WHOLE FOODS February 2012 Menu
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Are you smitten with someone special? This menu is made for that saying, “The way to someone’s heart is through their mouth.” With fun romantic undertones but keeping with what’s in season at the market, this menu is sure to please. Artichokes and asparagus are in their peak. These recipes will also be hearty enough to get through this cold and short month. Spring will be here before you know it!!
First of all, this isn’t for the grocery store Whole Foods, it is a menu for those that want to spend more time making their meals from scratch. For a detailed explanation of what is involved in creating this menu we have a post welcoming you to this menu. If you are new and not sure how to get started we have a wonderful series starting with 5 easy steps to get you on your way to once a month cooking. Good luck!
Is your family making the transition to whole foods in 2012? Or maybe you have set a New Year’s Resolution to eat healthier in 2012? Or perhaps you find yourself curious about the whole foods/real food lifestyle? Whatever the case may be, you should consider joining us for our year-long journey to help families transition to real food if they so desire through Get Real 2012!
Breakfasts
- Dark Chocolate Berry Smoothie**
Artichoke Muffaleta
- Quinoa Muffins
- Spinach and Cheese Strata
Lunches
Dinners
- Artichoke Muffaleta Sandwiches**
- Cider Sauced Stuffed Pork Chops
- Flank Steak with Rosemary Chimichurri Sauce**
- Chicken Asparagus Black Bean Enchiladas
Pesto Sauce
- Artichoke Spinach Lasagna
- Ranch House Slow Cooker Pork**
Add Ons
**Indicates meals that require NO COOKING on your OAMC BIG DAY aka “throw and go” meals, perfect for the family who needs to adjust to just do the quick meals!
Recipe Cards
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Grocery List
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Instructions
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Labels
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Pinterest:
Are you a person that likes to see the menus visually? Perhaps you should check out the February 2012 Whole Foods Menu via Pinterest to see the yummy goodness you will be cooking up on this menu. Not sure what Pinterest is all about, check out what Once A Month Mom has to say about it.
Facebook Fan Party:
OAMM Facebook Fan Page Party – February 12th 2012, 9:00 pm – 9:30 pm EST – We will be able to chat via video AND messaging during the event through FACEBOOK! How cool is that? We will be talking about the current month’s menus, answer your burning questions about freezer cooking and have fun getting to know one another. You can also see other past recordings from that tab as well. This is a great way to meet fellow Once A Month Mom’s or get your questions answered as you get started.
Instructions for viewing live-stream:
- Go to the Once A Month Mom Facebook Fan Page.
- Click on the “FB Fan Night” Tab on the left side margin.
- Hit “view live recording” – If I am live streaming it will show you what is happening in progress. If I am not live streaming at the time, you will have the option to click through other videos that I have recorded in the past.
- Enjoy!
Test Cooks
Each month we have some wonderful volunteers who “test” out the menu prior to publication. They do an amazing job of helping to eliminate confusion and mistakes. They may not catch everything but they sure do catch A LOT! If you are interested in test cook, feel free to volunteer. Here is a little bit about this month’s test cooks:
- Kimberly Hale – Hi! I’m Kimberly Hale and I am a full time faculty member of a university, wife, and mom of 3 kids (2, 5, 7). I am also writing a dissertation, which is why the monthly meal planning has been so helpful in the last few months since I found it. I found it to be addictive. After having the convenience of pulling food out of the freezer for a month, I had to stock up again. The frozen lunch and breakfast foods are my favorite to be able to pull out of the freezer and warm up.
Get Started
Are you new to Once A Month Mom or once a month cooking (oamc) in general? If so, you might want to spend a few minutes (or hours) on the Get Started Series. If you are in a real hurry to catch on we have written some simple steps for getting started. Welcome!
If you are feeling abundantly blessed and generous feel free to donate. 
But don’t feel guilty if you aren’t able.
Hi
Yummy looking recipes this month!
I may be missing it but I don’t see the water amount for the quinoa muffins on the excel spread sheet.
Thanks!
Lisa
I’ll check on that.
Any suggestions for a substitute for the quinoa. I live out in the country, and don’t know if my grocery store will carry it.
Sarah, I’m not sure about a substitute, but quinoa is growing in population and if you can’t find it in the pasta isle, maybe ask your grocer if they can special order it? Or you can always find it online.
I’m having trouble with one of the formulas on the Grocery List. I put in that I’m cooking for two people, and it’s telling me that I need 12 pork chops. But when I check the Recipe Cards, I’m only counting 8 pork chops. I’m wondering if this is off for the entire grocery list, or just this item?
After some investigating, it appears that you are correct. The amount for two people should be 8 pork chops. Our apologies, this is one that slipped by test cooks even. I appreciate you letting us know and we have corrected the math.
Thanks! I just wanted to make sure it was JUST the pork chops, and not everything on grocery list, so I didn’t end up with extra of everything! ;)
Hey! This is my first month trying the whole foods menu. I have to say I’m quite overwhelmed because before yesterday I had never baked bread. It turned out supper yummy! I’m a little confused about the Chicken Asparagus Black Bean Enchiladas. The directions call for using chicken, but it is not shown on the ingredient list so I don’t know how much to use or what kind. Since I’ve done the breasts in the crock pot, I’m guessing it’s the thighs, but do I use all of them, or are some of them needed for another recipe? Also, there are a few items on the cooking day instructions that are not on the menu. Thank you SO much for what you do for us! I’ve been telling everyone I know about it, I even gave your web site to the woman in the bakery!
It looks like the bacon isn’t listed in the ingredient list either.
OK, never mind. I did say I was new at this didn’t I? :-) I figured it out. Operator error. Back on track. My house smells so good!
:)
Hi,
I see you have Ziplist as a resource.
