Meal Plan • 11/23/15

• Monday: Black bean & corn chilaquiles with roasted tomato salsa
• Tuesday: Golden bowl with steamed kale (we like to layer it: brown & wild rice on the bottom, kale next, tofu cubes on top)
• Wednesday: Corn, spinach & bell pepper pasta salad
• Thursday: Thanksgiving (this is going to required a whole separate post - meet me back here tomorrow?)
• Friday: Thanksgiving leftovers + a giant green salad full of fresh vegetables
• Saturday: Make-your-own pizzas (see below)
• Sunday: Every man for himself

It can be so easy to forget to plan healthy meals for the week of Thanksgiving (or even to cook anything at all, frankly).  All thought seems to go into Thursday's feast, but I try to take a bit of an opposite approach.  I love Thanksgiving - it's one of my favorite holidays - but I always feel a little overstuffed afterwards and kind of can't wait to get back to my normal way of eating.

We have a ginormous feast at my mother's house, with millions and millions of side dishes and way too many desserts.  Sometimes Grandma even makes my favorite carrot cake, and after that, I go right ahead and eat a few too many pieces of my sister's peanut butter fudge.  Then I sit around until I feel a little less roly-poly, and that's when I belly back up to the counter for another plateful of vegetables that didn't find their way onto my plate the first go-round.

It's embarrassing.  And I never learn.

What I have learned though, is that there is nothing I crave quite so much as fresh vegetables the next day.  Crunchy, leafy, glorious raw veggies.  Thus, the great big salad (you know, to go with whatever other leftovers I managed to steal home with).  

By Saturday, I will be craving foods that have nothing to do with holidays, so I'll break out the bread machine to make some pizza dough, pull out some fresh mozzarella, defrost some marinara, and we will clean out the fridge to find toppings.  

Tomorrow, I'll pop back in to share my favorite Thanksgiving recipes.  I don't make turkey, of course, but I have a tried-and-true short list of side dishes and desserts that I can't wait to make again this year (along with a new recipe that has me all sorts of excited).