object to making several dishes at one meal, with each of us being able to eat 3 of  the 4 options, but I can't make a whole dinner that one of us can't eat. On Wednesdays, I make something completely separate for myself, but I really don't want to do that more than once a week.

Trivia for Ruthie:

This does not fully solve your current situation, but if Andrea has not already given you a link to the online meal planner for the SWAMI she did for you, ask her for it and you can use the SWAMI meal planner on your own computer.

If Andrea also did your daughter there will be a separate menu planner for her, with the food appropriate for her.

I think there is some effort to develop software to combine the food guidelines in the menu planners for a whole family, but that is not currently available.

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If you have a printout of  your diet plan from Andrea the URL for your personalized menu planner is near the end -- next to the page with the wallet cards. (Note: SWAMI Xpress users do not need this URL, since you can click on link within the the SWAMI Xpress software to get to the Menu planner)

So fish with cheese would be ok, IF there were a mutually compliant cheese, which there is not, so that casserole is out.  How about the salmon cakes, Ruthie?  I make those fairly often, and we like them.  I oven fry them in a little grapeseed oil.

I was just thinking how nice it would be to have a database of foods that we could search for mutually compliant foods by blood type and secretor status.

I can use the SWAMI meal planning website for DD1 or for myself, but it's not (yet?) set up to co-ordinate meals with BTD. I'm not even sure if we can combine the two SWAMI's together yet, and then we'd still be dealing with issues such as "this food isn't available locally within my budget" or "DS refuses to eat that." I think I'm better off doing menu planning the old-fashioned way. BTW, I was able to click on the link in the PDF file from her SWAMI to get to the meal planner, without typing anything in.

Thanks for the idea about salmon patties. I think I'll do that tonight, even though DD1 hasn't liked them when I made them in the past. She's been much more willing to try new foods lately- and she can always prepare something else for herself if she really doesn't like them, something that's much simpler to do when the kitchen is set up for dairy.

I think I'll make my typical "meat meal side dishes" tonight; frozen green beans, roasted sweet potatoes, white potatoes for DS, and brown rice. But I'll make them with dairy equipment and serve with salmon patties.

Ok, let's see what we've got so far: 1) roast turkey. 2) leftover turkey stir fry. 3) pizza 4) beef burgers 5) salmon patties.

I can probably do beef  burgers twice a week, and I think I'm set  for Sunday through Friday nights. More ideas would still be good though, so we can rotate the foods and not get sick of them.

How about pot roast, beef stew, beef soup, turkey soup, gumbo, vegetable soup, shiskabob, omelet,

What about Tuna Melts?  I combine two cans of tuna fish with whatever veggies (diced) and spices I feel like, put it between two slices of compliant bread with a slice of cheese (I let everyone choose their combos).  Then heat on stove using a press to "squish" the sandwich while it's cooking.  Oh and I use ghee in the pan.  Sprinkle with sea salt, yum.  Serve with a couple of veggie sides.

Ruthie- is their a pasta that you all can eat,  I like to make a salmon macaroni salad,with raw compliant veggie chopped or minced in food processor and I use compliant spices & herbs and then add miracle whip light dressing, I know the dressing is an avoid, but I seldom have it, and thought maybe you could come up with a compliant dressing, similiar in texture & flavor.

Do you know what tomatoes do to us that they are an avoid, this is a hard one I just found out about.  Is green tomatoes an avoid, also?

Tuna with chopped celery rolled into Nori sheets.  Same with canned salmon.

Do you make your own mayo from compliant ingredients?  We do and add to our canned tuna/salmon to make tuna or salmon salad.

Hope this helps ruthiegirl.

Sardines are not very "meal" like but they are good for you so keep that in mind.

Quoted from 14442

Sardines are not very "meal" like but they are good for you so keep that in mind.

Depends on what you do with them. I make sauces with them, sardine cakes, and egg dishes.

I use crumbled sardines in a dinner salad - on top of lettuce with other goodies added in.  It is definitely meal worthy, and it is something DH and I both love.  Filling, but not over-stuffing, and satisfying.  

