Karen's Kitchen Food Block Chart

Buy "THE Poster!"

This is my Food Block Chart that the recipes from "A Year in Karen's Kitchen" are based upon. You can see how useful it is to have everything typed up in blocks and you can only imagine how helpful it would be to have these posted on your refrigerator door! People ask what my best advice on following this new eating style is, and my answer ALWAYS is "BUY MY POSTER! Making a daily meal planner is really helpful in giving you a sense of what meals you will be eating, and what food you can be substituting for a meal.

Here are some of the "blocks" you will find on the protein section of my poster:

Best Protein Choices

Each square represents one block of protein. This is not a complete list of best protein choices. Your easiest choice would be to BUY MY POSTER! and get it all done for you. It also helps you to visualize "I get 3 blocks of protein for lunch today-- THREE of any of these! It's a lot of protein!"

This is not the first draft of doing food blocks in real "block" shapes. My original idea was to print protein on blue paper, fat on yellow paper and carbohydrates on green paper. Then I would mount each one on a magnetic back so I could change them each day, filling in the blank chart with each block of food I wanted. So I printed them, cut them out and left the room. Once I was out of the room I realized the first limitation of this idea. Suppose I wanted 3 blocks of peanut butter? I'd have to have at least 3 copies of each block! Then I went back into the room and found the SECOND reason this was not going to work. The wind had picked up a bit, come into the room and blown all the tiny pastel papers all over the floor! 3 months later, there's still a little block here, a little block there...

Now I use my Meal Planner which you can print out or make for yourself or ask me to send itto you as a MS Word Attachement.

THAT is when I came up with my POSTER! All in a neat 11"x19" sheet with over 14 recipes on the back side, the poster makes meal planning and menu planning a BREEZE. This is the chart I used in How to Plan Your Day. I have since found that using this poster, I have memorized enough of the portions that I just automatically think in blocks of food, and I don't do as many menus, but work on recipes instead. I DO find, however, that having the Block Poster in front of me when I do meal planning or my shopping list, that I am reminded of foods that I haven't tried in a long time. It has widened my meal planning, taken us out of a rut of eating only the same 7-10 meals each week, and made eating a great big adventure without ever allowing me to feel deprived of certain foods just because they are "unfavorable". There are so many great foods out there that we don't think about, who has TIME to get bored or feel deprived!!!

Find new ideas about menu planning in my one day menu (including delicious recipes) in my Menu of the Month.