"Nine Days" Pantry Challenge Menu

It's that time of year again - the Nine Days are here and it's hot out. It's actually quite fitting to have a week in the summer to focus on lighter eating. It seems to be quite practical, when you think about it, even though that wasn't the origin of this custom. I believe in keeping 9 days food very simple, not any fancier than a regular weekday's meals would be.

In my house, it's not really going to be a "lighter eating" week, since we eat vegetarian during the week year-round, but I plan to do a "lighter spending" week! Starting very soon, we will not be able to avoid spending money as we approach our son's upcoming Bar Mitzvah. There's just no way around it, even though I decided to self-cater the Thursday night event. Self catering is a lot of work, but it allows me to control the cost of the event, while serving foods that would be out of our price range if we did a catered event, as well as the ingredients used. With all the different foods we need to be careful about (at least labeled!!), this seemed to make the most sense...

But I digress. This week we'll be pantry challenging...

Here's the planned menu:

Sunday
Lunch: Sandwiches, cut vegetables with chumus
Supper: Spaghetti, Steamed Kishuim, Watermelon

Monday
Lunch: Lentil patties, rice cooked in vegetable broth, carrot sticks
Supper: Baked Potatoes/Baked Sweet Potatoes, non-dairy crustless vegetable "quiche" (using random veggies from the freezer)

Tuesday
Lunch: leftovers from Sunday and Monday
Supper: Sloppy Sams on Fresh Rolls, Corn, tomatoes & cucumbers

Wednesday
Lunch: leftover Sloppy sams and corn
Supper: Scrambled eggs, Pancakes, melon

Thursday
Lunch: Sandwiches, any vegetables that need to be used up
Supper: Pasta with sauce and cheese or polenta, salad, ??

Shabbat - this is a really tentative plan
Fresh Challot
Food from the freezer, plus fruit soup and a fresh black bean cholent
Seudah Shlishit will be tuna salad/egg salad, rolls, veggies, and  lots of fruit and lemonade or something like that...