What are we going to eat?
Where do I begin? Let’s start with food. We used to eat out and have a subscription to a meal service because we had the financial freedom that allowed us to not think about the food we were eating and more importantly the food we were wasting. But financial situation has changed with the goal of not eating out at all. The problem with this is I am still tired and on-the-fly cooking has led to a lot of semi-junk being made for dinner or worse cheap fast-food meals.
I know a ton of things needs to change with my diet. But I want to take small steps to try and ensure the change has a chance at sticking. The first habit to get into is to take stock of what is on hand and meal plan. Yes. That can be considered two different habits I am tackling but they do work hand in hand. There are many reasons meal planning will help. Here are the ones I am hoping this will help with
· Use perishables and things on hand so I don’t throw money away. Literally.
· Spending less at the grocery store
· Sidestep falling into quick meals/fast-food
· Control over the ingredients
So, what is in my refrigerator and freezer?
1 individual packages of chicken breast (skinned, deboned)
5 individual packages of ground beef
2 9-ounce turkey breast meat
1 pork loin roast
1 pound of mini-meatloaf patties (6 patties) pre-made
2 packages of chicken tomatillo tamales (roughly 10 tamales each)
1 package of cheese tortellini pasta
1 package of pre-made chicken tikka marsala
1 freezer bag homemade chili
1 freezer bag homemade red beans and rice (minus rice)
1 freezer bag homemade Japanese chicken curry
3 6-quart homemade chicken stock
Lots of frozen veggies
Now that I have my main stores figured out, on to what to make. In my younger, no-child days I would cook and bake often. Sometimes they would be lavish meals and when you have all the time in the world what does it matter if the meal takes 4 hours to make as long as it’s good right? Now, I will be lucky to have the kitchen to myself longer than 45 minutes before a small being invades our tiny area we have to make all our meals. But solving for getting them involved in cooking will come later.
For now, back to meal planning. Because I am just getting back into meal planning, I am limiting the planning to take no more than, hopefully, 30 minutes. There is a black hole of meal planning that people (namely me) can fall into trying to craft the best possible schedule to do with what I have but OH if we just buy this…… STOP. 30 minutes to plan the whole week including anything to put on the shopping list we must have.
Next requirement is the meals must be easy to prepare. I currently work from home until 5:00pm but that sometimes extends to 5:30pm. This means that my partner must drive to go pick up our daughter at daycare before 6pm. So that will leave usually about 45 minutes, an hour at most, to ensure we have something to eat when they get home as we like to have the toddler starting bedtime at 7:30pm so they have plenty of time to sleep.
While in the future I will want to add meals that adapt to my migraines and PCOS, right now it’s just a matter of planning dinner and actually ensuring it’s something I make. I also want to make sure in the future there is variety. No one likes the days to be the same. My dad has told me the “horrors” of eating grilled chicken every Sunday dinner. I am leaving at least one day in the week to eat dinner with the in-laws as we normally do to ensure plenty of time to see their grandchild.
Menu planning this week:
Monday: Split Pea with Ham Soup
Tuesday: Red Beans and Rice from the freezer
Wednesday: Pork loin with Warm Dijon Potato Salad
Thursday: Tacos
Friday: Chili Potatoes
Sunday: Chicken Tomatillo Tamales with slow cooker Refried Beans
Even though my goal is to plan out the meals for the week on Sundays, I want to make sure that I have something already in place when I plan to keep me from falling into just having a “everyone fends for themselves night” which means that we all eat fast meals without any veggies.
Let me know if you want me to post recipes and let’s see how I do!