I wonder if your kids would go for a hot pasta (rice noodles?) dish with canned salmon & veggies, Ruthie.  I've been wanting to try that as a quickie dinner idea.  I like the cold pasta salad idea, but that is more of a hot weather dish, and we're coming into the cooler/cold seasons now.  It's difficult to think of kid-friendly ideas.  I probably eat things kids would find gross, especially ones your son's age.

Quoted from 14442

Sardines are not very "meal" like but they are good for you so keep that in mind.

I often eat them for lunch, sometimes even for breakfast. But dinner needs to be heavier- DD1 is coming home from a long day at school, and my body has adjusted to eating a heavier meal at night.

Today we had salmon patties with roasted sweet potatoes, green beans in ghee, quinoa, and roasted white potatoes for DS (since he won't eat quinoa, even though it's healthy for him.) This meal worked well and I plan to do it again, probably once a week.

you could make a fake  stirfry with salmon. Just stir fry bok choy, broccoli, onions, carrots, water chestnuts, whatever veg, throw some comlpliant beans in and at the end toss with the fish. Top with a little wheat free tamari. Sounds weird but I do that with sardines for breakfast and I love it. Made some for my husbsnd and he loved it too

Turkey or beef meatloaf?

I mash sardines in quinoa or brown rice and give it a round shape (patties?). I sometimes include very small pieces of left over vegetables and or mayonnaise to the mixture (onions, broccoli, peppers, peas, carrots...). I  have vegetable soup or puré for starter.

I make enough soup  or puré to last me for three days so I have an easy starter.

  

Quoted from ruthiegirl

Today we had salmon patties with roasted sweet potatoes, green beans in ghee, quinoa, and roasted white potatoes for DS (since he won't eat quinoa, even though it's healthy for him.) This meal worked well and I plan to do it again, probably once a week.

Yay!  That sounds delicious, Ruthie.  

Quoted from deblynn3

Turkey or beef meatloaf?

I was thinking a turkey meatloaf, too, if the kids will eat it.  Leftovers are good for lunch next day.

Sounds so delicious.  I just cooked my first batch of quinoa two nights ago....I think it might be an acquired taste, because I wasn't crazy about it.  I have LOVED the quinoa pasta, but it has corn in it!!

The main problem with turkey meatloaf is that we already get enough servings of poultry in. My dilemma stems, not from "finding foods we all enjoy" but of trying to balance the needs of two different SWAMI-reccomended food frequencies. I could do turkey meatballs (nobody likes meatloaf but me, so I use meatloaf recipes to make meatballs instead) as an alternative to beef burgers.

We're already getting enough poultry for my SWAMI, and we've been over the limit for beef on Leah's SWAMI. So that leaves more fish. And fresh fish is double the cost of ground beef, so we can't eat that regularly. Salmon patties work well as one weekly meal. If I could find another similar recipe, some way to make canned fish seem more substantial, then I think we'd be set with meal ideas.

I used to make a tuna salad with eggs, onion, celery, dill weed or seed, red pepper and mayo and back in my pre BTD days mix it with pasta. Can't really give a recipe as it varied every time. I've got a coastal cookbook, I'll see if there are any recipes that can be adapted. In New York there must be a fish market. Usually there is some variety of fish that is cheaper than others especially if you do your own butchering.

How about lamb stew?  Beef is neutral for B so you could have more chili cooked in a crock pot.  Eggs are also an option..... a frittata would be very filling.  

All I can think of at the moment is tuna burgers, maybe with some ginger and asian flavors, whatever is compliant for all of you, but if you're already doing salmon patties, maybe it is redundant?.  I think if you do different flavorings,tho, it shouldn't get too boring.

I like the frittata idea, too, if everybody can have eggs.  That is a good way to add veggies to a main dish.  DH and I often share a veggie frittata.  They are quick and easy to make too.  I know you said the little guy doesn't like his foods mixed, would a frittata count as mixed?

Is it quite safe to reheat quinoa or is there as risk of B.cereus as there is with rice?
I, eventually after many interruptions, put soaked quinoa plus veggies and herbs into the slow cooker, intending to eat originally at lunch or early teatime.
By the time all was cooked it was too late and I didn't fancy it, so left it all still covered in the cold kitchen til today.
Now not sure whether to eat cold [not keen] or heat a portion up?
TIA,
Joyce