Need Help Menu Planning? This Giveaway is For You!

Cooking Traditional Foods has long been one of my favorite real food/traditional eating web resources. KerryAnn Foster runs the site which is packed with valuable information, resources, recipes, and even has a section dedicated to children and a Traditional Diet. One of the things I love the most about her site are the products that she offers. KerryAnn has an excellent weekly Menu Mailer as well as several eBooks and eClasses.

I contacted KerryAnn because I was already a subscriber to her Menu Mailers. I knew from experience what a critical role the menu mailers played in simplifying my journey of creating meals based on a Traditional Diet. I was very interested in two of her recent additions; the Back to Basics Series and the Often Used Recipes from the Menu Mailer eBook. KerryAnn provided me with a copy of each and I am thrilled to not only share with you a little about these goldmines but also offer you the opportunity to win one of these fabulous products!

Let me start by sharing my experience (briefly) with the Menu Mailer. The CookingTF Menu Mailer is the longest-running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet and after researching several other menu mailer services, I selected KerryAnn’s. She provides 5 weekly meal plans where most others only provided 3. Some of the weekly issue features include:

·        Five dinners, including side dishes. At least four meals need less than 30-minutes of hands-on time.

·        One breakfast

·        One soup during winter

·        One dessert

·        Extra recipes such as ferments, snacks or condiments

·        A weekly preparation plan to post on your fridge to remind you when to soak beans, thaw meat, and soak grains. Extra blanks let you write in your own needs for breakfast, lunch and snacks.

·        A post- shopping prep list of things you can do now to cut down on your time in the kitchen during the week.

·        Serving suggestions for each meal.

I personally loved all of the reminders about when to do certain types of food preparation, as well as what I could do to get a jump on the next week’s cooking. The CookingTF Menu Mailer also has the option for every meal to be gluten and/or casein free, so those with food allergies or who are new to having to cook for someone with allergies do not have to convert the recipes. Each shopping list contains suggestions for gluten and casein free brands for those new to allergy cooking. Since Tiny is now on a gluten free diet, this feature has been critical to our success.

So far, I have pretty much followed the menu mailer plans to a T. Yes, there are days that things do no go as planned or where I somehow forget to purchase a necessary ingredient, forgot to do the food prep, etc… But seriously, these menu mailers take ALL of the guess work out of meal planning. The recipes have all been extremely easy to follow but most importantly, they are DELICIOUS! Even my super skeptical husband has enjoyed the foods I have prepared (minus the fermented sides. He has yet to take that journey with me!)

Let’s talk about the Back to Basics Series. If you are new to Traditional Foods or considering getting started with Traditional Eating, then this 30-week long, 304-page eBook is exactly what you need. It is guaranteed to teach you how to incorporate Traditional Food techniques into your life, a little at a time. I know that I was VERY overwhelmed when I first started. Fermenting foods myself seemed impossible. I had never heard of sprouting grains. The task of making my own condiments, sauces, and the like seemed momentous. Yes, the menu mailers were extremely helpful but I really could have used a more start here, move three spaces, collect $100 approach.  

Well – this book is that more that I wished I had at the time. The Back to Basics Series helps you start to incorporate Traditional Foods into your everyday life; teaches you the techniques you need to cook from scratch; and helps you pull everything together into an affordable, simple, time saving menu plan. You start off slow and do not feel so overwhelmed. As you go through the series, you will gain confidence and an understanding of more techniques and foods.

The Back to Basic Series offers the same things I outlined about the Weekly Menu Mailer. It is simply FAR more comprehensive and offers readers a more long term menu planning system. Once you get the basic techniques and formulas down, you can use this book more as a reference tool as you create your own menu plans suited to your family’s needs and tastes. Trust me – you will never be at a loss for recipes. Don’t believe me? Check out the recipe index for this series here. It’s pretty awesome!

What do I love about the Back to Basic series?

·        Recipes that are easy to follow and not bogged down with tons of extraneous steps or information

·        Real life tips and information

·        An organized, easy to follow shopping list

·        A guide to which fruits and veggies are in season each month

·        A list of which staples to have on hand

Last and certainly not least, KerryAnn’s eBook, Often Used Recipes from the Menu Mailer, covers forty-five of the most commonly used recipes for the Menu Mailer. This eBook contains recipes for breakfast, condiments, side dishes, sauces, dips, salad dressings, spice mixes, packaged and processed replacements, ferments, stocks, sourdough starters and more. These are the basic recipes you see repeatedly used in the Menu Mailer, and they’re now all in one convenient eBook. I absolutely love this idea. Sometimes I am pouring over my mailers trying to find a particular recipe and this eBook gathers them all in one place. This is a great go-to book for those days when I have crafted my own meal plan and need to find one of the basic recipes.

I get a lot of questions about how I make it all work in my household and the Menu Mailers are just one of my tricks of the trade. I am so pleased to be able to share this resource with you and give you the opportunity to win your choice of the Back to Basics eBook, the Often Used Recipes from the Menu Mailer eBook or a 13 week subscription to the Menu Mailer.

Here is how to enter:

Mandatory Entry –Leave a comment here telling me which product you are most interested in: the Back To Basics ebook, the Menu Mailer, or the Often Used Recipes ebook. Be sure to add your email address in this entry.

Extra Entries (Do one, do them all, do none at all). Please leave a SEPARATE comment for each entry. You do not need to put your email address in the extra entry comments.

Follow Hybrid Rasta Mama’s blog on Google Friend Connect. If you already do this, that counts too!

Subscribe to Hybrid Rasta Mama’s blog via email or RSS feed. If you already do this, that counts too!

Subscribe to Cooking Traditional Foods’ Newsletter. If you already do this, that counts too! If you are a new subscriber you will get a complimentary copy of a recent Menu Mailer.

Become a fan of Hybrid Rasta Mama on Facebook. If you are already a fan that counts too! (You must use your personal FB page NOT your business or blog FB page).

Become a fan of Cooking Traditional Foods on Facebook. If you are already a fan that counts too! (You must use your personal FB page NOT your business or blog FB page).

Good luck to everyone! This giveaway opens on Monday, May 2, 2011. All entries will close at 11:59pm on Friday, May 6, 2011. Winner will be announced on Saturday, May 7th. You will have 24 hours to contact me and claim your prize after I announce your name and contact you via email otherwise a new winner will be drawn. Winners are selected from random.org.

Want to purchase the book now? (Hint, hint…you should!) KerryAnn is offering a generous coupon code good for ANY of her ebooks or the Menu Mailer. Simply enter RFM15OFF. Please order using the link below. I’ll be honest – I get a little something if you purchase through this link. J It helps support this blog.