Overhaul Coming

With looking after my nieces and nephew, along with my 2 kids, and all the summer activity involved with that, I have not been paying good attention to what I have been eating the past while. With only a week left of summer care before school starts, I figure I ought to start working out now some menu ideas for when school does start. I can, by all means, start before that, but I want to make sure to start at the latest September 4th!

My 14yo daughter is on board with me and healthier eating and trying wheat-free/gluten-free (celiac runs in my husband's family) and vegan, or mainly vegan (she keeps coming up with things she doesn't want to give up, but I figure if we can just focus on eating as vegan as possible, she might come to find she'll just indulge now and then or give them up entirely). My 11yo son... A little harder to work with, but being they're both homeschooled and it'll just be us most of the week once school starts, I am confident I can guide him to some positive changes, even if he doesn't go quite as all out as my daughter and I.

But how all out will I go? All depends on my planning and preparation. Part of my problem is I would so often rather not have to eat that if I have to eat, it had better be yummy. lol. Doing a huge overhaul of the diet with untested recipes is not just hard, but frightening. I have reached a point where I feel I do need to do an overhaul. Maybe a one-day overhaul, then a whatever day, then back to the overhaul, at least at first. But I am seeing that I'm not able to do the transitional thing very well: it's taking a lot of time and I'm realizing that if my ultimate goal is vegan, wheat-free meals, and if most of the planned menu items are new, it is going to work better for me to plan on wheat-free vegan meals right from the get-go. Some would say, "Oh, just go vegan and there worry about the wheat later" or vice versa. This just isn't working for me. And part of it is because I know that I'm going to have to phase out a whole bunch of yet-to-be-tried recipes. It may seem perfectionist or something of me, but I don't see the point in trying out a, say, a pasta recipe if it's going to have to be gotten rid of eventually to be replaced by something else because none of us enjoy the wheat-free pastas very much.

Which leaves me with the next week of searching online, working through cookbooks and putting together a collection of recipes I can try out. I have a goal of having the first week of school have 3 "ideal" days: no sugar, no wheat, vegan, lots of fruits and veggies and greens, whole foods... I guess I should really define what it is that I'm aiming for, first! I guess I have an unspoken/unwritten sense of what is acceptable or not, but if I can really define what I'm looking for, it will certainly help!