July brings a few holidays, including the 4th of July, Teddy Bear Picnic Day, Embrace Your Geekness Day, and National Chocolate Ice Cream Day. We really don’t have a lot of plans this month, except splashing in water and hanging out outside. This is how I like it. And ice cream! Way too much ice cream. And possibly losing track of days and posting the meal plan a week late. But what is summer for if not forgetting what day it is??

Ideas and resources for menu planning in July, many seasonal summer and real food recipes. Very simple ingredients, from scratch. As always, these are all frugal recipes intended for a tight budget. Real food/from scratch/traditional diet/nutrient dense/whole food/blah blah blah. My monthly meal plans use an alternative meal planning method, recipes organized into tiers based on how perishable the ingredients are, not sorted into particular days.

What is this REAL FOOD I keep babbling about? Real food is just home-cooked meals, from scratch. Nothing weird or super hard, just making food yourself from “real” stuff, not paying someone else to prepare something for you and add weird stuff and franken-food ingredients. You have control over exactly what goes into your family’s dinner, and your body. Good stuff, like tomatoes. And mozzarella. And dark chocolate. Lots of chocolate. But no glitter. That would be bad.

*Attention real food purists/whole foodies – the recipes I link/pin are all from scratch, but some of them you may have to make substitutions or modifications. For example, I link recipes that have sugar, but you can substitute whatever your favorite sweetener is.

*Don’t forget to read about how I meal plan at Frugal, Flexible Monthly Menu Planning!*

In this post: Seasonal Produce ~ Recipes ~ Download PDF ~ Pinterest Boards ~ Other Plans