Wow. I've been blogging every day now for two weeks! It has been surprisingly easy, most days, but it has required a shift in priorities. Every day I need to figure out what to blog about. Planning in advance is great, but not always possible. I can't force myself to always be ahead. Not taking things too seriously is always a good thing, and helps me not overthink each post. Overall -- I'm really happy with how this experience has gone so far.
Now, I've never been one who has been good at meal planning. I'm one of those "fuck rules, The Man is trying to keep me down!" kind of people, and since I consider cooking to be a creative art, I recoil in the face of anything trying to keep me down. But even I realize the need for meal planning. Basically, to save money and to eat healthier, I have a goal to make all of my own food to take to work each week. In order to do this, I need to plan ahead quite a bit. The combination of my CSA plus my weekly farmers market trips makes trips to the grocery store pretty rare; but I also need to be able to put together actual meals that I'll want to eat during the week. I've generally reserved Sundays and one night during the week (it varies) for cooking these batches of food. And it's been really great for me, because the system has mostly been working!
Today was my cooking day, instead of Sunday, because I want the food to last as long as possible, and sitting in the fridge -- it may go bad by Friday if I cook it too early. It was really hard to wait this long, given the delicious stuff I'd bought at the farmers market this week, but I managed to do it. Here I will share with you how easy it can be if you are able to get into a rhythm. Here's a typical day of cooking for me, and what I did today.
BREAKFASTS: New potatoes, pan fried with shiitake mushrooms, spring garlic & rosemary
LUNCHES: Fresh spaghetti with arrabiata sauce (both from The Pasta Shop) with added sautéed spring garlic, shiitake mushrooms & broccoli leaves
Given that today is Monday, I'm all set until at least Thursday. Good thing I'm picking up my new CSA box on Wednesday, which means I'll want to cook more on Wednesday night! See how this goes? There are, of course, some times when things don't go as planned or I end up hating what I've cooked or I just want to go eat cheese bread or something, but I'm trying so hard to prevent that.
If you have any meal planning tips/tricks, let me know! Eating locally and seasonally, in addition to carving out dedicated periods of time to cook, has really worked for me so far.
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