Munch Menu V.13
Your kid will never know that the potatoes are actually parsnips
If you’re new here, welcome! To get started, check out my first munch menu, which includes my dietary philosophy and an overview on how to use these weekly meal plans. Also, make sure to stock up on my (mostly) non-toxic munchkin kitchen essentials which help make meal prep much easier.
I slacked on the official ingredient spotlight this month, but without realizing it, I designed today’s Friday Munch Menu to be heavy on the parsnips.
If you haven’t introduced your kid to this root vegetable, let me make the case for why you should. When roasted, parsnips become ultra sweet, earthy and caramelized. They are somewhere between a potato and a carrot. More importantly, they can pass for either.
Serve them plain and roasted, like suggested in this week’s menu. If you need to jump the hurdle of that first bite, tell your munch it’s a potato or a white carrot. I also love shredding parsnips and using them to cut the potatoes in latkes (new GF recipe just dropped on my main site!). And cubing them to look like potatoes like in this month’s fall reset soup.
Speaking of this soup, this month’s Munch Menu leans more heavily towards family meals than our usual blue plate special, and that’s because ‘tis the season for soups and stews, and soups and stews just so happen to be amazing make-ahead meals. I’ve offered some suggestions below for store bought options if you don’t have the bandwidth to prep both a soup and curry in advance.
Thank you to everyone who joined our subscriber ranks this week and helped me donate $200 to my local food pantry on Giving Tuesday! It’s never too late to join us and get full access to the recipe archives and the special e-book planners I put together.
In case you missed it from September, this Pantry Meal Planner uses the usual Munch Menu format but is completely dedicated to shelf-stable and frozen options (ensuring less than 10 minutes of prep a night). If you’re at the end of your rope this holiday season (who isn’t?), consider dialing into this one and giving yourself a week off.
Please help me decide what our ingredient spotlight should be for next month! I’m debating between brussels sprouts and mushrooms. Which would you like to get your munch on board with?
Happy munching!
Phoebe
THE GAME PLAN
Store-Bought Spotlight
(elements you can buy)
Stubb’s Original BBQ Sauce (also available sugar-free): It’s hard to find the right balance between a condiment that will encourage your kid to try a new food, and a sauce that is not loaded with sugar. This BBQ sauce strikes the right balance and usually entices my munch to eat just one bite of veg.
Lentil Stew: If you don’t want the leg work of making my reset soup from scratch, this HeyDay Canning option is a great swap. PRO TIP: freeze extra portions in this tray and store in a bag in the freezer labelled “Soups” for future munch menus.
Maazah Mango Chutney: I discovered this brand recently at CherryBombe’s annual event. It’s women owned (sisters!) and began at the Mill City Farmer’s Market in Minneapolis (one of my favorite markets!). All of their sauces and dips are phenomenal and this one is sweet, addictive and perfect for gussying up seafood.
Goodles Mac and Cheese: This newcomer to the boxed mac and cheese game claims to have all sorts of vitamins and nutrients packed into their powdered cheese. Whether or not I fully believe the health claims, I will say that it is a delicious way to get your own dose of childhood nostalgia if you were a Kraft orange mac addict. This week’s subscriber recipe is a hack for making a stovetop mac in the same amount of time it takes to tackle a boxed one. But if you really just need a leg up, ain’t no shame in the boxed mac game.
P.S. Have you been enjoying Munch Menus as a free subscriber? It takes me many many hours to put together these game plans every week. If you love them, it’s a very reasonable $1.50 per week if you do the annual option. A small price to pay for someone to do all the planning for you!
Meal Prep
(elements you can make in advance)
BBQ Sheet Pan Tofu, Sweet Potatoes & Brussels Sprouts: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Slice a (15-ounce) block of tofu and place on one side of the pan. Dice a 1-pound sweet potato and place it in the center, followed by 1 pound of brussels sprouts (halved) in the last quadrant. Toss the veggies with salt and olive oil. Smear the tofu with BBQ sauce. Bake for 20 minutes until the veggies are caramelized. Toss the brussels with another glug of BBQ sauce and return to the oven until they are sticky and addictive.
Coconut Rice: Combine 1.5 cups sushi rice, one can coconut milk, 1 cup water and ½ teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, cover and cook for 15-17 minutes until absorbed. I use this rice twice this week, so if you’re serving a whole family, feel free to double. As written, this recipe makes 6 servings.
Kiddo Chicken Curry in a Hurry: This curry is designed to be ready in under 30 minutes, so you could easily make this as a quickie the night of. But like most spiced soups and stews, it only gets better as it sits, making it an amazing option for meal prep.
Fall Reset Soup: Like the curry, this soup is quick but benefits from being made ahead of time. Turmeric gives it a gorgeous orange color, and canned pumpkin plus quinoa (or rice) thickens the base into something that might actually stay on your toddler’s spoon. There are parsnips involved, but feel free to skip if that’s too many parsnips for one week!
Roasted Parsnips: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Toss 1 pound of peeled, chopped parsnips with olive oil and salt. Roast until sweet and caramelized, about 20 minutes.
Quickies
(non-recipe recipes you can cook the night or day of)
Mango Salmon: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Season your salmon fillets with salt and coat with mango chutney. Bake for 10 minutes, or until cooked through. If you want to swap the chutney for fresh mango, here’s a recipe for that!
Avo-Cucumber salsa: Finely chop two avocados and two mini cucumbers, season with ½ teaspoon salt and 2 tablespoons lime juice. Makes 4 servings (halve if just for the munch).
Lazy (High Protein) Mac and Cheese: This week’s paid subscriber recipe! Or substitute with your favorite boxed Mac.
Buttery Peas: Use your microwave as a shortcut
FAMILY MEAL IDEAS FOR WEEKENDS
If you’re someone who goes the family dinner route, don’t worry, I still got you! Every week I’ll add two ideas from my archives or the internet that have been kid-approved in my house. You can make them on the weekends or rotate them into a munch menu.
Dairy-Free Creamy Tomato Soup: I’m not a big fan of vegan hacks like adding cashews to everything, but in this particular case, it gives the tomato soup the most velvety texture, tons of nutrients, and will allow the adults at the table with a less than ideal relationship with dairy to clean their bowls.
Spiced Chicken and Rice: This one pot meal from the Green Spoon gals has been on our rotation for a while. It uses ground chicken, which is a weeknight shortcut I can always get behind, is lightly spiced, sneaks in more cashews (sorry!) and sweetens the deal with a small amount of dried fruit. Both this and the soup above are great options for freezing individual portions for later.
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So many good tidbits in here!!
Would love to see a mushroom spotlight! These menus have been a game changer for our family. Can’t wait try