Whole Foods May 2012 Menu
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May is fun month, but I have heard many people say that it is “the other December.” Between weddings, graduations, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, vacationing, and everyone getting the itch to throw a cook out, who has time to cook, let alone cook real food from scratch? YOU DO! That’s right. Gather up your seasonal produce from your favorite local source and plan a big cooking day before you get too busy. This month you’ll see more strawberries, corn, lettuce, green beans, cilantro, avocado, and zucchini. You’ll also notice a focus on beef and pork since that is our upcoming Get Real topic. I know it hurts your wallet, but this is the area where you don’t want to skimp on quality. More details to come from Get Real, but look for local, organic, and grass-fed options.
Looking at this menu again seriously makes me drool. Almost every recipe is a favorite from my recipe box or a new favorite after testing it for this menu! But I’ll try to pick a few highlights. They all make great family meals, but can also double for entertaining/potluck meals during this hectic month. Depending on your schedule, you might considering doubling your batch this month.
First, every mom likes breakfast in bed right? You have three perfect options to choose from, including a guilt free breakfast cookie. (Wink, wink to kids and husbands!) Cinco de Mayo – the perfect excuse for a party with margaritas – calls for enchiladas, tacos, and lots of lime juice. Take your pick. And finally when you get invited to (or decide to host) one of those inevitable cook outs, you have plenty of options. Lettuce wraps for a starter, pasta salad for a side, and for the main dish, Grilled Pork Chops with Garlic Lime Sauce. And of course here in the South, it wouldn’t be a cook out with out BBQ!
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
Spicy Beef Lettuce Wraps
Lunches
Dinners
- Shredded Beef Tacos
- Grilled Pork Chops with Garlic Lime Sauce**
- Pan Roasted Chicken with Lemon Garlic Green Beans**
- Black Bean Patties with Corn Relish and Avocado Cream Sauce
- Sweet Summer Vegetable Enchiladas
- Crock Pot Pulled 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 May 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 – Month May 10th 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:
- Merrilee Vanderwaal - I get to stay-at-home with my 4 kids, ages 18 mos to 8 years. I like trying out menus from OAMM and also putting together my own. My friend Emily and I have been cooking partners for the past year & a half and find it is much more fun with a friend! I sometimes blog at http://bythewaal.wordpress.com/.
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. 
Wow! This menu is amazing! I can’t wait to try everything! :)
This looks fantastic!! What a great menu. I’m behind on the April menu, so I might not get to this until June, but I’m adding it next to my list.
Do you have the WW points for any of your May menus?
I’m sorry we don’t. The focus of this menu is eating whole, nourishing foods, but not necessarily dieting. If you’re more interested in dieting, then please check out our Diet Menu, which includes WW point values. http://onceamonthmom.com/diet-may-2012-menu/
Quick question: The Shredded Beef Tacos calls for flat-cut beef brisket. For the life of me, I cannot find beef brisket in my area. Weird, huh? What would be a good substitution for this recipe?
That’s sad. Have you tried a local butcher? If you can’t find it though, you could try a chuck roast. Should still shred up nicely.
I used a round roast. Shredded great.
Wee! I found your website last month and have been plotting and planning for May. So exciting that the menu is out. These look fabulous!
On the lettuce wraps… do you actually need an entire head of lettuce for every person? Maybe I’m reading the recipe wrong…
Not for every person, but for every batch. I find that you’ll get about 6-8 usable pieces of lettuce from one head (between breakage and some of them being to small or too stiff). This is enough for 2-3 people.
YAY! Last month was my first month doing this and we are LOVING it! Can’t wait to get going on this menu this weekend :). Thanks for all your hard work!
I’m really confused by the instructions for the chicken breasts to be cooked in the crockpot for the Summer Veggie Enchiladas….aren’t they veggie?
Veggies are the feature ingredient, but they do have chicken in them too. See the recipe cards.
I actually had the perfect amount of shredded chicken fall out of the southwest paninis as they were grilling. I used that in my veggie enchiladas as I couldn’t imagine running my crockpot for .5 of chicken (only cooking for 2 people).
I did this whole menu today! Took me about 2 hours of prep last night and 5 hours of cooking/cleaning today. My freezer is replenished! The griddle cakes are fantastic.
Is the formula for the strawberry muffins broken? If I edit the number of people serving and you go past 4, the number of muffins gets very high very fast. Maybe I’m confused. 2 muffins per person, but once you put 5 people, number of muffins per person is 4 I believe.
There is a formula in this recipe because there are eggs. It is hard to make a half batch. If you put 1-4 in it is the same and if you put 5-8 in the number is the same. If you are on the low end of those ranges you will just have more muffins to enjoy. :)
Ok, thanks! I just wasn’t sure if my amounts were off or what. Makes sense now of course! :)
So glad you asked this. I was trying to figure the nutritional info for 1 muffin and ended up with over 1,000 calories, then I realized that was actually for 4 of them since the recipe was making 8 instead of 2! :)
Do you think it would be possible to use a crockpot for the shredded beef tacos? Or am I crazy to consider it…?
