Hi Friend,

Happy Monday to you!

Friday, I shared the Alves Family Menu Vanessa created (see below) that we'll be dining from over the next 2 weeks. She was feeling inspired and wanted to be creative and make a concrete menu for the meals we'd be eating over the next 2 weeks. This morning we had green smoothies, which was a backwards oatmeal meal (translation: our oatmeal meal, blended). Lunch today, you can see above, which was the Tuna Melt w/ arugula salad & vinaigrette dressing and a side of seasonal fruit (nectarines). Yumbo.

We grocery shop every 2 weeks because we build our menu around a Costco trip and as you know Costco has bulk items that mess with your cabinet space and grocery budget, hence the every 2 weeks. We also hit trader joe's, target, market basket and if need be home depot (non-grocery) or whole foods, if we need something else. We eat the stuff that goes bad first and and the stuff that can sit longer 2nd.

The menu below is an extra step she rarely takes, that she did this time to be creative and have fun and to make meal times extra fun for all of us. Usually she comes up with meal plans in her planner and then shares the grocery list by unchecking the circles on our shared grocery shopping list in the notes app we both have. The grocery list I shared below is just a screen shot of the top part of the Trader Joe's list. It's not the full shopping list, it's not the full trader joe's list and it's not even all of the ingredients that are on this weeks shopping list. It's a sample from the master list. If you saw the full list, you'd see Costco first, then scroll down to trader joe's, then target / market basket, then whole foods, then home depot, amazon and finally the pharmacy.