I was wondering if there is a possibility to make the option avaiable to add the grocery list and recipies directly from the website to my Ziplist?
Thanks!
Juanita, there is a button for you to add any of the recipes to your grocery lists or recipe box in the upper right hand corner of the recipe.
Thank you! :)
It apply to only this site right? As e.g. the Valentine Smoothy takes you to another website.
In my search I did however find a solution from Ziplist in the event of a recipe being on another website. It is called “Ziplist Recipe Cliper” and it lets you add a recipe to your Ziplist from any site. For some reason though the smoothy recipe had the wrong ingredients when I did the latter *shrug*
:)
We create printable recipe cards so you don’t have to do all that work. If you want to create your own you will definitely find Ziplist to be helpful. You should maybe read this post for some help with this: http://onceamonthmom.com/get-started-creating-a-custom-grocery-list/
Would love to see a mini list for whole foods!
For the February Whole Foods menu, we were wanting to buy the artisan bread rather than making since we are cooking for 10. Could you let us know about how many loaves of bread we’ll need? I read the Artisan bread recipe plus the original from the website, but couldn’t get a clear understanding of how many loaves the base recipe was making. Thanks!
Approximately 4 or 5 loaves for the Sandwiches and strata
Thanks Kelly!
Hi Kelly,
We had 5 moms cook on Saturday and made 10 of the 12 recipes. There was much frivolity and laughter! I think there might be something wrong with the math on a couple of the cheeses. When we entered 10 people, the grocery list said 10lbs of parmesan cheese and 5lbs of gruyere. We use 2lbs of parmesan and 2lbs of gruyere. We didn’t make the lasagna which would have used another 5 cups or so of parm, or the goat cheese pockets (which don’t use any). 10 cups of gruyere we used for the strata, but we got 10 packed cups from just 2lbs of gruyere. Hope that helps others!
Thanks for putting this together, we had a blast.
Best,
Amanda
Thanks Amanda! I’m so happy you had fun, isn’t it the best! Fun with friends, and food in the freezer! I can check the cards, we may have had a typo and should have put cups instead of pounds. We’ll look into it! Thanks for the feedback!
I have a suggestion/question… could the grocery list and recipe cards be combined into 1 spreadsheet? That way if I wasn’t going to make something that included part of the amount of chicken, I could just zero out those amounts and the chicken amount on my grocery list would automatically adjust? I’m not even sure if that’s a possibility, but just something I was thinking of today.
Technically, it is possible. Feasible is another story. Our writers already spend a tremendous amount of time preparing documents each month to be usable and functioning. Most of them have great menu writing skills but that would take a large knowledge of spreadsheets and editing on our part which we don’t have. It would also take an enormous amount of time. Given that the site is free, we are cautious about added time to our menus. We would love to be able to do something similar and may be able to in the future (at a cost) but we aren’t to that point yet.
Well, I have a CPA hubby (which means he is a spreadsheet wizard) and have a bit of knowledge of it myself. If you can send me the actual spreadsheets for both, I could try my hand at it. You can see my email, right?
Rachel, I will email you at that email – it might not be straight away since the 1st is crazy busy but we can chat a bit about it.
I use a great meal planning / grocery list tool called Plan to Eat. It’s a paid service, but I wonder if you could leverage that tool somehow? Clint, the developer/owner is very active and responsive. Among other things, you can enter a recipe at one serving size, then adjust the number of servings when you plan the meal and the recipe and shopping list update accordingly. Might be easier for authors and users alike!
I’ve been using OAMM for two months now – it’s an awesome resource! Very well thought out, easy to follow, and yummy! I’m so excited you have a vegetarian and whole foods menu! Now, if you integrated with my other favorite tool, that would be nirvana…(well, a personal chef would be nirvana, but you know what I mean).
I have definitely heard of them and even been at similar conferences. Thanks for sharing, I’ll do some research.
I’m preparing to use this menu for March and was wondering if any of the more savvy OAMMs could suggest a substitution for the asparagus in the enchiladas (sadly my husband will not touch asparagus with a 42.6ft pole). Most other vegetables are fair game (except eggplant and zucchini/squash; he’s such a picky eater). I was thinking perhaps broccoli would provide a similar texture. Thoughts?
I would not suggest broccoli, you want something with a little crunch and milder taste. I would have suggested zucchini but since that is off as well, what about something like green beans?
Hmm, would I just blanch the green beans like the asparagus?
Another quick fix for you (I hope). The recipe for Flank Steak with Chimichurri is having an issue with the recipe amount filling in. It’s no linked back to the instructions tab where you can input your servings number. Therefore none of the ingredient amounts change on the Flank steak tab. Just FYI.
We have fixed this now!
I’m having trouble with the spreadsheet…it isn’t allowing me to change the “1″ to “5″ for my family. I’m not allowed any kind of editing access, even if I download it…
Nevermind! I missed it. lol
I’m making the lasagna and am curious about how the layering works. I am making this for 4 servings so it says I need 8 noodles to make 2 lasagnas. I am curious I how do 1/3 of the noodles from just 4 noodles for 3 layers. I am trying to picture this in my head and I even went to pinterest and it still isn’t making sense to me. Also am I suppose to cook the noodles before hand or no. Thanks for any help you can give me:)
Hi Amanda, You do not need to cook the noodles beforehand. As for the layering I’ll check the formula but you should have more noodles than that. The box probably came with 12 if you bought for 4 people. I would do two noodles per layer making 3 layers in each 8×8 pan. Does that help?
Thanks Kelly!! That’s what I thought about the layering and that’s what makes sense but my reciepe said 8 noodles so I was so confused:( I figured it would only be 2 noodles wide, but I wanted to make sure so that I wasn’t left over with or ran out of ingredients. Thanks again for the help:)