No, it would work. Just be sure to adjust cooking times. It will probably take 5-6 hours on high or 8-10 on low.
Thank you so much! It’s supposed to be nice weather here this weekend so I’m trying to cut time where I can :p
Thank you so much for all the work you put into this menu! I made it ALL (over the course of four days; I have two under two) and everything we’ve tasted so far has been amazing. There are so many wonderful and unique flavors in this menu and we really enjoyed trying all these great new recipes! Thank you for making freezer cooking doable for me!
This menu is amazing. We have LOVED every recipe. Our brisket was nowhere near ready after after three hours in the oven, so we threw it in the crockpot over night and it was divine. Thanks!
We got messed up for some of the formulas– like there weren’t enough green beans with the chicken, and we bought a lot of stuff and didn’t have enough of some. This was the first time I tried this, so not sure if I missed the instructions– I just put the number 6 in all of the spreadsheets– but the recipes and the shopping list did not seem to go together… Just want to do it right next month! THANKS for all of your hard work on this!
Colleen, Well, we do have to estimate a lot of recipes in terms of conversions from items bought to items cut. This sometimes results in extra because not all produce/meat is created equally. There are sometimes mistakes though, we can’t rule that out. So if you find yourself in this situation please email us at info at onceamonthmom.com with how many your docs were set too and what ingredients were lacking or in abundance.
Ok, so I’m just being lazy, but you wouldn’t happen to have the nutritional information for these recipes (not WW points, just the basic info), so I don’t have to figure it out? :)
Not at this time, we only do that for the diet menu at this time. We use http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php – you can do your own analysis there.
Thanks! I’ve been trying to find a website that I could trust to give me accurate information.
If you put the recipe into http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/ you can then divide it by however many servings it yields and get completely detailed nutrition info. It’s a bit of work, but probably the easiest method I have tried, and if you are trying to track your intake of any nutrient (or calories) then you can also use http://www.sparkpeople.com for free and add a serving of the recipe to the nutrition tracker to see how you are doing overall. Sometimes if I enter a recipe and the calorie count is REALLY high… I’ll just divide it a bit more… so instead of 4 servings, I’ll make it five or six, and then add a salad or other veggie to the meal to add bulk ;)
[...] I’m a freaking glutton for punishment, I chose to follow the “Whole foods” menu (which has nothing to do with the grocery store chain and more to do with cooking with real [...]
I made this menu this week! My first time doing once a month cooking, and I LOVE it!
I’m gluten free, and this menu was easy to convert. I used Pamela’s GF baking mix to make the muffins, griddlecakes, and pecan cookies. I’m keeping the panini filling in individual portioned bags (along with individual portioned bags of cheese) and I’ll be making those on Udi’s GF bread. Instead of trying to make GF tortillas, I’ve decided to make the Summer Enchiladas and the Beef Tacos as rice bowls. I’ll serve the fillings over rice, and add cheese, sour cream, etc over the top!
I feel so pampered having all of this amazing food in my freezer! I’m going to be eating WAY better than usual… and I won’t end up glutening myself because I’m too tired/sick/lazy/busy to cook and go out to eat instead. THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!
Oh that is SO WONDERFUL! We are happy we could help you. Thank you for sharing your gratitude and we look forward to future months cooking with you.
I am just finishing up the plan. (Thank-you!) just a quick question about the Pan Roasted Chicken: Do the potatoes survive being frozen in this dish? I know potatoes in the ground don’t!
Again my thanks
Yes the potatoes are fine after freezing, as long as you cook them from frozen. Do not try to thaw them first.
Thankyou for your prompt reply to a question I am positive you receive every menu! I told my father I was freezing potatoes… he reminded me I almost stopped eating potatoes after finding a “melted” thawed potato in the garden. :)
I love your concept and the format seems really user friendly! I am having trouble with the recipes cards, however… Every recipe only prints one line of the directions for preparation in the Excel format. Do you have any tips to help with that? Thanks!
You can click on that cell and choose “text” or “normal” as the format. Or you can use it in Google Docs and not export it to Excel and those directions will be there.
Hi, I’ve been stalking your fb page & website for a while now & I think I’m ready to make the plunge. I am a mom to 23 month old triplet boys, I’m not a gourmet or even a great cook by any means nor am I a nutritionist, lol… I want to feed my family the healthiest (cleanest) way possible, so I’m cutting out everything boxed or packaged. Do you think this whole foods menu is the best menu to accomplish my goal or is their another menu that would be better?
Thank you! I’m excited to stock my freezer & not be in a panicked rush to make meals anymore :)
If you’re looking to cut processed foods and cook from scratch, whole foods is probably your best bet. Our Paleo menu is also very unprocessed, but is grain and dairy free. How exciting to be a mom of triplets. Hope we can make your life a little simpler!
[...] This month’s menu, with our changes, looks like this: [...]